“I can’t just sit there and watch life pass me by - I wasn’t built for that,” says Keisha Robinson, a Brian Connection with this one.

They first met when she ushered him to a seat at an AODA (Accessibility For Ontarians With Disabilities Act) round table event at King’s University College, at Western for International Day For Persons With Disabilities. When, in fact, we have a more personal family/community connection to our first 2025 guest.

Our first guest of the year and of February, Keisha Robinson describes herself as a social butterfly, now, but what was it that made her come out of her shell? She grew up with pain, was labeled “drama queen,” and with a diagnosis realised it all finally made sense.

Keisha shares about her life lived (before and after) the progressively deteriorating muscular disease diagnosis she received as a teenager, about the umbrella of various symptoms and deterioration predictions and timelines of Muscular Dystrophy (MD, and the philosophy she has gained with her plans with work giving back to sick children in hospital and her study of disability.

Robinson is working towards a double major in Childhood and youth studies and Thanatology—which is the study of death, dying, grief, and loss including all sorts of non-death losses. This week on Outlook we’re learning more about her studies and discussing how to demystify loss and grief and normalise the open dialogue on these parts of life we all share.

We explore the inaccessibility to be found out there (IE housing design) and hear about how it is to get around Western and King’s University College as a wheelchair user, not to mention around the city she lives in, along with some of her tools for doing that.

So while one host says he doesn’t miss a friend he’s never met, the guest might miss ice skating or swimming, while the other two hosts might miss seeing colours or video games and that’s the cross-disability perspective in an example of a non-death loss we’ve been navigating grief over. It’s one really important part of the “Outlook” umbrella we’re showcasing on this show and with guests here, both past and present.