How would you earn your living if you and your child had a severe disability? One mother shares how she has found a job that makes her life just a little easier. Some mornings I lay in bed crying. I know that my day will be painful, and so will every other day for as far as I can see into the future. I imagine relaxing in a rustic little cottage by the ocean, nestled into a colourful garden brimming with vegetables and wildflowers.
I think about sitting in the sun with friends and making strings of beads and shells to hang in the trees. Both my daughter and I will gradually become more and more disabled, but she much sooner than me. People with her level of needs are not well-accommodated, even in care facilities. I need to plan for her future β and I imagine she will outlive me, so I need to plan for that as well. These are the questions I contemplate as I cry silently in my bed.
I know that my life will always be hard both physically and emotionally, but sex work has given me hope for a future. I can fit my work around my disability, I choose when and how I work, and there is no pressure from my workplace.
I never have to do more hours than I want to, so I can spend lots of time caring for my daughter. The hardest thing about my job is being organised to place advertisements, take phone calls, and have somewhere convenient to work from.
I pay tax on the money I make, and I save as much as I can so that my dream of a country cottage can come true one day. Some people make the argument that any woman who needs money is not free to truly choose sex work, but is forced into prostitution by circumstance. They say sex work is not empowering, it is exploitation. They say my clients should be arrested, and they want to stop me from being able to work.
