DINNER CLUB, MELBOURNE (Belgrave), AUSTRALIA

WHEN: 7pm, 4th Tuesday 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
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Imagine a Christmas in Melbourne where there were virtually no street decorations, where shopkeepers didn’t make Christmas windows, where the houses largely had no Christmas lights, no wreaths or garlands, often not even an indoor Christmas tree. Well, in 2011, it happened. Person after person began spreading news not of Christmas cheer, but of Christmas sneer. Read the rest of this entry »

However appalling the topic, when it comes to hearing from women sexually abused by fathers, uncles, brothers, grandfathers, society is at least aware of the issue. As a society we have become so used to the potential of men to abuse that men working with children or interested to do so are sometimes instantly under suspicion. Yet up to 40% of those who sexually abuse children are women and around 10% of reported child sexual abuse of girls is perpetrated by the child’s mother. Read the rest of this entry »

Sick of attracting needy, greedy, me me me types? Then….
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We Pollyanna types have done it a hundred times. We meet s Sociopath, Psychopath, Narcissist, or a cling monster with Borderline Personality Disorder any of whom may also have a series of addictions or untreated bipolar or Schizo-affective disorder and we sweep aside all this ‘other stuff’ because we see their inner loveliness, their humanity, their potential… or do we? Read the rest of this entry »

Autism is a medical diagnosis according to DSM criteria. AUTistic, however, is not only a description of those with autism, it is an adjective describing self orientation/containment and there are so many roads and reasons why a person may become entrenched in an AUTistic state that its no surprise the range of people who come to identify with the term ‘autistic’. Read the rest of this entry »

Please know that every person’s journey with chemo is different. For some its a doddle, for others its a war, for others its a spiritual journey or any combination thereof. Every person’s body responds differently to chemo, you can go into it and get rid of arthritis instead of finding it exacerbated, you can find life long conditions suddenly amplified, you can find you get the extended warranty/expiry date you’re looking for, or you can find its a real tough road on the way out. I’m doing adjuvant chemo, 4 lots of 3 week cycles for breast cancer. I have a life long history of immune and autoimmune dysfunction, a history of brain injury effecting my autonomic nervous system, a daunting family cancer history on one side and inbreeding on the other. I am doing my journey as someone with Autism and DID and I bring all that to the table. With cancer there is no ‘Mary Bloggs’. Every person’s body and brain, personality, environment, baggage and support, identity/identities and orientation, hopes and pessimism come to the table. I wish any of you well on your own journies with cancer or supporting those with it. Here’s the chemo part of my journey. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not scared of going to Mars at the Day Ward tomorrow.
It’s only a docking station.
They will inject me with an IV and drug me for 3 hrs whilst I take my trip to Mars… sort of like Mork Read the rest of this entry »

Cancer is a guest, it walks into the room and changes the whole milieu. It can turn life into a pity part, a battle, a comedy sketch, a medical parade. Read the rest of this entry »

Bottom line, the oncologist felt, statistically, in the case of my size and type of tumor and my age of onset etc, that without chemo followed by hormone therapy, that I had a 25% chance of dying from recurrence within the next 15 years. He felt that statistically chemo followed by hormone therapy would reduce that chance to 10%. This was based on this occurring in someone without my immune deficiencies, meaning the prognosis would perhaps be even tougher in that context if I don’t do chemo followed by hormone therapy. Read the rest of this entry »