WHEN: 7pm, 4th Thursday of the month
WHERE: Honey Thai Restaurant, 1678 Main Rd, Belgrave (just up from Belgrave railway station footbridge)
WHAT: Dinner (meals start from around $17 and special diets can be catered for) with others on the spectrum
WHO: teens and adults on the autism spectrum and their direct support people.
This group has been successfully running since 2006.
Note: we have established 2 important ground rules for attendees
1) this is NOT an opportunity to study people with autism or explore ways to enter the autism field
2) those attending are expected to be self management skills (ie: able to respect other people’s space, have reasonable hygiene, respect the venue etc).
Any doubts whether this group is for you, please contact Donna: bookings@donnawilliams.net

Donna Williams, BA Hons, Dip Ed.
Author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter.
Autism consultant and public speaker.
http://www.donnawilliams.net

I acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the Traditional Owners of this country throughout Australia, and their connection to land and community.

This item originally posted here:

Social opportunities for people with autism in Melbourne

December, 22nd. Chris and I had walked around the villages in the Dandenong Ranges to take in the community cheer that shop keepers gift us with in December. But it was nowhere to be found… with the exception of Monbulk… yay, Monbulk! But that was only because their community of traders had a competition for the best Christmas window.

But for Chris and I, their windows were a gift to the community, its their festive face, its the someone who dares to dag, to put festivity out there, to spark others to celebrate, to raise spirits in something we could all share. The other villages, Belgrave, Tecoma, Upwey, Kalista, Mount Dandenong, Olinda, Sassafras, Emerald, but for the handful of exceptions (however small) who remembered or bothered, were largely devoid of any effort at ‘cheer’. Instead, they presented like Scrooge, bland, almost stating ‘business as usual’ or, more bluntly, ‘can’t be bothered’. And what they forgot was that this resonates with those walking past their windows, and then we can’t be bothered to look much further into their windows… they modeled ‘why be bothered’ and we resonated that.

I decided to ask a few shop keepers why they had pulled the plug on decorating their windows. There were so many reasons:

* they couldn’t see the point spending money when business had been tough all year
* there was nobody around, everyone is buying on the internet
* most decorations are from petrochemicals, made in sweatshops and lights contribute to global warming
* decorations are for those celebrating Christianity so if you’re not Christian why do it
* having a whole street or village join in promoting a Christian event is culturally excluding to non-Christians and therefore not culturally sensitive to the vast numbers of non-Christians (including atheists and humanists).
* we have a summer Christmas so decorations of snowflakes, snowmen or heavy dressed Santa make no sense
* Christmas decorations in the huge shopping malls are so homogenous, pristine and ‘designer’ they felt their own would be poor by comparison
* people felt bombarded by the ‘hard sell’ use of Christmas decorations used as early as September for a season in December and they didn’t want to look like they were desperately pushing the same hard sell.
* customers complained in general about the pressure of Christmas, its wastage, its kitsch, its sensory bombardment, its me-me greed, its hard sell style of Chri$tma$ as the celebration of materialism and profits.
* keeping decorations in a box all year took up space for no good reason
* when December came, they looked around and saw nobody else was doing decorations so couldn’t get ‘in the mood’ and decided they wouldn’t either.

There is much to celebrate in December in Australia. We don’t have snow but we do have sunshine. The trees are gifting us with saplings ready to pot and gift to others. The herbs in our gardens are so abundant they are crying out to be turned into ‘bush bouquets’ and plaited garlands to be gifted to others directly or through displaying them for the passing community. The bees are active, the butterflies are everywhere, the birds are singing and all pollinating the plants and trees in fruit, waiting to be picked and shared with others. The open spaces are waiting for celebratory gatherings. It is time for dancing, singing, playing instruments, poetising, throwing an ‘art party’, story telling (there’s some good Dreamtime sun stories), time to dag out, be part of the abundance of nature and remember we are part of nature too. Dress up as an elf, don your butterfly wings, adorn yourself with flowers and vines and celebrate the earth and its abundance. You can even have a safe silk ‘bonfire’!

December in Australia is our Summer Solstice, the celebration of summer and solstice is an astronomical event, an event of nature that belongs to us all regardless of religion, beliefs or differences. You can commemorate solstice whether you are Christian, Moslem, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Atheist, Neo-pagan or committed undecided humanoid.

