Tag Archives: Neurodivergent

A Poem Called “Labels”

Labels,

by theamazinj

Labels are important,
they can be very powerful,
when one is called stupid
to when one is called crazy.
Labels are important,
they tell the kinds of things a person is.
Labels are powerful
when used
like when we are called Brilliant, Honest, or a Liar.
Labels can hurt or be very respectful
especially when using the words,
Racist, Ableist, Abuser, or even Loving.
Words can hurt, but they can also heal.
I love you. I hate you. I despise you. I am in awe of you.
Labels are NOT just for cans, they are for everything and everyone.
It’s why TAXONOMY exists, it’s why we always use them.
Labels are important.
I love you,
I hate you,
I filter you.
I am so in love.
I am so in anger.
I have anxiety for you.
Labels are important.
Labels are important.
Labels are important.
Labels help and can also hurt.
They hurt when we use the R word,
they hurt when we use the N word,
however, we spin a word around
and make it a different word with a different meaning
so easily.
Like for the R word, Rich,
and the N word, Neighborly.
When we think of words,
we need to think of the positive words
and the positive meanings
and when we want to criticize,
instead of saying,
Ableist or Racist or Misgyonist or Sexist or Heterosexist or even pervert,
we need to treat people with respect and positive their whole lives,
once we label a negative word to a person
it sticks with that person for life.
Life’s journey is saturated with labels,
it’s saturated with bigotry,
it’s saturated with misunderstandings and miscommunications,
So, does labels go on cans and people?
Of course they do, they do every day.
So, it’s labels important?
Yes, of course they are.
Labels were created because of TAXONOMY,
because of categorizing,
but we can label things giving people something to live up to,
or we can label things giving people a dark windy tunnel to run through
trying to find the light.
sometimes we have to realize,
Being disabled is a part of life and is not a bad word,
we have to realize being Autistic is a part of life too,
we have to remember being Neurodivergent is a part of life as well,
and that society’s so called ‘normal’ is derogatory
even when called ‘neurotypical’ now and even
the way everyone embraces that social construction of ‘normal’ or ‘neurotypical’.
TAXONOMY is important, and labels are so powerful,
Just think about the labels
and you can think about your life.
Labels that are given to and accepted by individual citizens
do in fact define a person,
so think about when you call a person crazy, stupid, insane, ugly, overemotional, or even irrational,
how much pain you may be causing someone,
and may be you may want to use more positive words about anyone,
like intelligent, creative, loving, caring, and even beautiful.
Words matter, labels matter, labels mean everything.
The social construction of ‘normal’ is important, but not very logical.
Just remember being disabled or being neurodivergent is a thing
everyone experiences.

A Poem Called “From Death to Life”

From Death to Life,

by theamazinJ

I died.
I live.
I went to heaven.
I went home.
I came back.
I went home.
I left the hill.
I walked the plank.
I swam in the ocean.
I climbed the highest cliff.
I walked across on the bridge to the next cliff.
I flew with my wings.
I flew to the ground.
I dropped my wings.
I started walking.
I walked over the bounty.
I crawled onto the ground.
I sprawled my body spreading myself on the grass.
I sent over my gold.
I received my award.
I journeyed through the heavens.
I spent my ferocious volume expending my knowledge.
I guru’d my life.
I leapt through thou.
Thou created me.
I created thou.
I am Thou.
I am heaven.
I am hell.
I am darkness.
I am light.
I am.
Up, down, up, down.
Lifting me.
You lift yourself.
I am lift me.
I expend the journey of death
to live life into my head,
into my brain, into my mind,
into my heart bleeding before you.
I spill myself to you.
My richness into the light,
my goals of the spot.
My spot going good,
depleting the bad.
Spilling my guts.
OMG OMG OMG,
I am dead, no, I AM ALIVE.
My liveliness is a journey.
the pill is pain,
the passing to be something different is hard.
the passing to be me is easy.
the passing to be disabled,
the passing to be non-disabled,
the passing to be neurotypical,
the passing to be the original neurodivergent self I am,
passing into the slides of pane healing the pain.
Life constitutes life.
Death hardens death.
Death is a social construction.
Life is continuous.
Continuous life while crossing the curtain,
while crossing over to the other side.
The other side that is unknown,
that is scary, and that is life.
Life is scary, but we need to jump at it.
Life is scary, but we need to focus on what we want,
not what others want, but really what we want individually.
The tyrant or the martyr or just the person that we are.
I love you. I love you so much. I love you with all my might.
My mighty love is great, it is extensive.
extensive to be smart, to show our intelligence, to brighten up with our creative nature.
Making artistic expression, making creative continuity, filming our life’s journey
into the separate waves of the world.
I love you, can you love the world you’re in?
I love you, can you turn your hate into love?
I love you, can you turn your naive, ignorant, and lies into truth?
I Love YOU, so I want to see you in my heart, in my dreams, and in my reality,
because, I love you, I love all of you, and I love every piece of everyone.
Spend time in your heart to love
when life can go from low to high in a blink of an eye,
essentially cause of how much you show love
and how much you gain from love.
Spread love to spread life until we cross over into the depths of more life.

