Why Disabled People Are Still Locked Out of Media with Susan Wood
- Peta
- 24 minutes ago
- 20 min read
This episode contains discussion of self harm, suicidal thoughts, and mental health. Listener discretion is advised.
Susan Wood is a lifelong communicator, disability advocate, and the Senior Content Manager at Spinal Cord Injuries Australia. From a young age, Susan knew she wanted to work in news media. What she did not know then was how often inaccessibility would close doors before she even had a chance to wheel through them.
In this episode, we talk about what it means to grow up ambitious in a world that is not built for disabled people. Susan shares her experiences of being locked out of media and employment, not because of a lack of skill or drive, but because workplaces and systems were not accessible. We discuss the emotional cost of exclusion, the pressure to compromise on dreams, and how long it can take to find confidence and belonging when opportunities are repeatedly denied.
Together, we explore why disabled people are still missing from mainstream media, what representation really means beyond visibility, and why proximity and lived experience are essential for meaningful change.
This conversation is about disability, ambition, mental health, and the systems that continue to shape who gets to tell stories in Australia. This episode is for anyone who cares about media, representation, and why access is still treated as optional rather than essential.
Listen on:
Key topics discussed
Growing up disabled with ambition
Being locked out of work due to inaccessibility rather than ability
The emotional and mental health impact of long term exclusion
Why disabled people remain underrepresented in Australian media
Transcript:
The following is a full transcript of this episode, please note there may be errors.
00:00:00
Peta: Before we begin, I have a content morning this week. In this episode, my guest speaks openly about the experiences of self harm and suicidal thoughts. Please take care while listening and feel free to skip this episode if it feels too close right now. If you or someone you'd love needs support, help is always available in Australia. You can contact Lifeline on thirteen eleven fourteen, Beyond Blue on thirteen hundred twenty two forty six thirty six, or the Suicide Callback Service on thirteen hundred sixty five ninety four sixty seven. I've also included links in the show notes.
00:00:56
Peta: Hello, and welcome to the I Can't Stand Podcast, the podcast exploring what it's like to live with a disability. My name's Peta Hooke, I have cerebral palsy and I'm your host in today's conversation. This one really stayed with me long after the recording stopped. My guest today is Susan Wood. Susan is a senior content manager at Spinal Cord Injuries Australia. She is the non executive director of the Spine Care Foundation and the host of the podcast Have the Nerve. Like Me Susan was born with her disability, and in this conversation we talk about what it means to grow up disabled with a fiercely protected parent, the quiet grief of feeling behind your peers, and the long and often invisible road to employment, independence and self worth. Susan speaks so honestly about ambition, rejection, mental health, jealousy, desire, and the slow process of being comfortable in your own skin. I'm really grateful to Susan for trusting me with her story. I hope you feel the same connection I felt while talking to Susan. So, without any further ado, let's get into it.
00:02:37
Susan: Hello everybody. My name is Susan Wood. I'm the senior content manager at Spinal Cord Injuries Australia and I'm also the non executive director of Spine Care Foundation. My disability is neonatal hypoxia paraplegia, which essentially it just it's a stroke that happened while I was being born. My birth was an urgency C section, organ swelled up, had to be flown from the Blue Mountains to camp and Oun Hospital and then five days later my legs stopped moving. Paraplegia was a secondary condition of that. How did that shape me growing up. My mum was very protective, very very protective, and I can't really blame her. There was a lot of things that my friends were doing that I couldn't do, and a lot of it was going out by myself. Mum was very resistant to me going out by myself. Mum was also very resistant. It took me until year four to be able to convince my mum that I can do a sleepover at my friend's house. You know, all the school excursions she was coming with me. I think I think that it's a justified concern because not only was my mother a first time parent, but also her child has a disability and she doesn't know anything. So I think the default setting, sorry, I just hit my thing, I think the default setting is to be concerned. And then going along those lines, I think there was a whole lot of things that I was always behind. Right, so finding my first relationships work. Everybody was ten years earlier than me minimum, so I came to the party, not just super late, like mid twenties late.
00:04:45
Peta: Thank you for disclosing your disability. You certainly didn't need to do that. I mean, it's true, it's personal information to you, and it's only if she'd feel comfortable. But I find it so interesting as. Somebody who also grew up not knowing anything different other than being disabled, of how your upbringing does change your total perspective of disability. I'm fought and like, I can totally understand why your mum was so protective and wanted to wrap you in cotton wool. Did that create a lack of confidence in you? Or did you get anxiety? Like? How did that manifest because she was so overprotective? Did you struggle to make friends?
