We are conditioned to believe that perfect health, status, and successful careers are the key to happiness. But despite our perfection-performance oriented culture, many find themselves living lives of chronic illness, pain and disability that challenge this paradigm.

In the media, we celebrate stories of heroes who have persevered despite the odds and triumphed over hardship but the reality is often less storybook. There isn’t always a cure for what ails us.

Yet within this tension, the human spirit often not only prevails but thrives. When faced with the predicament of no apparent answer, no fix, many people with chronic conditions eventually find adaptation, connection, resilience and purpose despite our lives lacking what society told us would bring happiness.

Too often these stories are shared and valued only within the disability communities. But these lives have unique contributions to all of society as they creatively contend with the pervasive experiences of pain, uncertainty, disappointment and isolation.

Why We Matter is a feature documentary that explores how and why the voices of the unfixed have been overlooked in our society, how they are shaped by the friction of constant adversity and why this world is a better place because their stories, struggles and triumphs are a part of it.

currently in production