A Poem Called “Is it worth the frustration to be ‘nOrMAL'”

Is it Worth the Frustration to be nOrMAL,

by theamazinJ

Normal
nORMAl
NORmal
norMAL
NORMAL!
I feel the frustration,
is it normal?
Is it supposed to be passing for norMAL?
WHAT IS dammmit, NORMAL?
Normal is…
difficult,
NORMAL is…
frustrating,
NORmal is…
OMG!
NORMAL is…
OMG…I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS!
NORmal is…
Oh my goodness, OMG, Oh my GOD!
NORMAL, what can I say?
NORMAL, it is hard
It’s like very few can pass for it,
yet MANY embrace it.
It’s so very stimulating or in this case,
TRigGERRing to have to pass for norMAL!~~~

NORMAL IS…
hurtful,
especially when I am not NoRMAL,
including my friends who are not NORmal either,
or even whenever I walk down a street
I see MANY struggling to be NorMAl,
NORMAL is a social construction,
it is passing for…
what America wants,
it is passing for…
being non-disabled or NON-NEURODIVERGENT,
also, when EVERYONE is born NEURODIVERGENT,
but only PASS for NORMAL
and embrace NORMALITY
only to
ACCEPT NORMALITY
AND
Oppress The MANY citizens out there who CANNOT,
especially when
you are NEUROQUEER,
OR even when
you are not one of the BINARY genders
when gender is FLUID and is non-binary,
NOT saying I am non-binary, I AM JUST OPEN-MINDED
to everyone’s gender differences and EVERYONE’s iDeNTitiES,
and the self-determination of being WHO WE ARE INDIVIDUALLY,
and being the person we are MEANT TO BE and ARE in this world.
NOrMaL, what the heck is it,
when it’s all about when WHITE MaLE Christians who created the damn word many years ago,
who wanted EVERYONE to conform to THEM,
and who WANTED everyone to be non-disabled, non-neurodivergent, and labelled by IQ.
AND, who also wanted EVERYONE to look, feel, and think the SAME way,
How NORMAL is that when SO many are different races, of different religions,
of different thinking types, of different emotional types, of different FEeLIngs,
OF different concurrences acting at the SAME time,
OR of different lapses of time splitting in their heads,
and of different genders and differences in disability,
BECAUSE everyone can DO it,
NO one is IMMUNE to think differently, WE are CREATIVE which is WHY normal was made,
which is why things are DiFFerent.

