Tag: Different Not Less

Let’s not box people in…

Tonight, when I purchased my box of noodles together I noticed that the lovely noodle shop man, always says the same sentence as one leaves. Yes, I have purchased quite a few noodle box meals. I caught myself wondering to myself about this man’s little script. Was it a sign, was it a tell-tale hint that perhaps this man might be autistic.

As I walked to my car I chastised myself for that thought. I’ve noticed how often in autistic spaces there are discussions where speculation about people we know might be on the Autism spectrum. They always seem innocent enough, and when these people we discuss are people we know well, possibly even intimately, then perhaps we have a level of insight that might allow us to make such a judgment with some level of accuracy. In some respects, this is just a natural thing.

But, to make such judgments, about people we hardly know, seems, as I reflect on it now, just as bad as the stereotypes and so on that we autistic people tend to find problematic as they are made about us by non-autistic folk.

It’s almost as though what we are doing is the autistic equivalent of those non-autistic micro aggressions like- “well everybody’s a little bit autistic”, or “well that was a bit autistic”, or even “I think I am a bit on the spectrum”. Perhaps we should pay a bit more respect to the complexity of all that goes into diagnosis, whether that be a professional diagnosis or a self-identification.

I had this thought myself, just tonight, so I can count myself as nothing but guilty as charged. From now on I am going to attempt not to do this anymore. I am sure this will be a challenge as autism is such a massive aspect of my life, not just being autistic but in doing advocacy for myself and others, spending time with autistic friends and attending and speaking at autism conferences, and not least being a part of the implementation of an employment program for autistic people.

It’s easy to think this is not a big thing, and I guess in some respects it isn’t really, it’s just a thought we have, that we sometimes share and speculate with our friends about. No biggie really. Well maybe it is a bit more of a biggie than we think.

Being autistic, living as an autistic, is the only thing I know. It’s not a deficit or anything like that, though, dealing with how society relates to me, dealing with stereotypes imposed upon me and everything that goes with that can make negotiating the world more difficult than it needs to be.

The non-autistic world would kind of like it if we autistics just stopped being autistic and be more like the rest of the world. Many of us autistics tend to react to that pretty negatively. Let us be who we are is often the message we try to convey to the non-autistic world. We are not disordered we are different, indeed, Different Not Less is often the catch cry.

So, then, should we not be the same for those that are not autistic too. Is our making assumptions or presumptions about others just our way of imposing an autistic order upon them, our surreptitious way of imposing expectations of their behaviours based on our own stereotypes?

Just as we proclaim we are different not less, it is incumbent on us autistics to accept too that the non-autistic population of this world we inhabit are also different not less. Just as we are, so too are they. They may outnumber us, but that doesn’t change that they too are different not less and it is, I think, as incumbent on us to not impose our view of the best way to negotiate the world onto the non-autistic world.

Perhaps live and let live is a nice little maxim to live by after all.

But those memories…


But those memories, you know the ones, you can find them, we all have them don’t we? somewhere, they are there. You know the ones, the memories that show childhood was idyllic, fun and carefree. That’s childhood isn’t it. Isn’t that how we all experienced it? Sure it is.

But those memories, they aren’t the whole story, they aren’t even a bit of the story really. There is so much more to it, they are embedded with meaning that is incredibly potent and strong and impact and effect everything.

We all know the story, childhood is carefree. Childhood is full of fun and games and happily ever afters. It’s full of great family moments, togetherness. It’s all Beaver Cleaver, My Three Sons, Family Ties and Different Strokes or the Brady Bunch. Families where parents were rational, caring and listening. Friends that, sure, had their difference but in the end they worked them out and friendships prevailed; you know like when Peter Brady took on the Bully or when Jan Brady had to get braces on her teeth.

But those memories. Life is not Kevin and Winny and the fucking wonder years though.

I can’t deny it, I did have fun times, times of playing with friends and even family times that weren’t totally shit. I can’t deny that fact. It happened. Hours of cricket was played on the driveway. Bike riding around the suburbs with neighbours and friends, and even camping trips and trips to the beach that really were filled with joy.

