- Auties.Org
- Chris Samuel
- Donna Williams' Website
- Donna's 10 published books
- Donna's consultancy
- Donna's diagnosis page
- Donna's music page
- Donna's painting gallery
- Donna's presentations
- Donna's sculpture gallery
- Donna's Facebook page
- Donna's YouTube channel
- Nobody Nowhere
- Nobody Nowhere The Film Facebook page
Donna Williams is an Australian born adult with autism who was assessed as psychotic at the age of 2 in 1965, labelled disturbed in the 1970s and diagnosed as autistic in her 20s in 1991.
She acquired functional speech in late childhood and went on to become a qualified teacher with an honors degree in Sociology and a degree in Linguistics. She is the author of two international bestselling autobiographies and has 10 published books including 4 text books widely used in autism education and two books of poetry and prose.
As a screenwriter, she wrote the screenplay to “Nobody Nowhere”, the first book in her 4 book autobiographical series. That screenplay is currently under option to become a Hollywood film. She is an professional artist, singer-songwriter and published poet as well as a world renowned public speaker on autism now living with her husband in Australia. In her presentations she draws not only on her own experiences but on international experience as a professional autism consultant since 1996.
Donna’s is a speaker in demand around the world due to her unique perspective and ability to share her feelings and experiences on a very personal level. More information about her and her life’s work can be found on her website at http://www.donnawilliams.net .
Donna
Here I am on You Tube – I love your slide show!!
hello Donna,
I’m french and I don’t speak very well english but I try.
I’ve just finished to read your book:” si on me touche, je n’existe plus” in french.I like it very much so I’d like to tell you how I admire you.thanks to have share your experience and I hope if I meet an “autist” one day I’ll can help him throught your book….
thanks again
charlotte
just I’d like to add I like when you say in your book:( in french sorry): ” les mots d’accueil et de bienvenue ne sont que paroles en l’air, Car les mots n’ont pas de sens quand les intentions n’ont pas de corps”
Thanks for posting this slideshow Donna, and wow you do keep updating your blog a lot, it’s great to come back and see new posts about very diverse subjects. I wonder where you take the time to do everything, paint, write, work and still be posting new stuff here. I feel very privileged to know about this place 🙂
I have a question a little personal, do you have children or intend to have any?
Keep up with everything, and excuse the french 😉
Bonjour charlotte, je suis francophone aussi du Quebec mais j’ai lu les 2 premiers boukins de Donna en anglais, ça doit être merveilleux de lire ces écrits purs en français 🙂
ha ha, yes, I ask myself this too.
the answer is that some people with mood, anxiety and compulsive disorders simply take medication. Others jog or create or do all three. Anxiety related energy indulges itself into destructive paths unless exhausted or channeled. I’ve found a way to channel it so its useful, helpful, creative, and, yes, exhausting.
😉
as for babies.
I’m 45 this year!
I had two primary immune deficiencies till age 36 so couldn’t healthily have children anyway, then had an ovary removed and decided to keep what was left in good shape without risking things like ectopics (a tendency which ran in my family on one side). Also I am a far better aunt and teacher than I’d make a mother, I’m VERY solitary and feel phobic of entanglement and nervous of intimacy, but yeah, I’m a warm person and love people, so its a strange dance, but I couldn’t easily see myself as a mother because I’d be trying to get away all the time.
I wrote about facing this choice in my fourth autobiographical installment, Everyday Heaven.
Don’t excuse the French, by the way, I can read it with around 80% accuracy. I speak Italian, German, French and began once to speak in beginners Welsh, have a few words and sentences in Japanese, can count to ten in all those languages as well as Spanish and Indonesian… I struggled hugely with language processing but am an excellent rote learner.
I learned French in one week whilst in France. Learned it from advertisements on TV, products and walls. By the end of the week I was conversing in it. Didn’t take it further and can’t understand it much in ‘real time’ as most speech, even English, is too fast for fluent understanding, but it was fun to learn the system, sure.
🙂 Donna *)
bonjour,
j’ai cru comprendre que je pouvais parler en français car donna vous le comprenez trés bien!ceci dit écrire en anglais ne me ferait que progresser! :). et j’en ai besoin!
pour vous répondre oui, j’ai été absorbée par cette oeuvre de donna, mais peut être que la traduction en français ne fait -elle pas perdre de sa valeur au texte? en tous cas je me suis régalée!
bonne journée àvous tous.