Normalizing what?,

by theamazinJ

MORE importantly why WE all make MISTAKES especially with TRY(ING) to NORMALIZE America,
and in many CASES NORMALIZE the WHOLE WORLD, but many CANNOT be NORMAL,
MANY cANNOt think NORMAL, many CANnot feel norMAL
because NORMAL is painful especially when someone is disabled,
especially painful when someone is NEURODIVERGENT
when being NeuroDiVERgent is not VERY embraced
and people want to accept NORMAL as the ‘in’ thing as the BRAINS and the one with IQ,
and neurodivergent as OUT, as the ‘OTHER’, and the one that is WEIRD or FREAK or INCOMPETENT or
STUPID or even the re2379427d,
eVERyone is really neurOdivergent, but many seem to discount it, seem to disregard it, or even THINK SAMENESS is the ‘in’ thing,
when EVERYONE is really different,
everyone is really …
CREATIVE, emoTIONal, lEarnING all the time, brainy, INTELLIGENT, gaining WISDOM everyday, has their own WaY of doing things.
while everyone can …
BREAKDOwn, everyone can..
meltdown,
everyone can…
hit rockbottom to only rise to the TOP,
EVERYONE can…
MAKE a MASTERPIECE OR Make an invention OR make a discovery from within themselves that CREATES connection
and CREATES something with their MINDS even when it is just very small BECAUSE it really is VERY BIG for the world,
just like NORMAL was and just the way NORMAL was created
ESPECIALLY when normal is destructive to a human being’s personhood and just when normal can also construct certain elements of life,
because normal is paining and hurting MANY in this world
our peers who are not of the binary genders like you or I,
our peers who are NEUROQUEER
our peers who are a(sexual) or even sexual,
OUR peers who are mixed race, or not of the same race as you or I,
OR the way me and my peers who believe in different religious or spiritual thinkings,
or how many citizens who are disabled, neurodivergent seem to experience the world differently
even when the disability and neurodivergence is autism,
or even when it is cerebral palsy, down syndrome, or many other different developmental disabilities
because having developmental disability is NOT considered normal and is not considered intelligent and
seems to always associate with judgement, always associates with stupidity and incompetence and not knowing what is right or what is wrong,
because in the end, it’s normal, it’s abnormal, it’s just living, it’s just life.

Normalizing Why?

by theamazinJ

Being developmentally disabled is
being more INTELLIGENT than peers who embrace normality can even fathom,
its’s being more FUN and comical than one can even think about,
AND, is being more empathic and CREATIVE at the same time than any other citizens can even feel and think,
Being developmentally disabled or even have psychiatric disability is a thing, but it does not have to mean the person has to be this normal…
or has to abide by the rules that the leaders of normal created years ago,
Being developmentally disabled and having psychiatric disability is part of being human,
It’s a way that life sets us off, it’s a way to experience the world, and it’s a way of being intelligent differently,
since anyone of us can have psychiatric disability because it’s part of human experiences,
and developmental disability is a thing that happens to many, but not all, as a way to know being human is IMPERFECT,
and being human is MORTAL, and being human, everyone will have different ways to express the genes of the human race,
EVERYONE is GREAT, everyone is GOOD, and EVERYONE thinks different, and MOST importantly NORMAL was just a story or concept created but does not have to be embraced by anyone.
I am male, I am neurodivergent, I am autistiC, I am Jewish, I am spiritual, I am a artist, I am a beginning filmmaker, I am a scholar, I read many books and articles, I am a poet,
I am a person of science, I am many identities, I always have my own mind,
and most importantly,
I am J.

A Poem Called “Disease”

