Dear Friends,

Wow, the most wonderful time of the year is here! Motormorphosis is this week!

We leave tomorrow. My mom and Tara are coming with me. I am having fun packing! To think I will be surrounded by friends and allies in a welcoming and understanding environment, immersed in sharing and learning, in a couple of days is thrilling. This is truly a highlight of my year.

Please say hi if you are there. I might look overwhelmed or tired, but I will be thrilled to see you.

That is all I have to post for now. This is so exciting!

Your Friend,

Danny

Dear Friends,

My goodness, Motormorphosis is next week! How did that happen?

If you are not familiar: Motormorphosis is an annual conference held by I-ASC (International Association for Spelling as Communication). It is a conference for and largely by spellers. It is such a fantastic event! It is so inclusive of nonspeakers, and it is a giant reunion of friends. I can’t do it justice.

I will be part of two presentations and two panels. Whew! I am so excited for them, and for being surrounded by friends old and new. This is such a highlight of the year.

I hope to see some of you there. Please say hi if you see me!

There is still time to register!

I have been feeling so rundown with the humid heat we have been having here. Ick! But I am perking up as Motormorphosis gets closer.

Your Friend,

Danny

Dear Friends,

Tara’s birthday is this week! I want to celebrate her on here a bit.

I am so lucky to have an older sister like her. She is a truly talented, smart, and kind person, almost too compassionate at times, but also super funny and salty at times. She is so thoughtful and always eager to learn and grow. She is fierce as an ally, yet also so gentle and understanding.

The things she has done in her life could fill books. And she could write those books, because she is a beautiful writer. That is one of her neglected dreams: to be a writer. But she has spent much more time supporting and promoting my writing than tending to hers.

She is totally juggling too much now. I am encouraging her to take guilt-free time to reflect on how to make her life less overloaded. She is so driven to make the world better with her efforts, and she is doing so, but she is pulled in too many directions. I am lucky that many of those directions are related to my endeavors. But I want her to have more space for her own stuff, too.

The work that I do is impossible without her. The life I have now is because she drastically changed hers. The hope I have for my future is due to her. I struggled to write this post because I cannot capture in words all that she is to me.

I am so proud of her!

Your Friend,

Danny

Dear Friends,

Announcing a new episode of All Our Brave Hearts! I am so happy to share some of my thoughts about being “famous!” It is such a change from being silent and overlooked. I am grateful for it, but it is also a bit strange to get used to.

There are so many spellers now in the public eye. This is exciting! But I suspect we all are needing to adjust to a new level of visibility.

You can listen or read to the conversation here, or listen anywhere you get your podcasts!

Thank you for being fans of my work! This is so important to me. To reach thousands of people with my words is a privilege. I hope you enjoy this episode!

Your Friend,

Danny

Dear Friends,

I am having a nice time these days. I feel pretty calm and happy. And it feels so good to soak it up!

I am sort of behind on many plans that I am excited about. But it is all fine, because I treasure the days when I can relax. I have learned that it is worthwhile to slow down and enjoy easy days, instead of rushing to be as productive as possible when my regulation is good. There is a real pressure to do as much as I can when my body allows it. This was a strong driver of my earlier work, when I was newly fluent and eager to make up for lost time. And I did achieve a lot. I don’t regret it.

But now I see that I am able to rest more without feeling like I am wasting time. I value my downtime. I actually love just lazing.

And that makes my rest more truly restful. I relax and blissfully check out. It is so wonderful.

I have a lot of ambition. But I am learning to be more balanced about it.

This is advice to new spellers: you will feel so pulled to rush into your new life with communication. And it is so exciting! Just know that your rest is so important. And that your need for rest doesn’t make you less deserving.

Your Friend,

Danny

Dear Friends,

I am overall doing okay these days, especially compared to past years. But I am going through a span of feeling on edge. It is much more manageable than in the past. And I am so grateful that my hard work in therapy and mindfulness practice as well as figuring out how to lower my blood pressure have helped me get here. I know it will be an ongoing process of learning and calibrating over my life. But I am much more resilient than I used to be.

