The Invisible Weight of a Disabled Wife

This is the mop that ended my marriage.

See that innocent-looking green mop in the photo above? That’s it! The photo next to it is me hauling home food in my power wheelchair.

Well, technically, my marriage was already ending. Seventeen years don’t collapse because of a mop. But this particular mop managed to become the unlikely star of one of our final scenes together.

By then, I was a very sick and disabled wife. The garden had been ripped apart that day, and by evening it had become clear that someone had taken on far more than he should have. Instead of recognizing that he’d tackled too much, he turned his frustration toward me. My “refusal” to mop, he said, irritated him. Just to be clear, I never refused to mop! I had a hospital appointment the next day and I mopped when my body allowed me to mop.

Mopping a floor wasn’t a small household chore for me. It is physically difficult, sometimes impossible, and comes with consequences that last long after the floor has dried.

That didn’t stop the mop from becoming important.

Near the end of my marriage, my inability to keep up with things like mopping had somehow turned into me not doing enough.

One of the last things my husband said to me before our 17-year marriage ended was that I relied on him to do everything.

What an interesting comment towards the woman who kept an entire international business running while sick.

Apparently, while relying on him to do everything, I was managing the day-to-day operations of our company that he was no longer involved in. I was writing and publishing books, and selling art to ensure I had money coming in to ‘pay my half’ of expenses. While I was doing that, I was navigating my own healthcare, handling daily household problems, and doing a million other unnoticed things. During all of this, I was remembering how he wanted me to do things too, exactly to his preferences.

But I couldn’t mop the floor reliably, and certainly not on ruptured Baker’s Cysts with heart problems.

This is one of the stranger things that happens when you become disabled. People start measuring your competence by what you can physically do. I can do it one day if I have enough energy, but I can’t do it consistently, and definitely not before and after hospital appointments.

People saw the grocery bags I couldn’t carry but not the groceries I dragged home in my wheelchair. He saw the floor I couldn’t mop, but not the other things I was doing to keep the household functioning.

My wheelchair going into the car was obvious but not the woman who researched the appointment, booked it, prepared for it, navigated the medical system, talked to the doctor, and managed the treatments afterward.

He saw the things he did for me, but not all the things I did before he entered the room or came home.

What happened in my marriage is an intimate example of something disabled people encounter constantly. The things we cannot do are often used to erase the things we can and do contribute. In fact, I remember saying those exact words. “You don’t even acknowledge the things I do around here.”

I’ve come to realize that the person doing the visible task begins to believe he is doing everything.

Of course my husband did things for me and I will not deny that or minimize it. I became profoundly ill during our marriage. My mobility deteriorated and I became a disabled wife who could not do the things she used to do. There were things I could no longer physically do safely, and there were other things that cost my body far more energy than they cost an able-bodied person.

Obviously I needed help because I have a physical disability. However, I think he failed to recognize that I also received a formal heart diagnosis called PSVT in 2025 that significantly impacted what kind of physical labour I could do.

But that does NOT mean I was helpless or relying on him to do everything.

Besides, he was my husband. He did things for me, but it seems convenient to forget who was helping him with his medical issues. I was there for his surgery and subsequently pushed him out of the operating room and down two floors to his recovery room. When he got COVID and his annual bronchial infection, it was me dropping off meals at his doors and ensuring he had enough to eat and drink.

This really galls me because I was going out in my wheelchair to get things for him and dropping it right at his bedroom door. All the things that he normally did fell to me when he wasn’t well, like taking down the trash, getting groceries, doing laundry, and preparing his portion of weekly meals. I did so willingly because that is what you do for someone when you love them. That is what you do in marriage, for better or worse, right?

In contrast, on my worst days during those final six weeks together, he walked by my room with bags of food for himself. After I’d spent the day at the hospital, he didn’t bring anything home for me.

He later acknowledged during one of our final conversations that he’d been “in his head” during that period.

The part that interests me now is how physical assistance somehow became rewritten as total dependence. While I was apparently relying on him for everything, an astonishing number of people and systems were relying on me.