Disease,

by theamazinJ

Pushing,
pulling,
feuding,
crying for help,
hurting from the pain
from everyone around
who don’t appreciate,
from everyone who
don’t understand life.
Arguing with each other,
swinging the bodies in disgust,
feeling out of control,
the starchness of who we are,
as disabled people,
as we are neurodivergent,
as we are told to pass,
as we can’t be who we are,
as everyone becomes robots,
as everyone’s movements become fixed,
and the way we communicate become stuck,
without flapping,
without spinning,
without moving in the way that we are free,
without speaking with our true voice,
and speaking, moving, and guarding ourselves
in a way society wants.
It saddens me society doesn’t understand,
it hurts me society won’t give respect
unless these things are done,
and everyone does what is necessary
to be considered intelligent,
unless everyone speaks, moves, and intellectualizes in a way
society wants it
to gain the respect we should have had all along.
Society can be funny.
the physiology can be different than the way society actually is,
the way our brains work,
the way our bodies move,
and the way our spirit is to make a difference,
everyone is here for a purpose,
everyone intellectualizes differently,
everyone has different thoughts,
everyone is here to get their voices out there,
to debate, to argue their points, and to listen
however we all listen,
we are not here to be robots,
we are not here to be clones,
and certainly we are not here to be different than who we are.
Everywhere we go, everywhere we burst into a room,
every time we open a door,
we open the door to another opening
to another meeting,
to meeting more people,
to seeing what we can see,
to hearing new things
and to meet with new partners,
eventually committing to a partner if we choose.
Sometimes we have positive thoughts,
sometimes we have negative thoughts,
and many times the positive and the negative fight together in our heads,
creating anxiety and not knowing what to do.
The power of thought helps us know
what we want to think,
whether it is positive or negative,
or just a debate in our head,
or just a voice we are struggling to hear from another person.
Sometimes we would do anything for love,
even run from hell and back,
and sometimes we actually meet people for a reason to help us at the time
who only help us grow to meet the people who stick with us for life,
while meeting people every day of our life,
speaking the moment of truth,
finding the love we need to live,
while engaging with violent outbursts in our heads
between negative and positive thoughts,
and the powerful outbursts sometimes show in the real world
while most times it just lies inside our heads,
fighting our emotions, fighting our feelings, and fighting what we want to think,
a positive thought can be overthrown easily by a negative thought
if we don’t build a wall in our mind to overthrow the negatives in our mind
because we have to remember thoughts are things
and thoughts create our reality
while thoughts fighting in our minds
become inner battles for what we want in our life,
everyone gives, everyone takes, and everyone battles,
about or but what is.
the door is always open, we just have to open every door,
we just have to be who we are,
with our neurodivergent brains,
with our disabled bodies or not disabled at the time,
and whether we choose to pass for neurotypicality
and how much we choose to be neurotypicality,
finally, it is our choice,
and from that choice,
we choose to make love or to take love,
even when its a rainy night or just clear skies,
all we have to do is make that decision and live with what we choose,
deciding the magic we want to deliver to the world,
with the love we have to give and share,
and see with our eyes the beauty we made
for the world to see and share everywhere.
All we want to do is make the love,
and open the doors wherever we see them.
What about love? What’s missing?
Open the doors!

Supporting the Decisions Everyone Makes No Matter What Varying Impairments Anyone May Have including Autistic people

Supporting the Decisions for Everyone No Matter What Varying Impairments Anyone May Have Including Autistic People

Autistic people have rights just the way everyone has rights to be a leader of their life; Autistic people are thinking the way they want to think and are also human beings too with our own mind. Autistic people have feelings often feeling for others and have feelings that often feel pain by many other people who do not understand us. Autistic people grow up at different paces while others may just grow at the same pace as their physical age. Because many Autistic people grow at different paces, we are often thought of as less than human, deviant from the norm, and due to our impairments many in society look down upon us thinking we do not have a mind of our own nor are we able to make logical decisions about the life we want.

Though, Autistic people are vulnerable, and depending on the impairments, depend on how vulnerable the individual will be. It does not matter if the person is less impaired, they can be more vulnerable. Just because Autistic people are vulnerable does not mean we are not our own person. May be so many think that way because Autistic people feel so many emotions at once, that at times we either do not know how to use our emotions scaling back inward or use our emotions too much being considered to be over-emotional, rageful, and illogical. Whichever way Autistic people are, we are misunderstood by society as a whole, thus society is misguided in the way everyone should think of Autistic culture and human society in general.

Despite all of the misunderstandings and misguided ideas from years of a perception that someone with cognitive impairments is not capable, some in society are finally learning today what person centered really means. Yet, many do not presume competence. The tragedy of the thinking that Autistic people don’t have a mind capable like others has created in the past, a blood boiling battle scene between Autistic people and many others who striving for a way of conformity. Lately, the people who get the most credit for starting this battle scene is the organization, Autism Speaks. However, they are not the only ones who need to take responsibility for this battle scene between Autistic and non-autistic.