00:05:30
Susan: I was never anxious. I was very I don't. I mean, I talk a lot now and this was not born overnight. This was a lifelong commitment to talking, and now it's a professional, it's a profession of mine. So yeah, No, I was never I was never anxious, and I never I never had any problems finding friends. I was the first one in my group of friends in high school that got their l plates and their dry license right. And I made it clear to myself, because I grew up in the Blue Mountains, that I would get my license as soon as possible, because ironically I lived down the street from a train station, but I couldn't get onto the train because there was a flight of stairs right anyway, when I got my l plates and then eventually my pa plates, my mother would do this thing where she'd get up super early and she'd fill up the petrol tank in case I was going anywhere, so I wouldn't have to fill up the petrol tank. And in defiance of my mother, I took that full petrol tank and I drove around for about three hours to try and get it down to a quarter so I could teach myself how to fill up the petrol tank by myself.
00:06:49
Peta: You're a proactive person. I love it. It's so interesting and I was just thinking it's quite paradoxical like you, and it resonates with me. Sometimes I feel like I'm just watching everybody else's life happen and knowing that eventually a lot of the stuff will happen for me. But you just have to be patient because, like you said, things take so much time. Work has always been an issue. I've always felt behind in all sorts of areas. But also it's interesting that you felt that way. But the stuff that you could control, like getting your license, you were doing before anybody else.
00:07:28
Susan: Oh yeah, I made a b and then I was driving my friends around and I was their free ride, you know what I mean. I would drive them everywhere because I just loved driving. I think my proper working life actually started when I was thirty one, So I uh, I had to move from the Blue Mountains to the city to try and find an opportunity to work. And that was a huge move for me, obviously, as we've talked earlier, a massive move for mum. Mum's also Filipinos. So it's not like we're moving out of the house willy nilly. Culturally, what would happen is you're staying in your house with your family, and so why would you be moving anywhere your family is right there. Before I moved down to the city to try and find work elsewhere, for about three years, I tried to this is going to show my age, print out my resume, and then go to all these places to try and say, hey, give me a chance, and then you'd get you know, given the line of oh looks good, we'll put on file. After about a year, I remember going and going around and again and putting in my resume, and at some point I stopped. I was in Lura, so I was going up and down where I could get into and handing in my resume and I saw the woman's face and I went, I'll stop you right there. Would you actually hire me or not? And she said probably not and I said, okay, that's fine, I'll take back my resume. I don't want you holding on to something that is a lie. Don't lie to me. That was when I realized that there was no future for me in the mountains and I needed to go down to the city. And then I think you said it in your Eggs podcast, but life admin got in the way and my health started failing quite significantly, and so I had to take a three and a half year break from actually trying to do anything that was career oriented. And it wasn't until I was thirty one where I felt like I was finally well. Not fine, Actually that's a lie. I didn't feel like I was ready to work. I just actually needed to work because I didn't want to be chained to a center link pension anymore. And so I went and looked for something and then I ended up volunteering here at SCIA and then from there I got a job. Yeah. Shit just takes a really long time.
00:10:03
Peta: And I know you've always been interested in news media and that's where your heart. Like late particularly, I think you watched Sandra Sali when you were really little, and like that made you want to go into that career.
00:10:18
Susan: Yes, when I was fifteen, I saw Sandra Sally on the television. One day, we'll get to Sandra Sally and she's going to be like, Susan, we need you on Channel ten. But I saw her on the five PM news and I was like, why can't I do that? Peter. There was not even a situation in my head where I was like I am too disabled to get this thing done. I was just like, I want to do this. My mom did have to have a sit down conversation with me at the very tail end of the HSC and she said, you're not going to get the jobs your friends will have. And then she's like, so you've got no other choice but to use your head. You need to use your head and figure it out because you don't know what you're gonna do. We don't know what's gonna happen. But that was I mean, obviously that conversation happened when I was sixteen, and I'm forty now, and I would one hundred percent pass that advice on to anybody who is in high school right you will not have the same job opportunities as your friends who are able bodied. I think it's just like I'd rather people just know the facts straight up front instead of saying you can achieve anything, because you can achieve anything comes with a lie, and that is so detrimental to somebody's self esteem. I don't know what your story is like in this aspect, Peter. I'd love to know, But yeah, that was that was a very confronting conversation which needed to be had.
