Dear Ms. Williams,
My name is Sofia Piedrafita, the daughter of Toni Ortiz. I am a 5th grader at Flora Vista Elementary School in San Diego (California) and I am working on a project about Autism. Thank you for helping me with my report.I would love you to answer my next three questions.

SOFIA PIEDRAFITA
* How did you handle Autism when you were a child?

DONNA WILLIAMS
Hi Sofia,
hmm
it depends what you call ‘the autism’. Because autism is a fruit salad… its actually made up of different things. Some of my things included immune deficiencies so I got sick a lot and couldn’t digest food properly and was often on antibiotics. This made it harder to make sense of information so I couldn’t see a face or a body as a whole, I was face blind so everyone seemed in bits and nobody seemed familiar and I was meaning deaf. I found it really hard to have a body and was always losing track of having one… sort of like being a ghost! And because it was so hard being in the body I kept finding it foreign and attacking it. I handled these things mostly through enjoying textures, patterns, smells, rhythms, movement, my mirror reflection, music and songs.

SOFIA PIEDRAFITA
* Was it hard to learn in school?

DONNA WILLIAMS
Very hard. My meaning deafness wasn’t understood until I was 9. After that they slowed all their speech, made it simple and used gestures and objects and then I began to feel like a hearing person because I could understand with meaning after that and that helped me be able to speak with meaning instead of only echoed speech from TV and songs. I also couldn’t read with meaning so they had to take me back to the start with a picture word dictionary but slowly I learned how to read with meaning. I couldn’t hold things in my head well because I’d grown up meaning deaf, so I learned to represent things with objects so I could see the different thoughts outside of my head and make decisions about things.

SOFIA PIEDRAFITA
* As a child with a disability, did you have a lot of friends?

DONNA WILLIAMS
Not at all. It was like watching another world, a world in which I felt I was a broken child, not a ‘real’ or equal child. I did make some friends with new kids to the school or those who didn’t speak English and some abused kids who found it hard to make friends. But mostly I was an outsider. Some kids tried to include me but I didn’t understand them or their games and they didn’t understand mine. I’m glad though that I went to a mainstream school because I got to understand a lot about those who don’t have my issues and feel more familiar with that world, and those people grow up to be the majority in our communities so being familiar with them and their ways is important.

SOFIA PIEDRAFITA
I really apreciate your help on my project and I hope you can write back soon! Smile

DONNA WILLIAMS
No problem. I’m going to put our interview on my blog. You can find it at http://blog.donnawilliams.net
and I’ll share it with my facebook page which is www.facebook.com/theartyautie

SOFIA PIEDRAFITA
My mom will buy your books and I am sure they will be a great addition to our classroom book collection. I will be very interested in reading them. Thank you again and have a wonderful rest of the day (I am ready to eat dinner right now).

sincerely,
Sofia

DONNA WILLIAMS
You too.
warmly,

Donna Williams, BA Hons, Dip Ed.
Author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter.
Autism consultant and public speaker.

http://www.myspace.com/nobodynowherethefilm
http://www.donnawilliams.net
http://www.aspinauts.com