Many people before Autism Speaks have contributed to this blood boiling war between Autistic people and others who strive for perfection. Unfortunately, the mainstream media has contributed to this as well by mostly taking the sides of people who are against Autistic culture. This war against Autistic people is really a war against humanity and human nature, yet it should not have polarized thinking. The battle to fight for either correcting the genome from disability to embracing the genome and realizing cognitive disabilities like the way Autistic culture is, is something that needs to be accepted.

How far do we go to changing the human genome? Is it our right to change the genome that mutates and changes randomly over time? Who gets to say which parts of the genome are bad or not? And, is the human genome really a bad thing as many medical researchers are trying to correct it to make a perfected flawless human being? Is eugenics or genetic counseling really needed?

My feelings as a person who is Neurodivergent from outside the norms of society and as an Autistic person leads me to believe that I often feel like pushing to be who I am while getting pull back from society to make me the same as how others are. The fine line between autonomy and being who we are versus depending on others to conform to the standards of society is enormously thick, yet we need to pull one way and push another to be included in the community. Autism Speaks as an organization has been through a rough war because many people feel their misguided thinking for almost 12 years has been too hurtful to many who feel they want to embrace who they are regardless. This makes me feel that not just Autism Speaks, but everyone needs to re-think what we have done in the past that preyed on too many people and in some ways continue to do so.

Our society created the mindset of the perfect mind and body back when Francis Galton created the word ‘eugenics’ and the world decided that between Darwin’s evolutionary theory and his cousin, Galton and his creation of the word ‘eugenics’, that everyone became instantly obsessed with the human genome. To perfect the body and mind is to deny disability and separate from the imperfect human body to create a monster master race of the human genome that everyone will strive to be. This monster master race that everyone has been striving for since the late 19th Century, created the thinking that Hitler wanted to first exterminate people with varying degrees of impairments to eventually exterminating certain races, religions, and other peoples in the Holocaust because he thought society could do away without these differences.

I am sorry to say, but the world created the way Hitler eventually started the Holocaust when he thought about how to perfect the human genome, race, and religion and whether we like it or not. We create people like the way Hitler was in the world. However, this is not the only thing we need to take responsibility for, we also need to take responsibility for many other things throughout history both in our private lives and in the public.

Everyone is vulnerable in society, but we need to use that in a different way then the way we have been being vulnerable in the past. Supporting decisions that individuals make in the world is figuring out what will affect both the individual and society in a positive way. It is not about conforming to others, it is about being a leader of your own life. We just need to be vulnerable in the way we affect others and ourselves in the decisions we make in our life.

Much of society has been vulnerable to perfect a human genome that is constantly mutating, constantly changing, and constantly moving around in our bodies just like the universe is constantly moving. We can possibly change that, but we cannot stop that. Many people are obsessed with perfecting (and perfected) bodies and minds. However, perfecting a body and mind, is a very fine line between what we think is autonomy and what we think we need to depend on others for help. As society builds communities, we are connected to each other regardless of the way we identify through race, religion, sexuality, gender, or disability cultures. The way we represent ourselves is independent of being human because being human really means that we need to support one another regardless of what we want to influence since we all go through the same trials, tribulations, and rewards in life to form our identities and ideas.

Supporting decisions and the way we as individuals experience life is important. The person centered approach most are beginning to learn now, is something that is a part of human nature since the beginning of time. Yet, we have in the past, and in some ways still do, only respect the decisions some people make, while others we felt could not make decisions at all and could not think on their own. This is still is still happening today.

We need to give everyone the tools to decide and think about what they want in their life on their own even if it can be difficult with some individuals. This thinking presumed (and in some ways continues to presume) many people that their decisions are illogical and not right. Making decisions for our life depends on what kinds of decisions we are making. Some decisions we can decide on our own, but many other decisions we need the support from people we feel can assist us especially those close to us in making the best decision for making our life a success. There is always someone we can speak to that can help weigh the pros and cons of a decision in our life. For those who have more severe impairments, we need to help them as well to make their own decisions that are right for them regarding what the individual wants.

