Having a community where you can actually be yourself is unmatched. You don’t have to overthink what you say, you don’t have to explain yourself, you just show up. The good days feel better, and the hard ones feel a little less heavy. 

If that feeling could be captured in a moment, it might look like this: April Lockhart mid run-and-jump hug with a 7-year-old girl who has the same limb difference as her. 

It’s more than just a cute moment — it’s the first time the little girl had seen someone who looks like her, with an arm that ends just after the elbow. 

When the little girl’s mom first heard about April’s Disabled& events, she drove eight hours to get her there. Afterward, she told April she’d never seen her daughter break out of her shell like that, or feel that confident. 

April noticed too. “She’s a completely different person. It just gives me the chills.” 

Moments like that come from having a space where you feel you belong. For a long time, April couldn’t find that, so she built it herself. 

Disabled& gives disabled creatives a place to show up, connect, and create as their full selves. It’s built on the idea that disability is one part of who someone is, not the whole story. 

This community makes total sense for April, who’s learned how to turn something she once felt insecure about into a source of joy, power, and creativity. As a lover of all things bright and bold, you’ll usually find her wearing colorful eyeshadow, a feathered brooch, sequins, and funky prints. 

Movies like The Devil Wears Prada and 13 Going on 30 made her fall in love with fashion and beauty when she was little. But for a long time, insecurities around her limb difference made it hard to fully embrace that side of herself.

“Not everyone's disability is as easy to hide, but for me, I would just wear an oversized blazer or a long-sleeve shirt, and no one would know I had a disability until they saw me with short sleeves,” she says. 

That started to shift when she met other people with disabilities and realized they were navigating the same things she was. 

“Those friendships have really brought out the confidence in me,” she says. 

April learned about style when she went to the Fashion Institute of Technology for college. She was drawn to the sense of community within the fashion world. 

After she graduated, she talked about fashion a lot online in her videos, but she wasn’t quite  hitting her stride. She admits she wasn’t totally being herself, because she was holding back a part of herself: her limb difference. 

“I wasn't reaching the right audience, and no wonder why, because I wasn't being authentic at all,” April explains. “People can sniff that out so much in today's day and age.” 

After five years, she decided to share that she has a disability online. And then she literally threw her phone across the room and didn’t look at it for 12 hours. 

“Sometimes you just have to tune out and hope that you're doing the right thing,” she says. “And if you're being yourself, then you’re always doing the right thing.” 

She saw fashionable, elevated spaces everywhere. But when it came to spaces for people with disabilities, they were often centered on sports or didn’t reflect her sense of style. 

“I loved playing dress-up, I loved music, art, going to museums, and vintage shopping,” she explains, which, same. “Everywhere I looked, like, there weren't really those creative, elevated spaces for people with disabilities.” 

She also knew the friends she’d met in the disability community — aspiring models, musicians, writers, artists, and influencers — were looking for the same thing. It wasn’t that other disabled girls didn’t share her interests. There just wasn’t a place for them to find each other. 

That’s how she came up with the name Disabled&. 

“It's like, we can be disabled and creative, and cool, and fashionable, and ambitious,” April says.

She started planning events for disabled creatives that feel as joyous IRL as they look online. She’s hosted candlelit dinner parties, fun creative workshops, and out-of-the-box events that bring together disabled girls in cool ways. Dream job much? 

“That's the beautiful part of the internet. We see so much of the bad, but there's so much good that comes of it,” she says. “And as long as you're being authentic, you will find your niche community.” 

Her favorite part is getting to be the kind of role model she wishes she had growing up, someone who welcomes girls of all ages into a space where they can feel seen.