00:11:52
Peta: I think when I first finished high school and I wanted to get a job, it was the first time I felt like I was drowning because I would try so hard, and you you internalize that if you try hard and you do your best, you're going to seed. I wasn't aware that my success was determined by somebody else's perspective of whether they could take me on as an employee, and that was a really hard lesson for me to learn at the age of nineteen. But I've loved to. Work at maccas When I was going through hot A university, was I ever going to do that. No, So when you were going to those jobs and realizing, I don't think I'm going to get a job here, I'm going to have to move to a big city, what sort of jobs were you applying for.
00:12:43
Susan: I'd spent two years studying journalism, right, and I was already four years into doing community radio, and I was hell bent on being a journalist. What ended up happening was I went to this employment agency that would help me get volunteer work. And it's always the way, isn't it, volunteering into the hope of maybe having some sort of paid something. And so I did some administrative work, and I did some for a theater company in Penrith, and I did some volunteer writing work for the Blue Mountains Gazette. And it was a real eye opening moment. I had to interview somebody who was doing something athletic, and they deployed me to go to her house to write about her and interview her. And I got there and it was a mountain of stairs. I had to get the person to haul me up the stairs to get into that house. And this was one of three separate times where that happened, and a part of you feels like, am I supposed to be here? This is something that I heavily had changed myself to and I need to have somebody else to help me do this thing.
00:14:20
Peta: Yeah, it's I think that read. I've had that feeling and I haven't thought about it since you just said that. Of when you're young, you're passionate about a certain area, like for me it was accessible torurism, and you think I'm going to really make a change. This is what I'm meant to do. I feel so passionate. I've never really understood people who say I don't know what to do, because I've always known what I wanted to do. And then you get there and you've done all this work, You've done study just like you did. Think I either can't do. The role that I've always wanted to do, or nobody will ever employ me to do the role that I wanted to do. To put yourself towards employment agencies and like even the disabled specialized ones say sorry, if you don't want to do admin, we don't really know what to. Do with you.
00:15:16
Susan: I know, and also you know, I mean it wasn't just journalism stuff like I also do a lot of drawing, and painting, and I really wanted to do tattoo work. But I don't know if people remember fifteen twenty years ago, every tattoo shop anywhere you were were up a flight of stairs. So many dreams were shattered during my teens and my twenties and a little bit into my thirties. And that was just because this world was not built for me. Obviously, I love my job that I have now, but was it what I envisioned when I was a teen in my twenties?
00:15:57
Peta: No, yeah, and I think that's really hard, particularly when you're so passionate as you are. So then, how did you, like, did you ever struggle with mental health? I think about now, And I'm. Like, I never even let myself think about it, because if I let myself think about it, I don't think I would have dug myself out.
00:16:19
Susan: To be honest, I've Never said this publicly to anybody, especially on a medium like this, but I was a self mutilator up until I was twenty seven because I had no idea how to deal with my life. I had undiagnosed chronic fatigue syndrome. I also had a severe iron deficiency, and I had no effort for anything. And for nine and a half years, I was going I was trying really hard to hold down a job that I couldn't even get myself up in the morning for, and everything was very exhausting. And I was bullied a lot in high school and I did not know how to regulate my anger in a way that was useful. And I also didn't tell my mum about it either, so I just turned to self mutilation. And I know, this is getting super, super dark, and probably didn't need to be doing this right now, But it was New Year's Day and I was twenty seven, and I had a knife in my hand, and I was ready to just end it, and I was like, no, there is more for me out there. What's in front of me now? So then I went and saw a therapist, right and that was soon helpful. But it was a long hard road to get to this now. I remember people were saying to me when I was growing up, you'll be fine, You'll be fine. I have no concept of reality, you know, And so I was depressed because I'm like, I just really want to be. This thing, and no one will let me be this thing. Why am I here?
00:18:28
Peta: Thank you for sharing. You've certainly made me cry, and I really appreciate you being so open because it is like, sorry, it's fair, but it is fucking tough some days. We're disabled. It just you know, and. It's one of those things that, yes, we can tell our non disabled people in our lives, but it's only really us who understands what it's like to be like, no, this is what I want and it's not happening, and I don't know how to fix it.
00:18:58
Susan: Yeah, And so I get everybody's journey is different, right, and there's difficulties in some way, but I just want to overemphasize to people that your time will come. It's just might not be now, and you could be in the terms, in the words of my mother, destined for great things much later on down the track that you would never expect when you were trying so hard to be something when you were in your twenties and teens and whatever. How old are you actually, Peta.
00:19:31
Peta: I'm thirty five.
00:19:32
Susan: Yeah, there we go. So, like, you know, what have you learned so far? Since all of this?