Is there a place for shops in Summer Solstice? Of course there is. Imagine our villages celebrating the spirit of summer in all its energy, exuberance, inspiration, abundance. Selling hammers and wheelbarrows? Great, we can use them to put up a summer garland or barrow the plants we’ve been gifted or intend to gift. Selling dresses? Wonderful. We can buy them and embellish them with the colors and symbols of summer; leaves, berries, flowers. A Beautician? Great, you can adorn hair and faces with color and the symbols of nature. A real estate agent? Then boast the gardens of your properties waiting to be seen, the opportunities in a season of enthusiasm and activity to take on something new. A paint shop? Remind people of the gift of color, its place in celebration, creativity, inspiration. A travel agent? Summer is a time of high energy, of getting out there, of having experiences. There are no excuses.

When I was a teenager in the late 70s-early 80s, I left dandelions on door knockers, filled discarded bottles with pine needles in water and ran tinsel around the outside to make “bottle trees” for people, dressed as an elf, bought sweets and went to the city and offered them around to strangers. In my twenties I dressed up as a bear and ran about in the snow (in Birmingham). When I was 30, I made mini boxes of dandelion seeds as “wish boxes” and dressed as a Santa girl and went shopping.

Sure, Christmas is presently a conglomeration. For devoted Christians it will always be a time of going to church, of worshipping what they believe in, of celebrating in the name of Jesus and that’s valid for them and being summer solstice in no way takes away from their right to celebrate Christmas their own way. But until the 4th century Christmas was, simply, a celebration of the season, it was Yule. And in Australia, our season is summer. Our summer solstice coincides with Christmas time just as winter solstice does in the Northern Hemisphere. Chris and I We have a Summer tree, decorated with clip on craft butterflies and birds, beads and bling. We have a garland on our porch in rich summer colors with craft berries and fruits. I decorated the fence with ‘bush bouquets’ and we put up our little string of lights to spread the cheer with those passing.

Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. The end of the year is a time to celebrate new beginnings, sometimes after a very tough year. My husband and I were both in hospital this year facing challenges that could have taken our lives. December was a time to celebrate new beginnings.

Donna Williams, BA Hons, Dip Ed.
Author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter.
Autism consultant and public speaker.
http://www.donnawilliams.net

I acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the Traditional Owners of this country throughout Australia, and their connection to land and community.

This item originally posted here:

Happy Solstice everyone! Where’s your ‘bling’?

The spectrum of dissociative disorders includes dissociation, depersonalisation, derealisation…. sound like big words? The overdeveloped tendency to daydream, cut off from or highly compartmentalise experiences (dissociation), struggling to relax with intimacy, entanglement, familiarity or taking anything personally, emotionally (depersonalisation) or the feeling life is like a movie or that one may be dreaming one’s life, that things seem unreal (derealisation).

Further along the spectrum of dissociative disorders is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder associated with still relatively relateable experiences as vast as bullying to car accidents, natural disasters, and witnessing or experiencing assault or abuse. Beyond this is Dissociative Identity Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (DDNos)… people who have compartmentalised parts of them that are not integrated into the whole of them and may experience themselves as divided, multiple in their presentation, their identity. And at the most extreme end is Dissociative Identity Disorder itself (DID) which is a more entrenched version of DDNos in which those compartmentalised parts of the self have broken out (like leaking compartmentalised parts of the subconscious) with their own individual lives, often naming themselves as separate to each other and living with different degrees of awareness of each other.

Is DID equated with being emotionally erratic, self injurious, Borderline? No. Many people with DID live seemingly normal lives, most do not self injure, are not dangerous to themselves or others and most people would never know they had DID.

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is commonly confused with DID, and even many therapists struggle to differentiate the two conditions but in fact BPD is only one of 5 personality disorders commonly overlapping with DID and only the 4th most common to do so and many people with the DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY disorder of DID will not have personality disorders at all.

Those with BPD may experience constant deflection into roles and derealisation but roles are not alters, compulsive deflection into roles is not the same as splitting, and derealisation is only one of several experiences that people with DID experience. So, in fact DID has no direct relationship to BPD at all and those with BPD experiencing derealisation and compulsive deflection into roles might be best joining a support group for those who understand, respect and relate to BPD.