But those memories. They don’t exist in isolation. They just don’t. It’s just not possible to remember those memories without the shit also rising up and being remembered.

And I am sure we all had some shit go down too. It’s just completely untenable that anyone truly had an idyllic childhood that didn’t include some shit. Some irredeemable lost friendships, some deep hurt from family. To pretend that anyone walked through childhood into adulthood without any shit sticking is just some kind of misplaced belief.

But those memories. Yeah, that shit, it is a lot more thickly planted on to the memories for some of us.

For some of us, almost every moment is layered with some form of disappointment, sadness, hurt and pain. I say this, not to be all, you know, woe is me, but just to try and highlight that it really is different for some of us.

My father was and remains, to my knowledge, a horrible man. My Mother, began as a gentle young woman, but somehow, became a hardened nasty person after living with my father for a while. That’s not to say they didn’t ensure I was fed and clothed and so forth. Yes, I received those basic needs. I even grew up with a pretty reasonable level of privilege you know. I am a white person in a country in the beginnings of shaking off the racist White Australia Policy. You know, we had the house in the suburbs, we had most of the toys and gadgets that supplied a level of social and economic privilege.

That was the surface of course. I existed in my home in a sense of living life dodging the bullets. I lived that childhood as a undiagnosed autistic repressed transgirl. And you know what it was more than a little bit shit. Parenting in my home was an act of enforcing the parents iron will in whatever way was necessary. Whatever that included was perfectly acceptable. Statements like “because I’m the mum, that’s why” were potent with meaning that implied disagree and you will pay a high price. On my right knuckle I bare a small scar from one of these moments. Religious statements like”spare the rod and spoil the child” were used as justifications for physical punishments that were nothing short of physical abuse.

Those memories but. Yes I remember childhood. I had some great times. I suspect we all did. Those memories though, will always be potent, they will always be seared with other memories.

That of course is true for all of us. For me they are seared with emotional, physical, verbal and sexual abuse. I can’t get pretend that is not the case, it just is.

But those memories. Yes, it would be wonderful if calls to a golden age of childhood as the best years of our lives was a fair call. But for some it’s a call to not the best but the worst years of our lives.

But those memories…

Awakenings

The air around me is suddenly crisp and clear and real and natural. I can taste it anew. Taste it in a way I don’t think I ever have before. Every drop of morning dew and a blade of grass, each little squawk of birdsong, is fresh and new and more real than it has ever been.

I’ve undergone an awakening. An awakening of sorts that is so incredibly momentous that it is so almost impossible to put it into words. And yet, there is a word for it, there is even a word for the time of life I am in, there is even a sentence to describe it.

But it is oh so much more than that.

It’s almost as though it is a second awakening.

But these are more than just mere awakenings, they are moments of truth that are so full of momentous importance that it is difficult to convey them.

Have you ever had that experience of waking in the morning and feeling as though everything has changed, everything is different?

I have, and I am fortunate enough that it is more than once occurred. Now, twice I have had that immense experience of awakening to something of myself that is so potent, so true, so important that it changes everything.

Yes, everything.

Everything, yes, the way you understood yourself and your place in the world, your relation to others, your understanding of how you fit, how you think, how you in fact are, and what your being actually is.

It possibly comes as no surprise to readers that one of these awakenings is the awakening to, the realisation of, the diagnosis as and the acceptance and celebration of being autistic. That awakening did indeed change so much. So much became clear about myself, how I understand myself, my actions, my feelings, thinkings, relationships and so the list could go on.

Yes, an awakening to being autistic, whilst in a sense was not a new thing, but in a whole other sense was, changed everything.

Suddenly, I wasn’t wrong and strange and crazy, a misfit. I was just an autistic person. Of course, the moment of diagnosis, the moment f sitting at the clinician’s rooms and hearing them make the pronouncement was not the moment of awakening. No, that was more like a moment of dread and a moment of bad news.

