Identity

Joanne Wacha: Drama


Joanne Wacha was born in 1984 in Harrow, London. Joanne attended local mainstream primary and secondary schools and also spent time in hospital, attending the hospital school, after becoming ill at the age of thirteen. After school she went on to a local sixth form college, then a residential special college and then on to university.

Here Joanne talks about returning to school as a disabled child

Transcript

I think the hardest thing for me was making new friends and trying to always tell them about how I was. I used to walk, I used to do that, I used to do this because they saw me as an individual in a wheelchair and that’s who they knew me as but I still don’t think I saw myself as that so I was trying to tell them about the old me. That was a battle that I struggled with for a long, long time, just trying to find my identity as a person. I think I found my identity though through drama.

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