So is there a Melbourne meet up group for those with DID? Meetup doesn’t have one yet and many with DID could be afraid of meeting people with seriously unchecked BPD issues or DID Wannabes (sightseers) excited to hear the experiences of those diagnosed with the condition in order to feign having what they find exciting or imagine will make them more interesting. Those with DID will naturally find this extremely offensive and tedious so it’s no surprise that there aren’t meet up groups for those with DID. Those who think they may have DID or DDNos or other dissociative disorders should see a professional qualified to explore the condition with them. Most people with a diagnosis of DID did not go out in search of a diagnosis and if you want to tune in to the stories of those with DID go buy a book.

I have three friends formally diagnosed with DID and have met with several others. Almost all have been relatively functional people. I am formally diagnosed with DID and other than also being a person with autism/information processing issues and immune disorders who has just come through cancer experiences, I’d say I’m also a reasonably functional person. I strongly value my hard won equilibrium and have no interest in losing that. Nevertheless, perhaps here is at least a place for other Melbournians who are formally diagnosed with DID to introduce themselves, be out of the closet and connect with others dealing with the same diagnosed condition.

Donna Williams, BA Hons, Dip Ed.
Author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter.
Autism consultant and public speaker.
http://www.donnawilliams.net

I acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the Traditional Owners of this country throughout Australia, and their connection to land and community.

This item originally posted here:

Dissociative Disorders, Melbourne meet ups?

When my husband Chris got home, I showed it to him, obvious de’ja vu from late June when he’d been out of hospital 2 weeks and I had him feel the large lump in my left breast that within a week was diagnosed as breast cancer (3cm tumor that developed over 2-3mths). So he said he’d seen this black spot a week ago, thought perhaps I’d hit my head, had a blood spot there. He looked closer and determined it was time to see the GP tomorrow.

One of the GPs at our local clinic specialises in skin cancers and has all the equipment to view them properly. I saw him and explained I’d just finished chemo for breast cancer, had a history of variable immune deficiency (white cells, IgA, IgG2) and that members of my mother’s side of the family were in a medical study for Melanoma. He viewed it with the dermatoscope. It was irregular and black with a bluish tinge to it. He wrote a referral to a dermatologist and marked it urgent. I contacted one of the dermatologists on the list, one who’d seen me a year ago. His secretary put me in the priority queue then called to tell me I had an appointment on the Monday.

I had a million questions, of course. How could my chemo have killed stray breast cancer cells but let new melanoma cells develop? What did the speed of this new melanoma developing mean for the state of my immune system and its ability to limit the development of new cancers? Did I have any equipment at all to hold back new cancers? What happens when I get one I can’t see, even internal ones (you can develop internal melanomas). It’s one thing to potter through one’s life and get a melanoma and say, oh well, I’m an Aussie, it happens. It’s another thing to be in my 40s, 7 days out of chemo and find a fast growing melanoma appear out of nowhere as if its mocking chemo, mocking your new status as cancer survivor, your feeling you had beaten cancer and felt declared cancer free.

I named this new beast Mel Anoma. Like Ignatious Pug (my 3cm breast tumor) we will evict Mel ASAP. I refuse to let cancer boss me around. But I did want some answers… like did the chemo work? Am I missing something? Like Caspase2 (tumor suppressor protein that is responsible for regulated cell death of damaged cells, including cancer cells)…. without enough of it was the chemo less effective?

I heard from my oncologist. He reassured me that the melanoma in no way indicated the chemo failed to kill any breast cancer cells. He told me that my chemo drug, Taxotere, is not known to be highly effective against melanoma in the way it is against breast cancer and some other cancer cells.

One theory I have is that chemo caused immune suppression and as skin cancers are more common in people with immune suppression, this melanoma just took an opportunity provided by the chemo. I looked up the statistics for melanoma. Not nice! Now to just get that melanoma gone and recover from chemo to get my immune system into as good shape as possible.

UPDATE: results back today from the pathology lab… it was not a melanoma… it was a blue nevus (a blue mole)… apparently it had mutated from a normal mole, hence being largely black blue but also with red and why it looked like a melanoma. probably arrived as a result of drug related damage to the skin…. but its gone and all’s fab with the world

Donna Williams, BA Hons, Dip Ed.
Author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter.
Autism consultant and public speaker.
http://www.donnawilliams.net

I acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the Traditional Owners of this country throughout Australia, and their connection to land and community.