Bonjour Charlotte,
je ne parle pas tres bon Francaise mai je peux comprende qu’est que tu ha dit ici.
desole mais maintenant je changer au Anglais.
🙂
The french translation?
OK, it was translated by a lovely translator, Bella, and I liked her very much, but she had a Freudian background and that style comes through in her translation. My voice is far more pragmatic in style but in French she gave it more ‘cuteness’ perhaps, romanticism, she sort of did a bit of an Amelie with me.
In fact I’m far more complex than that. So in facts she got most right, there were some misinterpretations, yes, particularly in terms of co-morbid psychiatric issues, which are conveyed quite differently in the original English, and the feel has been changed, my voice. I also don’t use exclamations marks which she used liberally. These gave a very different feel to me which didn’t reflect my cognitive reality. But all translations remove some reality, some voice.
thanks donna for your answer. 🙂
Aw…that show is adorable!
“Also I am a far better aunt and teacher than I’d make a mother, I’m VERY solitary and feel phobic of entanglement and nervous of intimacy, but yeah, I’m a warm person and love people, so its a strange dance, but I couldn’t easily see myself as a mother because I’d be trying to get away all the time.”
I am exactly the same way.:) I have another rationale, too, though. One, I am very sensitive to sound, touch, sight, etc. and the constant presence of children that depended on me would not be good for me or anyone else. Moreover, I think I could help so many more people and children if I was not tied down by my own. I mean, the planet suffers from a lack of resources anyway, so I have no interest in adding my own children. Nor do I plan to adopt or foster…again, because I am not really much of a mother. Actually, I have one more reason. I do not fit the role. I fit between the feminine and masculine roles, though I mostly occupy the masculine role. The truth is, I would probably make a better father than mother.:)
Back to the video, I am very proud of the left-brainers on the autistic spectrum, but we are not all mathematicians, techies or scientists. I myself am very much both left- and right-brained, and my math skills are vey splintered. I am much more accomplished in geometry and basic math than in algebra. So I like an exhibition of autistic people who do not fit the narrow definitions many have. I have actually been told, not by experts but lay-people, that I can’t be autistic because I talk and do not self-injure. Well, they would be wrong.
What a self fulfilling prophecy. So those of us who didn’t have functional speech and were self injurious but largely improved to a degree we can mostly pass at least till we get home or alone, then we are no longer autistic I suppose 😉 This is what I mean about people being precious about stereotypes and labels.
This preciousness just stops people learning from those who have managed to adapt and relatively manage their condition on a variety of levels. The real question is WHY people get so precious about such things. Sometimes its funding, sometimes its identity of the carers and their relationships bound up in the child’s disability, sometimes its about fundraising or irrational fear of guilt (ie what did I fail to do if strategies/adaptations/treatments didn’t allow MY child couldn’t reduce his/her challenges) or the idea that if autism is ONE thing in ALL cases then they can more easily imagine or invest in ‘magic bullet’ and ‘one size fits all’ treatments (often extremely expensive ones too, and nobody feels good admitting maybe the condition is more complex than these can solve)….
As for the right-brain, left-brain dominance thing, there are also those who are relatively split brain, which is my case, and was tested by the people at the Brain Injury Rehabilitation and Development Unit in the UK. I’ve also had other perceptual tests and pretty much folks agree that the integration is a bit challenged.
What this means is that I’m more purely left-brain OR right-brain than most people and that I often lose perception or tracking of one side of my body which is a little spooky but not too big a deal as I can kick start it again when one side goes AWOL. And there’s things like shifting tasks mid way and then its as if the other task never existed or was a week ago. People can view that as DID (disocciative identity disorder), sure, and maybe that’s how identity makes sense of such neurological issues etc, but if the neuro-developmental people say your brain isn’t functioning well in an integrated way then the rest is just psych.
anyway, I digress. But my visual perceptual stuff and the fact I can’t hold complex conscious thought means science and maths can be a problem without representational objects, so that’s not so much that these parts don’t work as that there’s a disability in the way requiring an adaptation. I’m a systematician which is highly logical-mathematical thinking and a musician which is all about feeling relationships of rhythm and pattern. I’m also highly kinesthetic which is about movement and hands on experiences. So I think its more complex than left OR right hemisphere dominance.
🙂 Donna Williams *)