I am so excited to share Episode 11 of All Our Brave Hearts! This is a special one to me. I am so grateful for my siblings. They are grateful for me too! So I am so happy we had the chance for me and Tara to chat about sibling ties in this episode.
This is also a reminder that we are in Episode 5 of the Underestimated TV series, about spellers and siblings. Check it out! And the rest of the series, too. https://www.underestimated.tv/
I am so loving doing this podcast. Thank you for your positive feedback! We are so glad you are listening and enjoying.
I am so full of fun updates to share with you! First: we hosted our first speller party at home! Some of Tara’s clients came over for a watch party for Neurolyrical Café, I-ASC’s online open mic night. Three of them presented their poems, and it was so nice to cheer them on. We all loved hanging out together!
Tara is an amazing practitioner. I love seeing her with her clients. The families were singing her praises, which she deserves. She is special.
I am so thrilled to have these friends in my life now. It is a dream to host a party for my speller friends! I plan to host more and hope more of my friends can join.
Second: I got to see friends again at Waves4All on Sunday. It was so much fun to surf with other spellers! I got to watch and cheer on friends, and even stood up a bit myself thanks to my surf mentors. I loved enjoying the ocean with friends!
I hope you all are finding moments of joy like this!
Well, sometimes things take longer than planned. Such is the case with the podcast. We are a few weeks behind with this episode, but finally it is up! Things got so busy in June. We recorded this on June 13! But editing and typing a transcript take time. Thank you for your patience.
The goal-setting class we mention, that I announced here last month, is going great. I am excited to adapt it to be a standalone course available anytime online. Stay tuned!
This is a big need in our community. I feel proud that I am helping to meet it. Learn more about my journey to goal setting in this episode.
Well, summer is in full swing and I am so busy! But I want to say hi to you. I am so appreciating all of you.
Also, I want to promote the new docuseries, Underestimated TV, by the creators of the Spellers documentary. The episode that I feature in was just released on Sunday. It is about siblings, and I personally think I have the best ones around! This is Episode 5, but every episode has important lessons to share: https://www.underestimated.tv/
I haven’t watched yet, because I am a bit shy to see myself on screen like that. But I had fun filming it. I hope that it inspires other families!
Time to get ready for a speller party that we are hosting last-minute. I will share more about it soon!
I am loving the long days of June! Summer is so special and almost magical. Can you believe it is over halfway through June?
I am trying some new things lately. That is why my posts have been more scarce, and All Our Brave Hearts is a week behind schedule. Time management is always a challenge.
So one new thing is short story writing. I love writing poetry and essays, but fiction is new to me. I am taking a short story course through a connection to Unrestricted Interest, an organization that mentors neurodivergent writers. I struggled at first to tap into my imagination, but then I realized that I could work through my issues and ideas from real life through my fiction. Now I am having so much fun exploring this new style of writing!
Another thing is aerobic dance workouts. I need to lose fat for my health, which is tough given my compulsions around food. We are working on healthy eating practices, but I want to exercise more. I also secretly have always wanted to dance. I thought it would be too much for my apraxia, but my OT and also a great music therapist have both helped show me that my body can do a lot more than I realized. So I asked my sisters, who were both amazing dancers growing up, to help me find dance workouts online. We have been doing one for the past week, and I am so proud of my progress in coordination and speed. They are great coaches!
I am so grateful I can access these new interests now. It is part of an autonomous life. None of this would be possible without communication.
Another episode of All Our Brave Hearts is up! We discuss an idea related to the previous episode on worth: What if I and other spellers were not so intelligent? It is not bragging to say that many of us are incredibly smart. That is just a fact. Many of us are achieving great things and that should be celebrated. We are defying the ignorant assumptions of society and especially close-minded special education teachers. That is important to recognize.
At the same time, we need to be aware of the question: What if we weren’t so smart? Would that change how we are seen? Would that make our access to communication less compelling? Would our stories be so appreciated?
It is an important idea to consider. How to celebrate our achievements without slipping into an iteration of ableism? We share a gorgeous poem on the idea by my talented speller friend Trevor Green.
Thank you for listening and/or reading (link here)!