This item originally posted here:

Post chemo Melanoma

They call it chemo but its actually the ticket to Mars!
People there may say the ‘C’ word but I know that is a code name because otherwise everyone might want to go to Mars, so they have to make it look like crap so only the hand picked people get on the rocket ship.
And they say they use chemo, which is is code for Kimba… so they know they are actually dealing with Kimba and we all know that’s one really resilient white lion.

The rocket ship to Mars is well tested… the doctors are all scientists who have tested it for lots of years and found what brings almost everyone back alive.

I have great pilots, co-pilots, autopilots, all monitoring everything from the ground
I have a cheer squad tuning in from 12-1pm daily to monitor lunch progress and ensure all limbs are moving
I have astronaut food disguised in baby food jars as it may be difficult to digest on Mars and mouth ulcers, sore through and dodgy gut are quite normal for the inhabitants there

plus since I gained 3-4kg and got a normal white cell count at the ticket counter, well my seat got upgraded from the back of the rocket ship to the third row

and those getting to go to Mars are very lucky, they are all hand picked because if they stayed on Earth they might die soon due to an early useby date, but once they get back from a few months on Mars, they are CHANGED, their program gets changed and then usually they will live on on Earth without their otherwise pre-programmed in complications and they get an extended useby date!

This is how it works on Mars.

So I’m glad I’m going.

Warmly,

Polly (from team Donna)
one of the new converts.

Donna Williams, BA Hons, Dip Ed.
Author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter.
Autism consultant and public speaker.
http://www.donnawilliams.net

I acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the Traditional Owners of this country throughout Australia, and their connection to land and community.

This item originally posted here:

Mars, Mork, Kimba and Chemo

Exhibition Opening 6-8pm July 21 2011
Exhibition runs July 19 – August 06 2011

The latest exhibition by Melbourne based graffiti maestro Duel represents this artists progression, passion and individuality. Duel’s new works have multi dimensional brilliance, are like an untamed life force, and bounce off the canvases immersing you in their energy. Colors and splats, ribbons and weaves, take you on a journey through Duels past, his development of style, and future innovations.

Kick Gallery is located at 4 Peel Street Collingwood & open Tuesday-Friday11am-6pm & Saturday 12-5pm

For further information contact Kick Gallery on 0412 243 818 or email info@kickgallery.com

This item originally posted here:

DUEL The Aerosol Assassin – an A-Z graffiti art exhibition

Edna Everage behaving like someone’s doting grandmother always felt more like the wolf from Red Riding Hood dressed in grandma’s clothes.

Barry Humphries as Dame Edna Everage 1970s

Les Patterson seemed synonymous with the drunks at the many parties held by my criminal family in the 1970s.

Barry Humphries as early Les Patterson

As an adult when I saw pictures of Barry Humphries I felt dread. I couldn’t help but see a leering, macabre clown. So I’m not at all surprised to find he’s now been cast in Peter Jackson’s film, The Hobbit as The Goblin King.

Goblins, described in Wikipedia, are legendary evil or mischievous creature, described as a grotesquely evil.

Barry Humphries as Les Patterson in the 1970s

I had nightmares of such a grotesque clown, the hungry eyes, the leering smirk like smile broadening into teeth. I was one of those kids who was wary of clowns, all I saw were dressed up men.

Perhaps my own experiences colored that. My father was friends with entrepreneur and TV host Kevin Dennis since the 60s and entertainer Smacka Fitzgibbon in the early 70s, both of them mutual friends of Barry Humphries, who my older brother told me came to the parties too.

barry humphries 1970s

I’m sure, rhe parties in the early 70s would fit in the film, The Hobbit. Our parties were places of wild decadence and extravagance, places of no boundaries, the stuff of film really. Our parties had the very lack of boundaries so openly celebrated, enjoyed and written about in the diaries of self confessed pedophile, Donald Friend, a close friend of Barry Humphries whose lifestyle Humphries refers to as ‘benevolent pedophilia’.

I’m sure you could find many a Goblin King at our parties back then. As for Hobbits, as an almost eight year old around the adults swanning it at our parties, I felt like a hobbit, seeking out places to feel safe. But those parties were never safe for children.

