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Full Living Disability Initiative · FLDI
Build the life you choose.
FLDI is an emerging disability-led nonprofit initiative focused on the parts of adulthood that too often receive less attention in disability services.
Work. Relationships. Independence. Community.
We are beginning with Duchenne and Becker muscular dystrophy and autism/neurodivergence, while building toward a broader community for people with significant disabilities and complex support needs.
Why FLDI
Disability support should include living.
Medical care matters. So do education, treatment, equipment, and support services. But adulthood is also about getting a job, falling in love, deciding where and how to live, managing money and benefits, building friendships, creating things, traveling, taking risks, participating in a community, and finding purpose.
FLDI is being built to help disabled people find practical information, lived experience, mentorship, opportunity, and community around the lives they want to build.
Four core areas
What full living can include
Relationships
Dating, friendship, love, marriage, communication, intimacy, partnership, and navigating support needs within real relationships.
Independence
Personal assistance, housing, transportation, technology, benefits, money, routines, and meaningful control over everyday life.
Community
Belonging, peer connection, recreation, leadership, storytelling, shared interests, and opportunities to participate.
Full living
There is no single version of a full life.
For one person, it may mean building a career. For another, it may mean living in their own home with extensive personal assistance.
It may mean partnership, education, entrepreneurship, friendship, advocacy, creativity, travel, gaming, community involvement, faith, recreation—or something nobody else would choose.
FLDI isn't being created to define what disabled people should do with their lives. It is being created to expand the information, support, examples, and opportunities available to people deciding for themselves.
What we're building
Starting small. Building deliberately.
FLDI's long-term vision is broad. Our first work is focused, connected, and designed to grow in stages.
Mentorship & Peer Learning
Connecting lived experience with practical guidance around adulthood.
Adult-Life Resources
Accessible information about work, relationships, independence, benefits, support systems, and everyday adult life.
Stories & Representation
Disabled adults telling their own stories—not being reduced to diagnoses, inspiration, or tragedy.
FLDI Magazine & Directory
A planned digital publication and directory beginning with adult life in the Duchenne/Becker community.
Education & Training
Accessible learning for disabled adults, mentors, families, and eventually professionals.
Community
Accessible ways for people to connect, participate, share interests, and build belonging.
In development: These programs will launch in stages as FLDI establishes the people, funding, safeguards, and infrastructure to support them well.
Who we begin with
Starting where lived experience is deepest.
FLDI begins with Duchenne and Becker muscular dystrophy, including the realities of adulthood with significant physical disability, power-wheelchair use, personal assistance, and complex support needs.
Autistic and neurodivergent adults are also part of the vision from the beginning, including people whose physical disability and neurodivergence overlap.
Over time, FLDI is intended to grow into a broader disability-led organization while maintaining condition-specific knowledge where it matters.
About the founder
Ryan J. Russell, PhD
Ryan founded FLDI from both lived experience and a simple observation: there is often far more information available about living with a disability than about building a life with one.
Ryan has Duchenne muscular dystrophy and uses a power wheelchair, respiratory support, and personal assistance. His adult life has also included higher education, writing, work, coaching, disability advocacy, relationships, and navigating the complicated systems that make independence possible.
His background in psychology, education, training, writing, and disability advocacy informs FLDI's emphasis on combining lived experience with practical tools.
Needing substantial support and having substantial ambitions are not opposites.
Relationships are part of adult life
Love belongs in the conversation too.
Relationships, dating, marriage, intimacy, and partnership are often treated as secondary—or ignored entirely—when people discuss significant disability.
FLDI intends to treat them as what they are: ordinary, important parts of adult life.
Contact
We're building FLDI now.
If you are a disabled adult, family member, potential mentor, professional, funder, collaborator, storyteller, or someone interested in helping build this work, we'd like to hear from you.