My paternal grandparents, who were essentially ‘homeless people’, lived in a shed in our backyard until I was 4 and a half years old when I lost them both. Their shed had only a high frosted vent window, virtually no natural light. The walls were brown unpainted masonite, the floor was cement with lino over it and a thin rug. Read the rest of this entry »
Mental health issues effecting 70% on the spectrum… a far cry from the old days where if you had any mood, anxiety, compulsive, dissociative, attachment, adjustment, emotional or behavioural, personality or identity disorders or psychosis you were trolled with you ‘couldn’t possibly ALSO be autistic’. Alternatively people without functional communication who also have mental health issues traditionally have had their mental health issues almost as standard fobbed off as ‘part of their autism’. Read the rest of this entry »
I had an email from an optometrist wanting to find out what tints I’ve found work best for autistic children. I replied: Read the rest of this entry »
If you had a magic wand to make the world ‘a better place’ what would you wish for? Humans have a capacity to connect, to grow, to awaken, or to block, to defend, ignore. Often trying to get people to think, to question, to reflect or become aware only makes them more afraid of the deep, more determined to swim in the shallows, to dig in their heels and fight for the status quo no matter how unwell that may sometimes be. But what if all it took was ONE WORD… Sometimes less is more. Read the rest of this entry »
Its time we all learned people skills… Read the rest of this entry »
Chronic fight flight over taxes the immune system…. one struggles to regulate immune function…. viruses walk in…. Read the rest of this entry »
We think of domestic violence as something done by deranged men. But it is something done by everyday people. Sometimes the perpetrator is male, other times female. In our house, growing up, it was my father’s violence that snatched the headlines. My mother’s violence was considered ‘justified’. Read the rest of this entry »
Children who have been brought up away from psychopaths, pedophiles, addicts, and people who are seriously mentally ill have no imagination of what what their lives would have been had they not been adopted. The best thing an adoptive family can do is help them become aware of what being the abused child in one of those types of families is actually like. And there are enough walk-in-the-shoes books by abuse survivors that are accessible to young teenagers to safely and openly and collaboratively get this 101 by proxy. Read the rest of this entry »
My father was diverse. He was a lover of art, kind, responsible, generous, romantic, nostalgic and loyal. He was inspiring, colorful, creative, funny, silly, wild, manic and grandiose. He was childish, self pitying, pouty. He was deranged, perverse, immoral, dangerous. He was compulsive, conscientious, resilient and competitive. He was a father and a madman, a child and a maniac, a workaholic and a fighter, a gambler and a binge drinker, and he was Bacchus. 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 .
