Autism Positivity

We fight against stigmas. We fight to be heard. The world is not generally friendly to Autistics. We still need to remind people that the same rights they have, rights they expect to be recognized, also apply to us.

We celebrate Autism Positivity because we know we are not a collection of deficits. We know that because we, like everyone else, have assets, abilities and gifts.

We know this because we are human beings.

Autistics can be extra sensitive to sound and light. While this is seen as a deficit by a majority that is still not accepting of the need for accommodations, Autistics can experience the beauty of the colors in music, in the words we hear, and in the people around us. We can see the wind and hear the silence.

We celebrate Autism Positivity because we experience amazing beauty most people can’t see.

Many of us can’t speak like the majority can. That’s also is seen as a broken feature. But we are listening and learning at a faster pace than the neuromajority is. Give us the opportunity and the right technology, and our thoughts will enrich your life.

We celebrate Autism Positivity because what is inside our minds is worthy the wait to hear our typed, written voices.

Autism Positivity is the freedom to flap, rock, spin and jump. It is the accepting presence of those who “get it”.

Autism Positivity is feeling intensely every emotion around us. It is felling safe and finding comfort being alone, with ourselves.

Autism Positivity is having the courage to be ourselves. It is seeing our lives and actions help young autistics to do the same.

Autism positivity is learning to say “no” to forced compliance. It is refusing stereotypes, it is fighting stigma and wrong assumptions.

Autism Positivity is reclaiming our right to make decisions. It is rebelling against practices that seek to fix what is not broken. We are not broken.

Autism Positivity is exercising our humanity.

We celebrate Autism Positivity because we are human beings and we are pretty awesome, in our Autistic way.

"When your child is diagnosed with autism, it can feel like your world has fallen apart. Last year, when our son Gabriel was three, it happened to us. And though life is extremely hard for us, and much more so for him, he has opened our eyes, minds and souls to magical things in everyday life – like cinema.

Our son is essentially non-verbal, having very few words, and like many with autism he has major difficulties with language, communication and social interaction. We first took him to the cinema when he was two, and a passion was born. In the darkness of the theatre there’s no threat or pressure from neurotypical folk expecting conversation and eye contact. The two-dimensional characters provide a safe way of accessing life experiences: our son can’t seek answers and information as others would by asking questions and sharing fears. The darkness and ‘front focus’ help reduce the constant overwhelming visual input that is part of his life: how can you attend to the ‘thing’ in front of you when your eyes are flooded with hundreds of images every minute from every nook of peripheral vision?

In spring 2012, when he had a vocabulary of approximately 15 words, Gabriel clearly said ‘Sparky’. We were excited that he’d said a word and was undoubtedly trying to communicate with us, yet we had no idea what ‘sparky’ was. We searched our memories and came up blank. Then one day I recalled, ‘Last month we did see a trailer for a Tim Burton film – there was a dog in it called Sparky, but it’s only mentioned a couple of times, and it was so fast, and we’ve only seen it once…’

‘Nah,’ my husband said, ‘can’t be.’

How much we have learnt since.

That one trailer was to seize Gabriel’s imagination like no other. How did we discover that ‘Sparky’ was indeed the endearing dog of Burton’s creation? Gabriel showed us. We went to the cinema and Gabriel ran to a cardboard FRANKENWEENIE placard and spent 45 minutes dancing, babbling, singsonging and beaming in front of it. Over several months we hotly anticipated the release of the film. With every poster, every Disney Store window display, Gabriel turned to us with animation and joy. He began to request ‘Sparky?’ for the trailer and, always, he’d turn to us and exclaim and dance and beam.

One night, having difficulty getting Gabriel to sleep, I sat quietly with him. Thinking he’d finally drifted off, I tiptoed away, only to be stopped in my tracks by the little voice that floated out of the darkness – ‘Something big is gonna happen!’ The moment was eerie and magical; tears filled my eyes and swelled my throat.

Many phrases from FRANKENWEENIE were to follow, and this was before we’d even seen the film! Gabriel made – ‘Turtle, dinosaur’ – a request for us to sketch Shelly the turtle’s transformation into a T-rex like monster. He started to tell us ‘Mr Whiskers had a dream about you last night.’ He learnt new words: bat, monster, sea monkey! And, amazingly, he began to role-play. We’d been told that ‘autistics’ lack imaginary capacity, yet our son took what he saw in the FRANKENWEENIE trailers, and ultimately the film, and began to apply it to his toys: play-sniffing, tracking, chasing cats, even dispensing kisses.

But the biggest moment was yet to come. It wasn’t Gabriel seeing his Sparky birthday cake on his fourth birthday and being utterly transfixed sparky cake– ‘Spaaaaarky!’ It wasn’t going to the cinema three times a week to see FRANKENWEENIE while it was out. It wasn’t him managing to go to nursery for two hours because he had a laminated picture of Sparky in his hand and another in his bag. It was the giant sign he gave us during our first viewing of the film.

We’d spent months digesting, assimilating and loving the FRANKENWEENIE trailers, posters and placards, so we approached the screening with the ecstasy of parents knowing they were giving their child The Greatest Gift Ever. It started brilliantly, Gabriel was spellbound, but then he started to scream and sob… Sparky had been hit by a car.

Tim Burton didn’t show us the car, he didn’t show us the corpse; we saw nothing but Victor’s reaction – a face of fear shouting ‘Sparky! Nooooo!’ And that was the moment that many clinicians and educators were proven wrong. We had been told ‘autistics can’t express empathy and have little or no sense of other,’ yet here, in his distress, Gabriel was clearly showing us otherwise. He has shown us the same countless times since, identifying with a film character to such an extent that even subtle bullying will reduce him to tears. The first screening of a film is always difficult (and this is where Autism-Friendly Screenings are vital), as Gabriel has yet to discover that the character emerges triumphant and safe.