It wasn’t even the next day, no, it was some months down the road. It is a kind of dissonant thing in a way, as always, well for many years at least, had an attitude of acceptance of autism as simply a different way of being. Whilst “Different Not Less” was not a common phrase to fall from my lips, the essence of that phrase was congruent with my attitude to my autistic kids, to any autistic person.

But somehow when it came to self, that moment of diagnosis and the following months were somehow something a little different. A grief, a sense of loss, a sense of brokenness a little more acute than it had been in its ever-present history.

Guilt, a sense of giving autism to my kids made its presence felt too.

But then awakening. A moment. Clarity!

Acceptance!

Celebration!

But that’s not the awakening I intended to write about tonight. No. That is another awakening altogether. even more momentous, and yet equivalent too, in a sense, as both these awakening are in essence, an awakening to who I have always been. They are not a becoming something but an acceptance of what is.

I have awoken to the truth that I am in fact a woman!

Yes, the air is clear, the wind blows truly through me and all is right in the world as I accept myself to be who I always have been.

It’s certainly been a journey to get to this point.

So many years of trying and failing to be a man.

So much effort in trying to be one of the boys.

So many times feeling so disconnected and not quite fitting in when doing the man thing, associating with the guys.

So many years of secretly identifying wanting to be with the girls, do what the girls were doing. All that stuff.

It is such an intense awakening. Everything has truly changed.

As each day blooms a new into life I feel myself blossoming just a little more, as if my bud of life opens just a little more to the truth and reality of my true self.

Now I understand why I always wanted to play with the girls. Why I would rather associate with the girls. Why I had an inexplicable sense of disorientation when forced to be separate from other females. How it is that I felt unfairly excluded in the face of female-only activities and venues. Now I understand why I always felt an affinity with feminism, how I could never quite comprehend the chauvinist and sexism of patriarchy and the undercurrent of seething disgust at the subjugation of women that bubbled along within me.

Yes, it all makes so much sense now.

And so, yes, this is, my first post here, as Rochelle, my true name. Whilst all those other posts, were me, they were not the awakened me. Those posts that were written, not as the true me, but the me that was pretending to be a male me.

Welcome to the future. It’s bright, it’s clear, and yet it has messiness, a steep learning curve and there will, I am sure, be lots of mistakes, false starts, blunders, and falls. Just as a young girl wobbles her way through puberty to womanhood, so too do I.

If you’ve made it this far, thanks, I appreciate you sticking with it.

Join me on this journey, won’t you. I am sure it’s going to be a grand day out!

It’s the sanctity of life

Life is precious…

That moment when all three of my children emerged into life at birth remain three of the most precious and most powerful moments I have or will ever experience. The overwhelming emotional power of these moments left me sobbing with a confusing mix of joy, wonder, happiness, apprehension, fear, responsibility and amazement. As the tears flowed down my cheeks and I gathered my baby girls into my arms for the first time I was overcome with the precious little human person I held.

Life is precious, we should protect it, we should defend it, we should do all we can to stop it being snuffed out by fear and hate. Just as we strive to stop it being snuffed out by illnesses such as cancer so we should stop it being extinguished by the disease of hate and fear and ignorance.

Scrolls of despair…

Over recent days I have scrolled my news feeds with despair as I have read of the death and destruction of 50 human persons. Destroyed by hate. So many lives destroyed. The lives snuffed out and the pain and suffering and grief of those left behind.

In the coming days, weeks and months there will be analysis, reviews, enquiries, editorials, articles and op-ed pieces written. None of that will change the hard cold fact that those human persons were slaughtered.

They were slaughtered for no other reason than who they were.

It can be debated and theorised for ever and a day as to whether or not one is born gay or not born gay. In the end who fucking cares, because gay is what a gay person is. These people were murdered for being themselves.

In despair I have scrolled as my heart has ached.

Let’s be clear, this was a hate crime. Nothing more nothing less.

The religion of the perpetrator is irrelevant.

Representatives of the God of Love preaching hate…

As a Christian the despair has been heightened by so-called Christian ministers declaring justifications and affirming the actions of this murderer as rightful and just in the eyes of God. The typical proof texts of Leviticus are trotted out as evidence that these people are apparent abominations.