I am so thrilled to announce a new course that I am offering! This is an important topic, and I am eager to help other spellers through their transition to life with communication.
Announcing “Stepping into a new life: How to identify, prioritize, and plan for your goals,” a 3-session short course pilot.
Gaining access to communication is a huge shift for nonspeakers. It is exciting, but opens up a new and complex world of possibilities to navigate. We will share guidance for how to identify, prioritize, and plan out goals for this new chapter of life. Participants will share their goals and we will teach and work through the steps of defining and planning specific toward those goals.
– We will pilot this with six speller participants to begin with. If more than 6 interested parties contact us, we will randomly select participants.
– Open to fluent spellers with their CRPs (Communication Regulation Partner). Please contact me at DannyWithWords.com/contact or send me a DM here to learn more and/or register!
– Sessions will be via Zoom, on Mondays (June 24, July 1, July 8) from 3 to 4pm Pacific Time.
– The cost is $30 for the whole course (payment via Venmo, Paypal, or Stripe preferred, but other options can be explored).
– Each session builds on the previous session, so please intend to join all 3.
Taught by me and my sister. I am a nonspeaking autistic advocate and writer, who finally gained communication access in my daily life four years ago. I know firsthand how exciting but also overwhelming it can be to face this huge life change. As an active member of the Spellers and Allies Advocacy Network and the Nonspeaking Leadership Council of I-ASC, I am familiar with the diverse journeys and options that many spellers choose in their new lives.
My sister Tara is an expert in project planning and monitoring and evaluation, holding a PhD in marine conservation (with research focused on project evaluation) and working as a consultant for major global conservation organizations. She is an experienced trainer, and also has been the main advisor to me in structuring my life since I gained fluency with her. She is a certified Spelling to Communicate practitioner.
We will work to make the course materials available online after for other interested spellers and families, with the option to schedule consultations with me – stay tuned for announcements about this!
We look forward to sharing lessons from life after spelling with you.
I am having a lot of feelings well up lately. It has been a bit tough. But also good to process them. Maybe it is allergies getting me down. Or the anniversary of my dad’s last days. Or my aunt in palliative care far away. Or who knows.
But there are moments of joy. For example, yesterday I joined Tara in her spelling sessions with clients about an hour away. I asked if I could join because I was feeling lonely and I wanted to see other spellers in person. The client families were so welcoming!
I am so happy to share that I made two new friends around my age. We had a great time spelling together. They are so kind and funny! They are so feeling the elation of being newly fluent. It was awesome to hang out. I am so proud of them for all their hard work. We are just beginning our great friendships.
We also met up with another client who I am already friends with. He was so happy to hang out too!
This helped my heart so much. I also love long drives with Tara, and I also loved watching her work with her clients. She is a special practitioner. I am proud of her.
I still feel a bit overloaded with emotions, but I am learning to be resilient. And time with friends helped!
It is finally time to share another All Our Brave Hearts episode! It has been too long.
This episode is about how we value people. This is a particularly powerful topic for disabled people, but it is important for everyone. Think about how you feel about your worth. And how you feel about the worth of people like me who need so much support to survive and even more to thrive. You might find yourself facing some uncomfortable questions. We all need to examine our ingrained ideas about worth.
I am happy to hear that several of you are tuning in! Please share broadly because I think that everyone can learn from our podcast.
Thank you for listening on Spotify or Apple Podcasts! You can read our transcript on Substack.
It is once again late May. Six years ago, my dad was in the hospital in his final days. I was unable to share my feelings as I had no CRP at the time. I was unable to demonstrate with my body language how I wanted to just be by his side.
I can’t believe this was six years ago now. I am in awe of what I have gone through in grief. I miss him still.
I am stronger now. He would be so proud of me. He already was proud of me before spelling. He was not perfect, and many things he did hurt me. But he was only human and he had struggles of his own. He loved me, but struggled to always show it in the way I needed.
So we both had a brain-body disconnect in expressing our hearts. He was still a joyful cheerleader and friend to me. He was so bright.
I am grateful I can share about him with you. He deserves to be known.
Danny With Words 