Donna Williams, BA Hons, Dip Ed.
Author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter.
Autism consultant and public speaker.
http://www.donnawilliams.net

This item originally posted here:

Barry Humphries as The Goblin King in a world of Hobbits

Warmly,
Donna Williams *)
http://www.donnawilliams.net

This item originally posted here:

ARTISM blog – art work of the month – May 2011 “Iris”

My father was a car dealer, second hand cars. He also moved amidst criminals (convicted and unconvicted), the swells of the entertainment industry and ultimately cops who became ‘friends of the family’. His car yard life was filled with compulsive womanising and this extended to at least a few teenagers and I can’t be sure he bothered distinguishing between who was 18, who was 16 and who was 14. His back rooms were filled with porn, guns, stolen goods. He was a fence. So most of this was ‘dirty money’. And it came with parties, raging wild, weekly parties for his associates and those he schmoozed with.

The parties were full of alcohol but it was not uncommon for joints to be passed about and it probably didn’t stop there. It was usual to see my father literally dance on the snooker table, see people strip off and skinny dip in the pool, move amidst people having sex in the vast garden behind the high wrought iron gates, their rolled barbed wire over the top, the high brick fence out the front. Even the neighbors drew the blinds on our property and when the guns went off in domestic violence at and after the parties it was so terribly hard to get police to the property and even when they did come, strings were quickly pulled to replace them with cops who would take care of it as they were ‘friends of the family’.

In my 30s my older brother was talking to me about the parties at our house in the 1970s. He said, ‘we had some pretty famous people come to those parties’. I knew about entrepreneur and TV celebrity Kevin Dennis (Dennis Gowing) because I’d been taken to his car yard since I was at least 3 years old and then you see the same person on the TV (Kevin Dennis’ New Faces) and that’s not a hard one to forget. My father took the trade ins off Kevin Dennis since the early 60s and by the 70s they were still very close colleagues.

We had other celebrities of the era visit the parties, including Smacka Fitzgibbon, a close friend of Barry Humphries (aka Dame Edna Everage), who came to one of the parties in 1971. Smacka, too, was not one who was easy to forget. He was a chubby faced man who took over the kitchen one night during a party to cook fish. He played the banjo, sang and cooked a fish with me in the kitchen and it was the first time I tried fish. Smacka seemed a nice enough bloke. Never laid a hand on me and the fish was nice. ‘You know Barry Humphries was at our place, for the parties’, said my older brother.

Then he told me what he remembered about a man who had been taken out into the back garden and punched up out there. The man had been caught coming out of my attic bedroom. As a functionally non-verbal autistic 8 year old, I didn’t understand grooming and after giggling, scampering and jumping on my bed didn’t work, I’d begun to flail and bite. Things escalated. The rest is part of PTSD and therapy. Pedophiles project seduction onto the children they abuse to try and justify or water down responsibility for their own actions. They often claim they were seduced by the children they abused. But nobody could claim I seduced the pedophile who abused me.

Donna Williams, BA Hons, Dip Ed.
Author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter.
Autism consultant and public speaker.
http://www.donnawilliams.net

This item originally posted here:

Remembering Australian Entertainer Smacka Fitzgibbon

Barry Humphries on Pedophilia

Donald Friend

Australian film maker, Kerry Negara, who produced a film on the subject, ‘A Loving Friend‘. According to Negara, who interviewed the boys, now adults, the Australian art establishment kept silent on the issue, essentially sanctioning it.

Actor, comedian, writer, Barry Humphries AO CBE (aka Edna Everage/Les Patterson)

Barry Humphries as Edna Everage in the early 1970s

Donald Friend gave the boys money to attend school, gave them work, and lodging but clearly not without ‘cost’.

Donald Friend

If a white child of 9-12 was school fees and pocket money in exchange for sex, I doubt we’d consider the pedophile doing this ‘benevolent’.

Barry Humphries is now set to play The Goblin King in the upcoming film, The Hobbit.

Barry Humphries in the early 1970s

A goblin is a legendary evil or mischievous illiterate creature, described as a grotesquely evil or evil-like phantom.

I wonder if Barry Humphries’ Goblin King will be somehow ‘benevolent’ in a world of small Hobbits.

Donna Williams, BA Hons, Dip Ed.
Author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter.
Autism consultant and public speaker.
http://www.donnawilliams.net

I acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the Traditional Owners of this country throughout Australia, and their connection to land and community.

This item originally posted here:

Barry Humphries views on ‘benevolent pedophilia’