Those who have been close friends with me will know I have an extremely poor sense of my value to any other human being. I do get my value in relation to Chris but I am just not oriented to think about or hold onto the information about my worth or value to others. Read the rest of this entry »
We all get earworms. I do too. But this is rather different to having the equivalent of a radio program in your head. I feel I’ve had my own invisible iPod all my life because I have always had music starting up in my head, including to the degree it got in the way of learning or processing external sounds… or perhaps it filled that gap because I couldn’t. Read the rest of this entry »
Velveteen Rabbit by Donna Williams
This month’s artwork is titled ‘Heritage’. Read the rest of this entry »
The Idiosyncratic Personality Trait is referred to as ‘The Mastermind Trait’. It does not make one an obsessive-compulsive personality, who tend to be rigid and concrete factitions in their thinking. The Idiosyncratic Trait involves being the opposite; highly fluid in one’s thinking, speculative and abstract. Without these skills Einstein would not have been able to ‘think so far outside of the box’. Temple Grandin, who is the granddaughter of an engineer and inventor and an innovator in the meat processing industry has no history indicating Schizotypal Personality Disorder. Nevertheless, she has long touted Einstein as an example of autistic ability. Recent studies have found significant overlap between Schizotypal Personality Disorder and the autism spectrum. Read the rest of this entry »
Since the development of iPads, many functionally non verbal people with autism have shown themselves able to express themselves independently. Others, however, have shown little interest in using an isolated finger to type or even point out icons or swipe pages on an iPad. When the same person sits stimming on their finger waggling, it is easy for some people to presume or imagine that person is to intellectually impaired they just don’t have the IQ to understand what the device is for, how to use it for themselves or why they might want to. Read the rest of this entry »
Got It by Donna Williams
I presently have around 11,000 people a month visit my blog and website, another 5000 on my FB page, then there’s Twitter and You Tube. I have 10 published books, videos and artworks all around the world. Yet in 1991 when my first book, Nobody Nowhere, became the first international bestseller by any person diagnosed with autism, I rejected the TV appearances and the offer to be followed for a week by a photographer from Time Magazine. I soon also rejected the ‘autism circus’ atmosphere of ‘Meet The Speaker‘ sessions at major autism conferences and failed to embrace the ‘it girl’ thing.
The result was Read the rest of this entry »
If you believe that Autism is NOT a ‘Fruit Salad’ of a range of other conditions presenting ‘as the autism’, then look through this list of ‘Autism Fruit Salad’ at all the things that can be taken as ‘just parts of The Autism’. Read the rest of this entry »
So far we have been through the Medical Model of disability, then moved to the Social Model of disability and more recently the ‘pride movement’ moved on from the social model of disability to an Affirmation Model of disability. But in addition to the medical, social and affirmation models of disability, from this day forth I’d like to propose a new model… THE EMPOWERMENT MODEL Read the rest of this entry »
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 .