But no, they are not, they are human beings. Their lives are precious and valuable and not expendable by hate in the name of God.

Quickly it was established that the killer was a muslim, and quickly the labelling of him as an Islāmic terrorist occurred.

Yes this was an act of terrorism, but it was not an act of Islamic terrorism. It was an act of terrorism against humanity.

But to be clear…

The murderer was an American citizen.

The murderer used a weapon legally obtained.

The murderer was not an illegal immigrant.

The murderer also happened to be a muslim.

This was not an act of Islamic Jihad, it was an act of mass murder in the name of hate.

It is of major concern…

A major concern to me is that as an autistic person, as a disabled person it is the actions of LGBTIQ movements that have shown the way of self-determination, acceptance and basic human rights as universal for all. There is much to be emulated by other groups in grasping similar rights and taking similar actions in gaining full acceptance in society. If when such a group is targeted by such a crime it is deemed appropriate for justifications of such hate on the basis of religion and Godly justice are made, what does this mean for other groups?

Would we hear such outcry if a slaughter of 50 businessmen in a stockholder meeting occurred, would there be any acceptance of such justifications like they were only businessmen?

What if 50 lives were slaughtered in fitness club, would we countenance justifications of but they were just fitness junkies?

Of course not, but somehow we allow justifications of oh they were only gay and it is the carrying out of god’s justice.

And what does this mean for other groups.

Imagine,

But they were only blind.

But they were only paraplegic.

But they were only ADD

But they were only Autistic

But they were only diabetic.

There is no justification for such hateful actions.

What has happened is a hate crime.

What has happened is the slaughter of LGBTIQ humans because of hate.

What happened is the slaughter of humans because of hate.

There is no justification for this. Not a faith-based one, not a justice based one. There simply isn’t.

This is simply hate. Hate allowed to fester. Hate fuelled by rhetoric.

When one group of human persons are able to be maligned, declared an abomination, declared sinful. When one group of humans is sidelined and segregated such that they have to fight for their human rights, then hate is able to fester.

It is the same ignorance and hate that gave rise to hate groups like KKK.

It is the same ignorance, fear and rhetoric of disease and defectiveness that allows abusive treatment of disabled humans.

The slaughter in Orlando must never allowed to be categorised as anything other than what it was a hate crime against LGBTIQ people by a home-grown American criminal.

We must cry out for the sanctity, value and preciousness of every human life.

Like words on a screen

There is often discussion in forums, support groups, social media groups, blogs and any other media you can think of about verbal and non-verbal autistics. The unhelpful functioning label “Low Functioning” is often interchangeable with “Non Verbal”. I don’t agree with functioning labels, and mention them here only in reference to how they are used.

It is as though whether or not a person can speak with their mouth parts is the defining characteristic of the worth of the person. This is absolutely ludicrous. If we were to follow that logic the amazing woman Helen Keller would be considered unable to contribute to society.

There are many autistics who do not speak with their mouth parts who have a very lot to say. They say it with eloquence. They say it with clarity and they say it with their own unique voice. It is important that we listen

to them.

There is much discussion and consideration about the spoken words of non-verbal autistics, which is important. What I don’t see a lot of discussion about however is the challenge of the spoken-word to many other autistics. This is an issue for me at certain times.

Before going any further I want to make it clear that not for a moment do I consider alternative communication methods to be inferior to spoken words from the mouth parts. Whatever communication method is most suitable for any individual should be made available and not withheld from them.

Often I have been told I am eloquent, able to string sentences together well and get a message across well. This may be the case but it certainly does not come to me in a natural way. My spoken words come at some effort. For me talking is like reading words out loud off an internal screen that sits behind my eyes or in my mind somewhere.

It is not the easiest concept to explain. It might seem a bit strange, or odd. It is what it is though.

In a discussion I will be simultaneously listening and allowing my response to form on my internal screen ready to be read back. This is a contributor to why it my take longer for me to respond that it does for others at times. This is heightened when it is a situation of stress, nervousness, or indeed, where I am being spoken at with aggression or assertiveness.

