I’m REALLY proud about how I ended my writing career for 2016. This is my first piece for Bustle and I wrote about how it’s time they featured a woman with a disability on The Bachelorette! Bustle has been on my writing bucket list for awhile, so I’m really glad I made it!!

As you can probably imagine, I have an opinion or two on the subject, which made writing Why ‘The Bachelor’ Needs To Feature More People With Disabilities so much fun. Oh, and I may or may not have volunteered myself to be that first Bachelorette, so, you know, if anyone from ABC reads the essay…

Here’s an excerpt of the essay, which pretty much just cuts right to the chase and gets to the point right away! No time for fooling around when reality TV is involved, you know…

I’m just going to be honest here: I’ve never seen an entire episode of The Bachelor/ette. I could say it’s because I refuse to watch reality TV or that I’d rather spend my time reading great works of literature, but neither of those reasons are true. The answer is far simpler than that — I’ve never watched a full episode because I never saw anyone like me on the show, because The Bachelor doesn’t have a history of including contestants with disabilities. I’m the girl who was born with Freeman-Sheldon Syndrome, a genetic bone and muscular disorder. I’ve amassed surgical scars by the dozens and logged hospital hours in the thousands. You can watch a lot of TV when you’ve been in a hospital bed as long as me, and I’ve very rarely seen people with disabilities reflected back at me in reality shows or scripted series…

Over the years, I’ve struggled with feeling different and at times, I’ve just wanted to scream to the world, “Can’t you see? Women with disabilities aren’t as different as you think!” So maybe that’s part of the reason that I keep wondering why, in 2017, haven’t we seen a woman with a disability as the Bachelorette?

You can read the full essay here and I’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to email me anytime at mellow1422@aol.com and let’s chat! And of course, feel free to share my essay on Facebook, Twitter or even your local refrigerator. If you share on Twitter, be sure to tag me @melissablake so we can connect! I can’t wait to hear from you! Love you all… xoxo