The other major piece to my resilience has been my family learning to better co-regulate with me. This is huge. It helps me so much. They have worked hard to unlearn misconceptions about nonspeaking autistic behavior, which society ingrained in them. They are so lovingly working on more spacious and compassionate ways of responding to my dysregulation. And that is tough, because I can be a real pain when dysregulation strikes.

I get loud and bully people into doing things or interfere with what they want to do. I stim loudly and frantically and it even drives me nuts. I also get into explosive rages and the anger is scary. And my compulsions get so intense. It is awful for everyone.

I know I can’t help most of it. This is my disability’s ugliest side, for me. And I also know it is difficult to live with. But I have also learned that there are ways to make it a bit better over time.

These days, the anger still boils over at times, the stimming gets loud and frantic, and compulsions intensify. But the frequency and magnitude and duration are significantly lower. And I am learning to feel more confident that these bouts are manageable.

I am aware that each nonspeaker is different. Our regulation profiles vary widely. But I feel that practicing true mindfulness and learning more about mental health could be so helpful to many nonspeakers and their families. This has been life-changing for me and my family.

Your Friend,

Danny

Dear Friends,

I am so honored to know one of the co-founders of a great non-profit, Brothers Helping Spellers. This group focuses on fundraising to make spelling more accessible to underrepresented communities. This work is so important, and it makes a difference.

They offer scholarships to cover the costs of materials and sessions with a practitioner. This support helps families get a good start on their spelling journey. It is simple, but effective.

They are not the only scholarship fund, but I just happen to know them as friends, and I learned they need more funds. So I am encouraging anyone who has the means to donate to consider a gift to them.

Their website and donations links are here and here, or you can use the QR code in the picture below. And check them out on social media (IG, FB)!

Thank you, Brothers Helping Spellers, for helping our peers access life-changing communication!

Your Friend,

Danny

Dear Friends,

It has been longer than anticipated since my last post! I came down with something, and Tara got it, too. I am all better now, and she is okay, if still tired. So here I am at long last.

So I hinted at some schemes for the summer. One is to bring together people through casual coffee hours, where people can learn more about spellers in an open and friendly environment, for adults around my age. This is my idea to help people who have no direct experience with nonspeakers learn to better relate to us. It is my answer to all the “socialization training” that autistics are expected to go through. Just kidding (kind of)! But it does address an obvious need in society: better informing the public of our realities.

I believe that ignorance is a big reason why disabled lives are seen as less worthy. It is not the only reason, but it is the easiest to address. I want people my age, who would never have had a chance to interact with me even if they had attended my high school at the same time as me, to get to know me and to see that I am more than they were taught to see me as. I want to empower them to see my peers as theirs, to better know how to interact with us. And I want to give myself a chance to restore my faith in people.

This will also give me another reason to hang out in coffee shops. Which I always love.

We will plan the first one for last June. I am excited for this!

This is just one of my fun ideas for the coming months. What do you think?

Your Friend,

Danny

Dear Friends,

I am back to social media! Tara is back from her trip, and we are ready to resume our regular work together. I am so happy she is back!

This past month was nice but of course different. I am lucky to have a support team that can keep me busy, engaged, and safe. It was nice to rest a bit from my regular routine. But I missed it, too.

I have some schemes for the summer ahead. It is all very exciting! I am looking forward to sharing more.

For now, I just want to say hi after my absence. It is good to be back!

Your Friend,

Danny

Dear Friends,

I am delighted to share a new All Our Brave Hearts episode! This one is more light-hearted than recent episodes. It is about an unanticipated little adventure my body took me on at Motormorphosis 2025.

This was fun to recount. It also has some great lessons about dignity of risk and safety in community. I think you will really enjoy it!

You can read or listen at All Our Brave Hearts on Substack, or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Thank you for being listeners of this podcast. It has been a great experience on making an audio format work with my mode of communication.

Your Friend,

Danny