00:19:40
Peta: I have learned that I wasn't the only one that really found it difficult to not get what I wanted.
00:19:48
Susan: Yeah.
00:19:49
Peta: Yeah, Even to this day, it's such an internal practice to be like, I'm happy for everybody else that they've got what they have. Yeah, and then I'm not jealous, like I can say that, hand of my heart, but do I want What they have
00:20:09
Susan: Yes, I used to also think that way, and I am jealous. I used to be very jealous of whatever. I was very jealous, especially when people get into relationships and you feel like you know what's going on. I've seen people get married, have children, separate, divorce, and as somebody who's just turned forty, and obviously you know the ticking time clock of wanting to have children. Do I want to have children? Do I not want to have children? Obviously you would know all about that. I think I love my life as it is now and all the things gitting up to this moment has made me actually love my life or because of all the things that have happened, right, So, like retrospect is always twenty twenty, hindsight is always twenty twenty.
00:21:11
Peta: Well, I'm very happy to hear that you're in a better space now. What were the things that you think determined you being in the place you are now? So you said, you started therapy, You've obviously got a really good relationship. Told me, how did you get from twenty seven year old you to forty year old you today?
00:21:33
Susan: Getting my own financial freedom was so incredible. Identifying some health problems that I had not known about was also quite helpful. I took up paradants for about six years, and I did some competitive paradance competitions and if for anybody who doesn't know what paradance is, it's adapted ballroom Latin dancing. And then I found burlesque dancing. I follow a few burlesque dancers and somebody from the United States was coming to Australia to do a workshop. But I got there. I was the only one with a disability, uh physical disability of my nature doing burlesque dancing. And it was incredible and I felt so good. And the best part about that was that they didn't change a fucking thing for me. I just did it myself and I felt great. And I know that I just swore, but it felt so good. I feel great, like I feel really confident, and it turns out that I feel really sexy, something that like I didn't feel that way in my teens. I didn't feel that way in my twenties, barely felt it in my thirties, but in my forties I'm like, yeah, man, actually I think I'm actually quite attractive. It turns out, I guess it's hard, right, because because your self worth and self confidence is always very much tied to what you see around you. And what I saw around me growing up was a lot of able bodied people who were getting into girlfriend boyfriend relationships in high school and it was all very cute, and they're all making out on the oval and spending time with their boyfriends or girlfriends or whoever, and uh, I didn't have that. And then, for some reason, because you've you've only been on this earth for like fourteen fifteen, sixteen years, you think that that's the most important thing about you. And then you see all these people move on and get married, and what are you like at that point eighteen nineteen, twenty twenty one, twenty two, twenty five, twenty seven, And you think to yourself, Yeah, that's not happening to me at all. And then I don't know what it is. Something about being in your thirties. Can you just go it's not all about that. Actually, I've got a very long life to live. Potentially, Am I going to define my whole life on making sure that I am in a relationship with married with children or am I just gonna let whatever happens happens, and whatever happens literally happens. Do I want children, yes? Do you want to get married yeah? Or whatever? But whatever happens happens, right, And I think that that can easily be applied to airtybody. I don't think whether it's somebody with a disability or not. I think there's always been something somewhere where somebody has felt inadequate because of the environment that they were surrounded by. But you don't know if that marriage is happy.
00:24:48
Peta: Yeah, and you realize that just if it's pretty perfect on the outside doesn't mean it is in reality, or it doesn't. Mean it would be the sort of relationship that I want.
00:25:00
Peta: As someone who's really invested in Australian media and still today has aspirations to work in mainstream media as you should, I really love to see you on Chantleton sooner rather than later. To them, what sort of things as far as disability representation or barriers that needs to be removed to allow it disabled people to actually be a part of the industry.
00:25:25
Susan: Do you know about Nas Campanella.
00:25:27
Peta: I do, but for those who don't,
00:25:30
Susan: She is the disability affairs reporter for the ABC. And there's also a man, Charles Bryce. He lives in South Australia. He is another journalist for the ABC. Maybe, and this is no shade on Nas, no shade on Elizabeth. Maybe you need more than three three journalists in one news station to talk about disability. Maybe we need to have a person with disability working in mainstream media. Ten SBS nine seven. But I also feel the same way about people of color, and I also feel the same way about other minority groups. I feel like nobody really talks about disability issues unless it's Nas. Have you noticed that? That's terrible? And that's not I'm not saying that about Naz. I'm saying that about the state of disability and media. I can't believe that they talk about the NDIS blowout multiple times on mainstream stations, but they don't actually talk about the issues within disability or how difficult it is.
