Danny Whitty – Nonspeaking Autistic Writer & Advocate
Dear Friends,
Today I had an amazing snorkel at the Marine Room with Tara and Shay! It was fantastic. So many leopard sharks!
My stamina is improving, and I felt more confident exploring on my own, though I know Tara and Shay were watching out for me. It was my first time snorkeling with Shay, and I think his curious energy inspired me!
Your Friend,
Danny
Dear Friends,
Today was another great snorkel! We went out early at La Jolla Cove, to a high tide but gentle waves. It was so gorgeous and vibrant. We saw so many Garibaldi and several sea lions swam by us. But the highlight was swimming around the eastern point to a line of caves and cliffs. It was my first time getting so far in that direction and wow! Was it stunning! And it was just Tara and me there, among all the fishes below and seabirds above. It was so majestic and solemn and otherworldly. I can see why it is one of Tara’s favorite spots in the world!
I am trusting that you will take my word for it, since Tara has had a super busy week and forgot her water cameras! Here is a photo of me scoping out the conditions before, one of the same cliffs from another outing of Tara’s, and one of me enjoying a hot tea from the newly opened Parakeet Café across the street from the Cove. New episode coming next week!
Your Friend,
Danny
Dear Friends,
I have had some absolutely exciting opportunities and achievements pop up lately! But this also stirs up all sorts of difficult feelings as well, like fear of failure and sadness over time lost and stress. Our brains are so funny!
So I wrote a few poems today about all of this. This one I am sharing is about the years that were wasted in public school special ed, which was particularly mediocre at Poway High School in the late 1990s. I will one day work through my resentment of my “teachers” there, but not anytime soon. Each step forward is a triumph over their prejudices. I am not so petty that this drives me, but it is satisfying all the same.
Your Friend,
Danny
I am one of the defective
The flawed in design
The pitiful until you can ignore me
Tucked away in the room of
My fellow disposable negligible
Misfits so you don’t have to be bothered
By us by disgust by your own guilt
By the inkling that
What you have been taught about worth might well be
wrong
And and and
Now I am here.
Dear Friends,
Welcome to the updated The Ocean and Us! I am so proud of our new focus, and so proud of our original episodes as well. We are starting off our renewed series with and interview with my friend Joshua Greiner. He is a fellow Speller, and also an active poet and surfer and more. And we had a great chat about our shared joy of surfing with Waves 4 All! I am so looking forward to sharing more stories of disabled folks and the ocean. Thank you for being with us! (Transcript below)
Here is a link with some of Joshua’s poetry: https://poetryforopeninghearts.weebly.com/
Your Friend,
Danny
D: Hi my Friends! I am so excited to share our new vision for The Ocean and Us Podcast!
T: Yeah, well, as you know, we’ve not been really able to regularly keep up with the podcast in its original form which was interviewing friends about their work in ocean conservation and inclusion. I think it was a really great project and you learned a lot and made a lot of connections, and we’ve definitely heard from many people who appreciated it and really enjoyed it but Danny was feeling like it needed to be freshened up… not that it was stale! but he wanted to shake things up a little bit
D: Exactly! It was a lot of work and it seemed that we weren’t reaching many people. So I wanted to take a step back
and reimagine what we can do in the ocean realm while connecting to more people!
T: So, do you want to share what you have come up with?
D: Absolutely! We will focus more on how disabled folks access the ocean!
T: And why have you chosen this focus, this approach?
D: I have grown so much through my own experience in learning how to play in the ocean! And also my perceptions of what you can do have changed a lot, too
T: And my confidence as a support for you has grown through our experience working on your ocean skills together as well as watching other people help you access the watersports that you want to learn. So that’s been important growth for myself as well
D: I am so proud of my journey and have met some amazing people in the process!