I’ve had many situations in my life where I have been unable to respond. The words simply have not been there on the screen for me to read out. This is infuriating to others speaking to me at times.

Another issue I find myself having is when I am having a lively and stimulating discussion in a group setting. I have my words formulated and ready to go on my screen and the subject changes. This is most frustrating as my words are sitting there needing to be spoken, I often wonder if this is why I find myself in social settings seemingly randomly returning the conversation back to a previous topic.

Another thing I find that occurs for me is when I start to talk and I hear myself speaking but I am not sure they are the words that I had formulated on my screen, I seem to then keep talking, at times, probably raving on, as if the sheer volume of verbosity will get me back on track and to the point of what I was saying. I am never sure if what I am saying in those situations has any relevance to the topic at hand. It is a most disconcerting situation.

If I do not run off at the mouth like that I have discovered that I pause, long enough pauses for people to think I have stopped, but, they seem microscopic in length to me. These pauses are kind of like moments to allow the internal screen to refresh and refill with the new chunk of words to read out.

On thing I have discovered that is very important for me, and I suspect many other autistics, is, that it really needs to be a question and then answer pattern. Any deviance from this pattern and it all goes wrong. It becomes stressful, confusing and agitating and can often result in outbursts of anger and frustration at not being able to communicate.

It’s really important to allow time for the question to be responded to, not to rush, or to move on thinking that it has been ignored. Likely it has not been ignored but it is being processed.

So please ask the question and wait for the answer, if the pause is longer than you would expect, then try to be patient and keep waiting. Once you lose the pattern and have multiple questions or comments awaiting a response it is likely to be extremely difficult for many autistics to answer. It’s as though we are unable to ascertain what it is we are meant to be responding to. Is it the first the second or the last question. Which do I answer first. And so on and so on.

When the stress and frustration become too much it can result in losing words temporarily. I know for me at times like this it is very easy to mistake it for me refusing to speak, when in reality it is me not being able

to speak. The words are there, but they can’t be got out. Sometimes the screen is readable but the words get lost on the way to the mouth. Sometimes it is as though the screen is jumbled up and unreadable.

Regardless of the reason it is a very real phenomenon and is not an act. It is a thing that needs patience and understanding. Acceptance that this is something in an autistics life that needs some accommodation. It’s not personal or vindictive or anything like that it just is.

My personal experience in this is that it is incredibly unpleasant and extremely frustrating. It is not a situation I like being in, it is one that I loathe and would much prefer did not happen.

Wait time is a really important thing. Wait for the response. Wait as long as you need to. The preparedness to do this may just result in fewer occasions of the autistics in your life losing their words and going non-verbal for a time.

And of course remember that the spoken word from the mouth parts is by no means the only valid, or the most valued form of communication and interaction.

Not Prosopagnosia but…

If you’ve read the previous post you will know that I spent a couple of days at University of Queensland doing some neuropsych testing. It was a very intensive and exhaustive experience. It was also interesting and enjoyable. I am more than glad to be involved in it. The particular research project this was connecting to was in regard to the study of the Corpus Callosum,

which is, the largest white matter structure of the brain. It is a bundle of 250 million or so neurological connection that cross the midline of the brain.

This is very important research, the rare conditions Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum and other Disorders of the Corpus Callosum are very rare indeed and impact a very small group segment of the human population. They are no less important than any other group and so any research to assist in understanding their condition is extremely important.

This is not a condition that effects me personally, but it does effect my family as one of my family members has this condition. They were born without this vital part of their brain physiology.

Having made that point, I want to talk about the issue of Prosopagnosia, or face-blindness. Wikipedia defines this condition as:

Prosopagnosia/ˌprɒsəpæɡˈnoʊʒə/ (Greek: “prosopon” = “face”, “agnosia” = “not knowing”), also called face blindness,[1] is a cognitive disorder of face perception where the ability to recognize familiar faces, including your own face (self-recognition), is impaired, while other aspects of visual processing (e.g., object discrimination) and intellectual functioning (e.g., decision making) remain intact.

