I had surgery last Friday and wasn’t up for writing a blog post all weekend. Yesterday, I asked my mom to remind me what I did Monday night and what she wrote to me in response is worth sharing: There we sat, flipping through the television channels. “Oh, is that Bob Ross? I’ve seen memes about him.” It seemed like as good a reason as any to watch a TV program. My daughter, admittedly on a post-surgical slush of medications, watched the program as if it might explain a path to enlightenment. My husband watched it as an athletic competition. I sat in the middle of the two. “Oh, Mom, he said that I can paint happy trees. He says I can make my world be anything I want. It is my painting.” These sighs came from my left. In the meantime, I hear from my right. “Oh, yup, he’s going to mess it up now. Nope, he shouldn’t mix those colors. Whew, it turned out alright. That was lucky.” A lot of peace can be found from watching happy little clouds form on a canvas. Read more of her writing at fatgorda.weebly.com!
1 Comment
Did you know that autistic girls are often misdiagnosed with psychiatric conditions before finding out they are autistic? It turns out that there are many symptoms that overlap between the Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) Cites
Clarification before going forward:
I promise there is a point to all of this. The other day, my mom showed me a website she ran across (still don’t know how she found it). It was a blog called, “Neurocosmopolitanism” by Dr. Nick Walker, “an autistic genderqueer author, speaker, educator, transdisciplinary scholar, and aikido teacher.” Reading his blog gave me such a feeling of relief that I teared up. He was saying things that I felt but didn’t know anyone else did or even noticed- much less that there were words for it. He put what I didn’t think I was allowed to think into words. I felt validated in ways I didn’t know I was missing. I read the first thing I saw, “Guiding Principles for a Course of Autism.” It’s an explanation written for educators, but I think everyone can learn from it. His last two points of this piece were by far the most powerful for me. He gives examples of how teachers can and must model the “accommodation of neurodivergence” and “invite the embodied expression” of it. He made it sound easy and possible. I was able to imagine a learning environment that felt safe and allowed me to truly reach my fullest potential. (Yes, this is me held back.) I really hope you check out this website. It is about autism and more. He makes you question what paradigms you’ve fallen into. A paradigm is not just an idea or a method. A paradigm is a set of fundamental assumptions or principles, a mindset or frame of reference that shapes how one thinks about and talks about a given subject. A paradigm shapes the ways in which one interprets information, and determines what sort of questions one asks and how one asks them. A paradigm is a lens through which one views reality. That’s big. Dr. Walker says that we can learn our way out of it. Discrimination, hate, and harmful misunderstanding of neurodiversity exists, but it doesn’t have to. Substantial change for the better will only come from abandoning the pathology paradigm and making the shift to the neurodiversity paradigm. I didn't expect to find comfort in this blog. It's about autism. I don't have autism, how could I possible relate? Oh, he agrees that minorities shouldn't have to "balance" or make space for placating their oppressors or validate research just because it's mainstream, it may still be wrong? That's for us to decide? Oh, cool, I guess we aren't so different.
So, I dug this up, recently, but I’m not bringing it back up because it’s a fantastic prose. My first political activism: age 12 (originally posted 4/6/14) Today I was being nosy and was watching my mom while she did stuff on her laptop. She watched this video on immigration (I watched it too). I was upset. I knew about illegal immigrants and visas and everything but... I didn't realize, I don't know, I guess how bad it was. I talked to my mom and learned more about immigration and the Dream Act. There are so many people, kids, living in fear of getting sent back to a country they might not even know. If they lived in the US, they could have been brought over by their parents when they were babies. Some don't even know they don't have papers until they need their social security number or something. I wrote a letter to the congressmen of Virginia. You can send them a letter too. They have people whose job it is to read them. They will start to consider something a problem if they start getting lots of letters on the subject. You can look up how to send a letter (it will be different depending where you live), but you some sort of return address (even if you don't ask for a return answer), a name and a letter (doesn't have to be long). It's easy, and important. It's been 5 years and it doesn’t feel like anything has gotten better. The night before September 11th, I begged my dad to not leave the house. I went to sleep wondering if it would be more dangerous for an aggressive person to think he is Hispanic or middle eastern (yes, the latter has been assumed). He understood why I was crying, so he agreed to stay home. 9/11 was a tragedy, but so is all of the damage that came afterward. Sometimes I feel the same fear I did when I was 12. The worst part, though, is that I don’t actually believe I can make a difference anymore. I don’t have money. I don’t have status. And even if I did, there are people with power beyond my imagination who would make sure that I couldn’t cause them problems.
I'll keep writing posts and letters. I'll keep trying to spread the bleak facts in front of humanity, even I know though words mean nothing without action because it's all I can do. This isn't me just being pessimistic or exaggerating. The world is literally on fire. The people who are supposed to protect us either can't because of backwards laws or just flat-out choose not to. The clock is ticking and anyone who thinks we can ignore it is kidding themselves. I'm talking about our climate change and our planet and the wars and hate waging on its surface. So, yeah. The conclusion? I’m terrified of what the future holds- of what the present is. I started writing six-word stories after seeing a prompt inspired by Ernest Hemingway.*
In the 1920s, Hemingway (supposedly) won $10 in a bet with his friends by writing: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” 100 years later, it's still famous. If you want to read more about this story (or lack thereof):
Here are some that I wrote.
And lastly, Six words are insufficient to describe -- me. * Hemingway is often credited with both the line and, in turn, as the creator of flash fiction; however, many literary experts argue that he did not do either. It is possible that his publisher, Peter Miller, fabricated the entire story, but that's okay. (see Snopes). |
Who Am I?Hi there! I'm Whit, my pronouns are they/them, and I write a lot.
Learn more about me here :) Click the button to read my poetry. Categories
All
All posts since April 2018 tagged at least once.
Archives
April 2021
Header
Painting by Whit Acrylics on masonite April 20th, 2019 Words are a Quaker saying. George Fox? |