I have been thinking so much… and at the same time… writing far less than is the norm for me. I have too many partially completed projects that are pulling me in different directions. There is just so much rattling around in my head and I can’t seem to find the time – or energy – or focus – or will to stick it to the paper.
And then there is reading; I cannot really seem to focus on reading lately either. I am usually a voracious reader, but my mind is spinning and I can’t seem to settle and quiet myself for long enough to take in the text.
I want to move ahead with some amazing projects and support H in developing his advocacy skills. I want to write more about limit setting, and welcoming dissent, and the importance of honouring the individual in interventions, and independence, and so many other important things…
I have lots of ideas swirling about, and almost 200 partially completed yet unpublished posts.
And I am busy…
But I am always busy…
My noisy brain is telling me I need some time…
So I am going to take the hint and realize that what I need to be thinking about is where the limits are for myself. Perhaps my brain is voicing its dissent, and I may need to slightly change or adjust my colours. I need to step back just a wee bit and reconnect with the people and activities that fuel the heart of me.
So the plan is that H and Craig and I are just going to hang out and watch Doctor Who.
And maybe, if it stops raining in the next few days and we are feeling ambitious, we will rake up some of those leaves that have strewn themselves about our yard in autumn’s confetti style… or maybe not…
There also might be chocolate ice cream involved… and popcorn.
Gotta run… H wants me to see that he has built the TARDIS in Minecraft…
Awesome!
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30 Days of Autism is a project designed to fight stigma, promote civil rights, and increase understanding and acceptance for those who process and experience the world differently.
©Leah Kelley, Thirty Days of Autism (2013)
Thirty Days of Autism 
Leaves! And Tardises!
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Yes! Yay!
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Awesome. Enjoy hanging out. 🙂
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Thank you… I know we will!
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Leah, you say: “where the limits are for myself”. I can relate to that.
The children I educationally work with, and across an approach emphasising empathy and their capacity to self-advocate, constantly take me beyond my limits. I then strive to articulate perspective when so holistically placed: thinking that this offers prospect of some framework for me advocating for them; and that in turn possibly offering some support to their actions of self-advocacy.
What I come up against as an obstruction, is myself: a self too shaped and constrained, I think, by what is social and societal; a self not sufficiently fit for an autistic journey, even if it’s the only life-journey I have ever really known. But (and this the touchstone of limiting experience) across piggy-backing on the life-force of the children I work with, I constantly feel on the cusp of true autistic perspectival articulation (this involving sensing, and the transmutation of sensing to perception, and the streaming of perception into discursive expression, with all that allows as we create human life form across meaning-making).
There’s an interdependent independence in what these children and I end having and striving for: they keep me autistically real and authentic, life-fed by their life-power; and I hope to provide them with sustained optimism that together (a broad inclusive community-based together) we can win-out across autistic life-circumstance. Everything that is involved in that authenticity and hope, occurs at limits: their limits, my limits, our joint-action limits; and at the limits of what contextualising others can tolerate before moved to shut-down what they sense is taking place.
Such limits seem to me to be a metabolic thing rather than a capacity thing, although we then encounter limits to a capacity to metabolise autistically; and then we have to enter the part of a cycle where we refresh across activity which kindly treats our core self, activity well within our capacity, activity not involving this limiting-experience metabolism.
You then say; “Perhaps my brain is voicing its dissent, and I may need to slightly change or adjust my colours”. Yes; and you are expressing something powerful here. We, maybe second or third generation autistic-activists, and we concerned with supporting the life-lot of this generation of autistic children, are I think reworking our brain across its inherent plasticity; and that is very hard to do when all the reworking is taking place, and only, at our holistic limits. If and as we succeed in this reworking of our brains, and so as to cerebrally support what is involved in articulating perspective on autistic affirming and including and advocating, we put ourselves in active support relation to the children of our concern. We then model the collective we would have for these children, across joint-occurring with them. We are slowly and progressively winning through to the cerebration and discursive expression which can underwrite the collective we want around our children going forward into their life and biography.
As we push our selves and our brains into this reworking effort, we encounter limit-experience in another form: as sense with little or no framing, little or no phenomenal and perceptual skinning, little or no communicable quality; we have colours and other meta-sense, we are strung out across limit-experience, we are autistically disposed, we are at the empirical epicentre of autistic being and occurring and intending.
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Thank you, Colin. Your words, as they always seem to be, are encouragement and affirmation combined with a perfectly timed wave-like smoothing of the rough edges of my understanding. There is something so organic in this: a nurturing – that makes such a difference in more clearly seeing the colours of the stones upon the shore.
We are trying to pace ourselves with such openness – and that is good – and needed… as we nurture this next generation of Autistic people to adulthood in a way that supports their authentic selves. Along side of that openness and intense sensitivity comes the necessary partner of vulnerability, and that too is a good thing. I do not think we can be truly open if we do not also welcome this vulnerability. Noticing and being aware of our own limits within this system of support is important if we are to sustain this support over many years. As I am supporting H in understanding and honouring his limits… so am I learning about my own.
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Absolutely. And the efforts of each of us is mutually supported and enabled by the efforts of all others in a community of support and supporting. As each individual reaches limits, there is someone from a community who is not at their limits: and we have interdependent independence; and a community that is moving forward transcendently across its internal resource.
Meltdowns are what happens when one of us is isolated and pushed beyond personal limits by contextual circumstance. Our community does things, to ward of that isolation, and to provide resource to individuals in any moment of being isolated.
H-centred in all this, we teleologically orientate to an H-centred consummation of all that is being done. Good days.
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That was lovely! You take care of you 🙂
And I LOVE LOVE LOVE Dr. Who – been watching since I was a kid (Tom Baker). Have a fantastic Dr. Who Day! I think I’m going to dress up as a Tardis for Halloween next year and see if my then 7 year old will dress up as Matt Smith or David Tennant… at least for parties – he can be whatever HE wants for Halloween itself.
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Thank you 🙂 H is trying to figure out how to make a Dalek costume… I see lots of rivets and experimentation on the horizon…
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*loud crashing noises as I fall through the ceiling* DID SOMEBODY SAY DOCTOR WHO?!?!
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Welcome! *Shoves over and offers a spot on the couch
OMG – I hope the werewolf doesn’t follow you down here!
Ooooowwhhhhhoooo!
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