This is a very real condition that afflicts some autistics. It’s not a thing that I have ever really had to consider personally. I don’t really have difficulty in recognising faces. I’ve never felt that I have at all, and I have not really experienced situations where people expect me to recognise them and I don’t.

Face-blindness is a difficult thing for those that deal with it. Imagine the challenge of not recognising your family members and close friends by looking at their face. I imagine there would be many occasions of embarrassment and explanations needing to be made.

For an excellent explanation of this condition please watch the below video by Amythest Schaber of Ask and Autistic.

https://youtu.be/qREQlELyH40

I discovered that, I don’t in fact look at a whole face, I don’t see a face as a whole but as a combination of different features. This was a real surprise t
o me, and has left me thinking about it over the last few days.

The activity involved looking at a face and then matching that face with a group of other faces. There were about six other faces, one of which
matched the original. I found this activity a lot more challenging than I expected it to be.

The key thing I noticed was that I wasn’t able to look at the face and then the other faces and easily make the connection with the correct face. I noticed that in fact what I saw was a bunch of individual features, a set of eyes or a chin, or a pair of ears.

I then found I had to take that set of ears or eyes or that chin and find them in the other faces.

The activity followed up with an activity which was similar, yet quite different. I was in this case required to identify not just the same face but also two others which were the same but facing a slightly different direction. This was actually very difficult.

Clearly, with my history of recognition of my family, friends and aquaintainces this condition is not an issue I have. I wonder though now is there a spectrum within this condition too. A spectrum of how well we are able to recognise and identify faces. I suppose it is a possibility. Something of course people far more qualified than me would be able to speak to with far more insight. I do wonder though of course.

This is a really important issue. Something the public should be educated about. Just as we are educated about other aspects of disability we should be on issues like this. Just as we would not question a person in a wheelchair needing particular accomodations and supports in their daily

life, so we should not question if a person with Prosopagnosia’s need for accomodation and supports to recognise those they encounter in their daily lives.

Next time someone you know, or feel, should recognise you doesn’t before you get offended or upset, take a moment to consider that they may just not be able to for real reasons beyond their control, and not just because they have not made an effort. Have a think abo

An Unenchanted evening

The needs of our children don’t let up. They apply to us at all times. No matter where we are at emotionally, physically or whatever. So it was that I gathered up my energy and motivation and headed out the door even though I was tired and a bit

fragile as one of my girls needed a lift to her weekly small group she attends. It was an unexpected disruption to my inner plan for the evening and the rest of the day. Trigger point one had been breached — Change of routine in unexpected ways.

This was particularly pertinent, I had already dealt with a few of these little changes in the day and so was beginning to sense a level of anxiety rising within me. One of my other daughters is helping out a family around the block who is on holidays by collecting their post. She was in her pyjamas already, but figured she could just duck out of the car and grab the mail and jump back in the car.

Out the door and into the soaking wet rain, jump in the car. Of course I was just doing a quick ten minute little trip so didn’t worry about whether I had a jumper or even shoes, I threw on my rubber thongs (flip-flops for my American readers). Off we head two Autistics and an Allistic. The traffic was all over the place considering the night and seemed determined to raise my levels of anxiety to disastrous. Cars in front stopping suddenly with stop lights not working, the rain on the windscreen playing havoc with visual processing and causing all kinds of difficult reflections. A police car two cars in front dropping a sudden u-turn and needing to brake very suddenly to avoid an accident.

My anxiety levels were rising pretty quickly. I had other things I would rather have been doing, but, I was doing what I should

have been doing: what my kids needed me to do for them.

Another red light! Waiting. Off we go again. Up the hill. BANG! What the hell was that…

Flap flop. flap flop. Oh great. A blow out. No nice place to pull over, just a dirt edge, facing up hill, pouring with rain. Wearing jeans and a light shirt and thongs.

Stop take a deep breath. I really need to do this as I am feeling like I could easily just blow up right about now — Just like the tyre did.

I duck out into the rain and check the tyre. It couldn’t be much flatter. What to do?