Whenever anyone makes a decision, it not only affects us, but it also affects everyone close to us in that decision, and in some ways can affect the rest of society as well. For example, when any one decides that they want to change the way their child is, they are making a conscious decision that will affect the way their child will feel about themselves and toward others as well. These decisions we make affect us individually in many different ways. If a child rebels against their parent’s decision to change who they are, then the child and the parents must take responsibility for their actions.

Deciding on changing the way a person is, also changes the way everyone feels about themselves. It is important to attribute every decision we make to the way we think about others and ourselves in our life. When we think about who we are as a person, we think about where we came from, and the people in our life that affect what we think. Sometimes what we think can hurt who we are and/or other people especially those close to us.

Though, the way we think depends on our experiences. For example, if we spitefully act because we think we want to hurt someone emotionally or physically, we essentially hurt ourselves in the process. The golden rule still stands to do good to others always, however, sometimes what we think is doing good in our mind, may be hurting others without even thinking it through. This is definitely true when Galton created eugenics that eventually became the study of genetics that led to the thoughts many people have had since then that has hurt society.

Autism Speaks may not have been thinking through in the past how they are helping Autistic people in society may not be actually helping Autistics everywhere, but they hopefully are starting to learn. However, every non-profit organization has been thinking irrationally including the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network and many other Self-Advocacy organizations that also seem to not think about the way everyone feels. Yet, the self-advocacy and the Neurodiversity movements that were started by self-advocates helped (and continues to help) the parent movement begin to understand things every day.

Every organization has their own agenda to what they think they are doing is right. Yet, everyone and every organization, through medical charity or self-advocacy, cannot know exactly how everyone feels because we all have our own thoughts and experiences, that are different than others and ourselves.
When thinking about supported decision-making, everyone thinks about the way they want to live their life. For example, an individual may choose a different way of living than many other people do on an actual daily basis, but that does not mean that individuals in society cannot live a quality life. A quality life is subjective to what an individual actually feels they want in their life. No one can suggest a better quality of life or social skills to make others conform to a society that is not universally designed for everyone. We need to accept and protect the boundaries we individually make ourselves to the way others set their boundaries too. We need to remember who the person is as an individual and how individuality really is what everyone wants as a single mind of their own.

Society can lead to too much frustration because of a social construction of conformity to make everyone the same, as followers. Some may be more frustrated with who they are than others because their experiences with how society treated them or certain individuals who treated them in the past made them feel particularly unjustified and unaccepted living their life. This responsibility is what everyone needs to fully grasp and think about how to create a unified world with justice served.

Everyone has their own way of living. Everyone has their pride and joy that makes them feel good about who they are. Everyone does what is right for them, but no one has a right to tell a person that the way they are living is not quality of life and not conforming. Conforming is living in a world that is universally designed to fit everyone even if society does not understand that type of conformity. Many times some impairments create situations that make a person feel they cannot function enough and in fact need accessibility and universal design to help them get by or even thrive in society. So, why cannot we create universal design in everything we do in society so that everyone feels that they can live their life the way they know best? That is a good question because our society has always conformed to the idea that its citizens are too vulnerable and need to be corrected (or fixed) to fit in.

The world is a tough place to live in. Autistic people can be vulnerable, mostly, everyone is different to the person standing next to them, and simultaneously we can all be vulnerable to what others are thinking. However, it does not mean as individuals that vulnerability is a weakness. Everyone is an individual who can think on their own and are susceptible to others in the way many think.

Human culture is defined; all of us think whoever is standing out in that moment yelling their voice the loudest and often ranting a lot, is the leader. This is not true, we are all leaders of our own life, and self-directing, as we all need to believe that we are happy with who we are and connecting with others. The vulnerability everyone has is just a strength we have that we need to show others that we need support. So, we all get to support the decisions we all make in the best possible life we all want, including Autistic people.

In order to think through how to create more positive experiences with others in society, we can help by providing to strive for universally designing a world that everyone can live in with dignity, respect, getting their voices heard, and able to function with everyone else around them no matter what. Everyone can lead their own life whatever way they want to live. We need to do better and we need to ease the pains of so many people especially in our society, including Autistic and non-autistic alike.