FRANKENWEENIE sparked a magical trajectory for us, showing us the actual potential in our beautiful boy, rather than the deficiency that others perceive in him because he can’t express himself in recognised, neurotypical ways. It also has given us so many moments of unbridled joy and discovery that I don’t have the words to convey their significance in our lives.

It’s April 30th. The last day of Autism Acceptance Month. And the day of the third annual Autism Positivity Flash Blog. I didn’t write for the last two iterations. The first one, I didn’t hear about. I was not part of the online Autism community at that time because I was taking a break from the stress of things — I had met my first local Autistic adult and it turned out horribly with stalking and threats. And I was living with a partner who hated autism and Autistic people. I did not know that I am Autistic when I got together with him and my diagnosis was pretty devastating for the relationship (which still somehow continued for another decade afterwards.)

I first learned about this project a few months after it launched for the first time and I was kind of shocked into silence. You see, I have a tendency when frustrated to treat Google as a sort of oracle. I will type a complete sentence in, like “He calls me stupid all the time but I’m really smart.” Once I typed in “My rat died and I’m very sad.” The hits that are returned from these sorts of non-questions are often enlightening, sometimes comforting, sometimes informative.

So I honestly don’t know if I’m the person who typed, “I wish I didn’t have Asperger’s,” but it was so much like the sorts of things I do type into Google when I’m feeling lost and distressed and, with all the stress I had in my relationship and with university and fighting for accommodations no one wanted to let me have and getting accommodations that just made my classmates so angry they bullied me so much I wished I had just dropped the class instead — I did actually drop out of becoming a math major because the attitude toward accommodations in that department was so hostile that I knew I wouldn’t be able to finish the degree either way — with all that going on, I was having a really hard time and so much of my stress and struggle was centered around being Autistic.

I will never know if I’m the person who triggered the first Autism Positivity Flash Blog or not, but it was so much the sort of thing I would have done, that I could only sit in shock and read through all those letters to . . . . if not me, someone exactly like me.

So I didn’t write last year because I was still too overwhelmed by the bigness of it all. I sat and read every single entry from that first year and I cried a lot and, most of all, I felt supported. I was afraid to say anything to anyone about the possibility that it might have been me they were writing to. I figured it didn’t matter, because whether it was me or not, there are so many other people out there who desperately needed to read those words. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of “me”s out there feeling miserable about the cards life dealt them and wishing they could play any other hand but that one. And I still have no idea if it was me or not, but I’m revealing now that it might have been me because it’s important to know that if you are going to understand what my Expression of PosAutivity really means: it might as well have been me and this project gave me something to rejoice about at a time in my life when there really didn’t seem to be anything good about me or my Autistic life.

I didn’t necessarily believe every word that I read, but it awakened something in me. A few months later, I re-opened this blog. I had shut it down after the bad experience with the local Autistic. I was afraid and I was ashamed. I re-opened the blog and in that first post, I published my photograph and my full name. I was protesting Ann Coulter’s use of the R-word and I was putting myself out there to say “this is who you are hurting when you use that word” and also putting myself out there to say “I am no longer afraid and ashamed. I will be known.”

I could not have found that courage if I had not read all those letters to . . . . someone like me . . . . that were written back in 2012.

So the joy I want to write about today is this: life dealt me a hand but it wasn’t Aces and Eights. Sure, I haven’t figured out what to do with that Trey of Hearts yet, but it’s not a Deadman’s Hand and, what’s more, the cards are merely slips of paper that only carry as much power as the players choose to assign to them. What life also dealt me was a table filled with players who have decided to turn the game into something we all can win. I am seated with great people who want to help me figure out where that Trey goes. I am seated with generous people who are willing to show me their cards so we can all play together instead of against one another.

I still struggle with the notion of “Autistic Pride.” It’s not easy for me. Inch by inch, I approach it. But in those dark times when I am unable to take pride in myself, I can always look around me and take pride in my community. We — Autistics and allies — are strong, brave, loving people. We are people who work hard to make the world better for us and those who will come after us. We are people who will take the time to write anonymous letters of hope and love to people we’ve never met — anonymous people crying out for some relief from the pain. I take joy in my people, my tribe, my family.  We are a loyal people, an understanding people, a forgiving people. I am honored to sit at the table with the wise and noble souls I find myself surrounded by.

I no longer refer to myself as “having Asperger’s.” For one, it’s now a historical term, like Dementia Praecox or Invert or Hyperkinetic Reaction of Childhood. For another, I’ve learned that what I am is Autistic and I have no need for a special label that attempts to place me in some hierarchy of “functioning levels” (and couldn’t place myself there very well even if I tried, since my “function” is so variable from task-to-task and from day-to-day.)

But also, I no longer wish I didn’t have Asperger’s (or autism of any stripe.)  I’m dating someone different — someone who loves me and admires all of me and understands that I am who I am because I am Autistic, no tin spite of it. I am on a different life path so I am no longer fighting with a university for accommodations I need but am punished for requesting. And I can now see that being Autistic is not only who I am, through and through, pervasively, but it is something that connects me with a warm, welcoming, compassionate community of the most decent and loving human beings I’ve ever met in my life. Not a perfect community, because it’s made of people are none of us are perfect. But a community that has repeatedly taken my hand and helped me up when  I fell to the ground and lay there, hopeless.