Two daughters in the car needing to be somewhere else. One Dad in the car wanting to be somewhere else. Traffic blasting

past in the two busy lanes.

I have to deal with this, we ring the RACV (our local roadside assistance organisation), after some discussion and discovery that details need to be updated as they are attached to the other vehicle that is sitting happily in the garage at home. A 40–70 minute wait.

More frustration.

By this time I am on something of a knife’s edge. The 40–70 minutes became two hours. A tow truck turned up as the company deemed our position to be two hazardous for the roadside assistance person to assist. They made this call without actually telling me of course and suddenly everything had changed again.

I was really struggling to hold this all together. I was very angry that I was waiting and waiting, that there was minimal communication and left in a state of not knowing. These are things that I don’t cope with very well at all. I managed to hold it together reasonably well in the end and I am actually chalking it up to a successful avoidance of a meltdown. I am somewhat pleased with myself.

The success here was not planned and is somewhat surprising really. Situations like this have often been catalysts for me to crash into raging meltdowns where I become totally irrational and loud and end up in a curled up ball of quivering bawling human. So I am really happy to have managed this process as I did. Surprised but happy.

What was different here, I wonder, I can’t put my finger on it completely but I my line of thinking at this stage is that I had managed to have some tiny level of awareness that I was a bit triggered, that I was moving into a difficult state of circumstances. I believe that was the number one thing.

The number two thing, and perhaps the most important and pivotal was in making contact and connection with the people I know that could support and help me and were available. I was able to make contact with my wife at home so there was not that worry, I was then able to engage in some social media activity with some contacts and maintain connection throughout the process. I think this made a huge difference for me. I think this was in fact a huge thing in this situation. So much so I managed to kill the battery of my phone to completely flat. Thankfully I saw this coming and was able to make appropriate contact with home base to let them know the situation.

The take away from all this I guess is that it is possible to head it off. Yes we can, sometimes at least, head off that meltdown or shutdown before it actually happens. The key I think is twofold, well at least twofold anyway. Firstly, and this is pretty critical, know what triggers you, learn what are the situations, feelings, thoughts, words that are likely to contribute to heading down that pathway. Secondly and equally pivotal is knowing who you can call on that will listen as you ramble and not dismiss you, importantly have a few people or groups you can do this with, just in case you can’t contact the first you try.

It was not an evening of enchantment but it was an evening of triumph.

It’s A Unity Thing

In my posts over the last months I have written on a range of stuff with some recurring themes. One of those themes has been unity. Unity I am talking about here is unity between the key factions or strands of the Autism/Autistic community. This is a really important thing if we are to see human rights upheld for autistic people.

If there is to be a thriving accepted autistic community then there must be unity between autistic adults and autism parents and allies. Unity does not mean blindness to the differences between different groups but an acknowledgement of difference and a commitment to work through it.

There will always be tension between autistic adults and autism parents. The protection and advocacy of each move from different points of genesis. It goes without saying that each will come from a unique position of their own lived experiences or an understanding of the lived experiences of their children. This does not have to be an impasse.

Listening must be done. Genuine listening, listening that has at its core a willingness to change an opinion or belief when convinced by an other, when new information demands that the currently held position can no longer be held. This goes for Autistics and Autism parents alike. To not approach it like this is really not listening but simply hearing.

The opportunity to put my money where my mouth is, as the saying goes, has arisen. I have been privileged to post a couple of guest posts on the Never Less Than Everything blog in recent months, and have teamed up with the owner Tricia to work on a joint project of video and pod casts discussing autism issues. Our collaboration has been very positive and we continue to pursue that project with excitement and passion.

Additionally after much discussion with Tricia we have together to join together Never Less Than Everything and Proud Autistic Living together under the banner of Never Less Than Everything. We hope to bring this blog to be a strong voice of advocacy and support for the autism parent community and the autistic adult community.

This post then serves as an announcement that posts will now be posted over at Never Less Than Everything. This blog will remain here for legacy purpsoses but will not be added to. All posts have in fact been imported to Never Less Than Everything and are available there. I hope you will join us in the journey to unity and autism accaptance and inclusion.