Anoushé Husain - Not your average climber

The Curious Climber Podcast: Chatting with Hazel and Mina

Anoushé Husain is a civil servant and paraclimber in the UK and a champion for all those experiencing barriers and self-limiting beliefs. Born missing her right arm below the elbow, living with multiple health conditions, a cancer survivor, a Muslim and coming from an ethnic minority, Anoushé has never let what society or culture thinks she should do limit her or dictate the direction of her life. She spends her time sharing her journey to help others realise they shouldn’t be limited by how society or culture might see them. Anoushé is the 2017 Asian Women of Achievement Award winner for Sport and the 2017 recipient of the Helen Rollason Award for Inspiration at The Sunday Times Sportswomen of the Year Awards. She was also named on the 2018 Sunday Times Alternative Richlist, has received a Points of Light from the Prime Minister and is currently in the Top 100 most influential people with a disability Shaw Trust Powerlist. She is an Ambassador for Limbpower (leading amputee and limb different charity in the UK), Ehlers Danlos Support UK and a patron for the Grit&Rock foundation helping girls from deprived backgrounds reach their potential through Climbing.

She co-founded Paraclimbing London in 2018 to reduce the barriers to climbing for people with disabilities and long term health conditions.

In this podcast we take a deep dive into the following issues: what lock down is like for someone with health problems and a disability, the politics and language of disability, what needs to change in our culture around disability, the idea of inspiration porn in the disability world, the difference between vulnerability and victimhood, how para climbing works and what the scene is like, climbing as a BAME muslim and how welcoming climbing has been for her, body image and facial hair as a woman from an ethnic minority, the headscarf, how to make climbing more diverse and why it isn't very diverse already.