The business and my clients relied on me. I handled household matters such as problems with the hot water heater and the air conditioning because I was home during the day and it made sense because I speak Chinese.

The cats relied on me. His family benefited from my labour. And he can say whatever he wants, but he relied on me too. I couldn’t do heavy lifting or grocery shopping, but I came up with ideas to help take that strain off him.

He just chose not to take the help I suggested.

As for invisible lifting, I did the planning, organizing, remembering, communicating, problem-solving, administrative work, household management, all business operations, and the emotional labour of handling a man who thought he did it all. While he was traveling extensively, I was caring for the house and everything in it all by myself. I also raised his child like my own for 21 years.

All of this while doing the exhausting mental mathematics of constantly calculating what my body could do today, what absolutely had to be done, what could wait, and what I would have to pay for physically tomorrow.

Nobody watches a disabled wife sitting at a computer and thinks, Look at everything she’s carrying.

But we carry entire fucking worlds from our chairs.

I also managed an extraordinarily complicated medical life. Doctors, specialists, hospitals, medications, tests, treatments, side effects, records, appointments, and emergencies were all par for the course with me.

I continued working, writing, creating, publishing and solving problems. My advocacy work with Crossroads Taiwan helped change the law for disabled foreign permanent residents of Taiwan. I even participated in our legal victory and press conference from my bed. The change made history in Taiwan and eventually allowed me to access in-home care. And yes, that is me on the big screen thanking our Taiwanese legislators for helping us.

Apparently, there are quite a few things a disabled woman can accomplish without ever standing up.

There is a word for some of what was happening here. It’s called ableism.

In this story, it’s noticing the floor I couldn’t mop while overlooking the business I was running.

Ableism isn’t always someone mocking a disabled person or denying them access to a building. It can often look like measuring a disabled person’s contribution by what their body can physically produce.

It’s assuming that needing help means being helpless. It’s believing the person carrying the grocery bags contributes more than the disabled person who planned the meals, made sure there was food waiting at home, handled the household repairs and kept everything running while he was away.

That’s ableism too.

When this happens inside a marriage, it can be remarkably difficult to see.

Eventually, when it became clear that my marriage was no longer a safe or sustainable place for me to live, I did something else while apparently incapable of doing anything without him.

I got myself, two cats, two suitcases, and 15 boxes of belongings out of Taiwan and back to Canada after 23 years abroad in 25 days.

Then I started my whole life over again at 51 with almost nothing.

Since returning to Canada, I’ve navigated social assistance and disability systems. I’ve applied for benefits and dealt with new doctors and hospitals. I found work, took on new clients and launched my new business. I’ve rebuilt professional networks, bought a car, and continued advocating for myself through medical emergencies.

I’m doing all of this from the same disabled body I’ve had for 17 years

My body didn’t magically become capable when the marriage ended and my limitations didn’t disappear.

I’m still the woman who cannot lift heavy things. I still need help. I’m still calculating whether 30-minutes on my feet or behind the wheel will cost me too much physically.

What disappeared was the person telling me that needing help meant I couldn’t function without him. And perhaps that’s why that comment looks so different today.

I relied on my husband because that’s what people in marriages are supposed to do. My disability meant I relied on him for some physical things more than I once had. But dependence is not incompetence. I’ve proved over and over again in a million different ways that I’m highly competent.

Needing physical assistance does not erase my contributions or the things that I was already doing.

And being able to mop a floor does not make you the CEO of someone else’s life.

The mistake wasn’t that I relied on him. Instead, it was his mistaken belief that everything he did for me counted, while everything I did had somehow stopped mattering.

I’ve always known I was carrying more than I should’ve been carrying while my partner was focused on convincing himself that I wasn’t doing anything. Yet the facts are undeniable. He just chose not to look.

This isn’t really an article about a mop though.

It’s an article about what happens when someone mistakes disability for dependence and assistance for evidence that a disabled person contributes nothing.