00:26:45
Peta: It's so shocking to think that in a country with twenty six twenty seven million people, there's only three, you know, people with obvious disabilities on our screens each day, Like that to me is just shocking. Why can't it be one here five?
00:27:01
Susan: Well, I mean it's one in five people with disability in this country, so you know, maybe we should consider it.
00:27:09
Susan: I don't know, talk to me about your podcast and all about it. Okay, So this podcast was a grant that we got twenty nineteen and it fell into my lap because I was the only one that had a journalism certificate and I was like, I'll take it on, and I wish I would love to have like endless amounts of time to put more episodes together. Every time I see your email come. Through and you're like episode one hundred and something, I'm like, oh my gosh. My podcast is only on episode fifty two when it's been five years.
00:27:43
Peta: And before you go on, I just want to say it's called Have the Nerve.
00:27:48
Susan: Yes, it's called Have the Nerve. I've just talked about it without knowing that people don't actually know what it's called. It's called have the Nerve. It's any way you stream podcasts, and it basically started as a way to talk about disability that's beyond surface level media stuff. I've interviewed people who as sex workers for people with disabilities, a lot of psycho sexual therapists, because yeah, sexuality is a big deal and we need to be a little bit more confident. But how do we do that? And it will take time. I've talked to survivors of domestic violence. I've talked to political figures with disability about the lack of disability in politics. It's really just for anybody who wants to learn something about disability. And there's a lot of lived experience, life stories. I'm going to release an episode soon about fatherhood and disability, and they're from the perspectives of our peer and family support team. Three guys, two droplegia, one with paraplegia, and we talk about, you know, what sort of conversations do you have with your partner, about what sort of responsibilities that you're going to take on with the mobility that you have, the capabilities that you have. I just think that people need to have more understanding about what it means to be a parent with disability. I don't know what that means, so I'm going to ask other people what that means. Yeah, just a whole that one's truly a Labor of Love. I love that podcast. I love radio, and I love that podcast, and I love that twenty twenty five allows me to have my own radio show.
00:29:37
Peta: It really comes across that you are passionate. It's a really great show. People should definitely go listen. And you recently did an episode with your colleagues in at your workplace talking about about their Perception of disability. And one thing you said that really struck me. That you say that you repeat often, so it's people who listen to your podcast. Sorry from repeating we've heard this before, but you said that you don't really think change can happen by non disabled people unless they meet us face to face. I have the realities of what disability life is like, and I love you to talk a bit more about that.
00:30:20
Susan: I would talk to my coworker about what it was like to try and find disabled parking when you can't find it, and I remember trying to explain to her, you know, circling the block and everything and then eventually just give up and then you go home. One day, she was in the car with me and we could not find a car park anywhere, and we drove around the blocks of Wilhelmloo into the CBD, we drove into King's Cross, we went everywhere trying to find a suitable car park for me to be in. And then she said, I have thought about that every day because I would never have known how frustrating that was, because there's not only so much talking, you can do as well, right, Like I think in that same podcast episode, Libby shared the story of when we were leaving work one day and it was the middle of a rain storm and it had just finished raining and Central Station wouldn't take me at the train station and I had to take a bus, and then I had to take a metro, and then I had to take the ferry and the whole trip took like four hours. And I think she said it in the podcast like I was so angry and you were so calm, and it didn't even occur to me, you know. It wasn't until I started dyeing my hair bright colors where the conversation went from feeling sorry for me for living by myself and a very common one, which was are you married. No, Oh, it's a real shame. And I remember once I was just like it doesn't even matter, or one somebody said to me, do you have a husband, And I said no, I've got a partner. And then they said to me, oh, it must be really difficult for him. It must be so difficult for him. And I was like, mostly yes, because I'm a difficult person, but also secondly he should feel honored, okay, but also I was just like that is just so crazy, like it's crazy. But then when I started dyeing my hair, suddenly that conversation was like, look at your hair. Unless fascinated about the wheelchair, and I was like, yes.
00:32:38
Peta: Yes, Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the I Can't Stand Podcast. If you enjoy today's conversation, the best way you can support the show is by sharing it with a friend or posting about it on social media, and if you have a moment, leaving a rating and review helps more people find these stories. Don't forget. You can always send me an email I Can't Stand Podcast at gmail dot com, or you can follow me over on Instagram at Peterhook. I'll see you next week. I would like to respectfully acknowledge the wondery and bunn wrong people of the call and nation of which I record the podcast today and I pay my respects to both elders past and present, along with and especially to those in the First Nation's communities who are disabled themselves.
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