Which of these Donna’s would you relate to or befriend?

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I was approached by a French psychologist, Dr Luc-Laurent Salvador, who asked me about bonding, coloured spots and reflection.  Here’s our discussion: Read the rest of this entry »

Once upon a time a 9 year old girl had been stimming in the garden.  Thirty feet away, an excited black curly haired retriever/kelpie cross bounded about happily, looking like a cheery harmless grizzly bear.  The dog had no name for it was only visiting.  It belonged a man who’d gone on holiday and was being looked after in respite care.  But the 9 year old didn’t care, for anything friendly was a friend.  Read the rest of this entry »

As the author of 10 published books, an international public speaker and professional autism consultant I’m best known in the autism world. But I have a wide following in the D.I.D (Dissociative Identity Disorder) and MPD populations too. Read the rest of this entry »

Kate Boundy is a graduate student from Florida Atlantic University doing a dissertation on women and the neurodiversity movement.  I was one of her interviewees.  Here’s our interview:   Read the rest of this entry »

When I was a homeless girl

I had yellow teeth with holes,

Big enough to fall through.

Twenty six years of antibiotics

written on my enamel. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2008 The Aspinauts and I were gathered in a living room improvising with me doing beat poetry as the guys jammed on guitars, drums, keyboards.  It became an anti war protest song, Ladies and Gentlemen.  Luckily, someone hit the record button so when Paul joined us as drummer in 2009 we began to rehearse the song.  It became a powerful, almost Floydian stand out piece of sound art and made it onto the debut album, Broken Biscuit in 2010.

Here’s the video clip made by Oz Thomas, a colorful human and a wonderful poet in his own right.

I received this comment

Severe autism is NOT being discussed and it’s getting real old…this is such bs….everyones ignoring this side to the detriment of their own souls

If Temple Grandin was 2 trying to say ‘ball’ but only able to say ‘bah’ and couldn’t communicate until she was 3, is that ‘severe autism’?  If we add to that that she smeared feces at age 2 and 3 and hated scratchy petitcoats so much she tantrumed does that make her autism more ‘severe’?  An obsessive compulsive personality (see OCPD) geared for achievement and capable of high levels of fixation.  Does that make Temple more autistic than other personalities?   If we add that she was a highly intelligent with enough dyspraxia to have been unable to pronounce speech clearly without speech therapy, sensorily disorganised (commonly occurs in dyspraxia) and was unco-ordinated enough to be misjudged as ‘brain damaged’ how does that shape our view of her discussion of having been ‘severely autistic’?  Read the rest of this entry »

THE DANCE

Grizzle, grizzle, grizzle grump.
Sore throat you woke me like a broken record.
“But you sounded so good…”.
And I remember myself like a poster glossy and shiny
shredded overnight in my interrupted dreams.

We’ll fingers crossed, hey?
We’ll hope like hell.
‘Cause Jesus ain’t waiting in the sunlight with fairy dust.
and positive thinking won’t buy me a Mercedes
(or an immune system).

Click your heels Dorothy.
Hope ’til your nipples fall off. Read the rest of this entry »

Three years ago I began an interactive poetry challenge on my blog.   It involved the public sending me 1-2 word titles and I had to send back a poem to each title within 48 hours.

Ranging from surreal, to grungy, from romantic, to funny, from political to symbolic and everywhere in between, the poems were as diverse as the titles sent in.   I gathered them into a collection called Weirdos Like Me.  It’s a collection of poetry, art and surrealism.  Amidst the poetry are also song lyrics to songs by Donna And The Aspinauts with whom I am the lead singer and main singer-songwriter. Read the rest of this entry »