T: Absolutely. I’ve really enjoyed meeting for example some of the other Spellers we’ve met through surfing through Waves4All, which you’ll hear more about. And it’s definitely a common thread that seems to run through many Spellers – many of you are drawn to the ocean. I think that’s a commonality that most humans share
D: I agree. And with that, I want to introduce this interview with Joshua Greiner, who is a friend through poetry and surfing and a community building project in Arizona!
T: You and Joshua have crossed paths in several ways
D: I so enjoyed chatting with him!
T: I think this was the first Speller interview that you’ve conducted with another Speller
D: Yes it is indeed
T: I know when we were starting this series, we were wondering “how does this work with Spelling to Communicate?” And we were like “Let’s just try it, we’ll see!” That’s why it’s in video format, so we can have the captions and transcript
though your speaking enunciation is progressing phenomenally!
D: We tried it and it worked and I want to explore options for more audio-only options
T: So you mean so people can just listen and follow along even just in their car when they can’t be watching a screen or reading a transcript or captions, right?
D: Right!
T: Yeah! We’ll figure it out Back to this interview: I must admit that… so, I have met Joshua several times online and a handful of times in-person. I very much value his company and, embarrassingly, I kept calling him Jeremy in this interview, which makes me cringe because I know and value Joshua as a complete person on his own. But Jeremy is another of Danny’s friends and he and Joshua overlap with this Arizona project, and Danny had been hanging out with Jeremy a lot. And I kept calling Joshua “Jeremy” and I am very embarrassed about it and apologize very much to Joshua. And thank you to his mom and CRP Amy for kindly correcting me. I don’t know what was going on with me that day
D: Haha he thought it was so funny!
T: Well, that’s gracious of him if that’s how he felt. But really, Jerem… I just did it again! Oh my gosh. Joshua is quite a talented poet as well as surfer, so I really recommend – we’ll find some links for some of his poetry and include it. I do recommend checking out his writing in addition to this interview
D: Totally!
T: Is there anything else you want to tell folks?
D: Hmmm… Not for now, other than I am so appreciative of Joshua’s time and friendship and also Amy’s!
T: Yeah, likewise!
D: Let’s go!
T: Enjoy!
D: I am so excited to chat with you!
J: Me too, Danny!
D: How are you today, my friend?
J: Wonderful
T: Good, good!
D: I am so lucky we met through so many cool initiatives, and surfing is one of them!
J: Yes, so glad!
D: So I want to learn more about how you started surfing!
J: I started 5 years ago in San Diego with John White and Waves4All, with my dad and my cousins and my brother
T: Wow, it’s been a while, Josh! That’s awesome
D: I loved surfing together with you earlier this year!
T: It was really cool to see the 2 of you surfing side by side
J: Yes, I loved it!
D: So how does surfing make you feel?
J: It is too incredible, feeling the tremendous energy of the ocean. I love showing it my energy. I love that its energy is so much bigger
T: Wow, Jeremy – sorry – wow, Josh, that’s beautiful!
D: So gorgeous, and I totally relate!
A: It must be amazing for you guys to have something that has bigger energy than you, because the energy you feel must be so big and to encounter bigger energy is a cool concept!
T: It is, absolutely!
D: Absolutely, it is so absolutely freeing and so awe-inspiring and so profound!
T: There’s seems to be something that any Speller we’ve talked with about the ocean, they say there’s something very special about it about the energy they feel there, how it can regulate them how it helps them feel more a part of the world somehow
D: Totally! Josh, I am so wanting to know how Waves4All feels as a community!
J: It is love. When I’m there, I feel safe and understood. I am testing them, but they always know to bring me back My body wants to run, but I want to stay. We fight our bodies. They understand.
T: Yeah, I think they’re really remarkably good at helping – I know that with Danny, work through some of that nervous, anxious energy that anyone would experience when trying to learn how to surf and helping him get back to what he actually wants to be doing
D: Totally!
A: Yes, so many other people think that he doesn’t want to do it, but they definitely understand – they’re like “Let’s keep doing it!” They don’t listen to the body
T: Yeah! For years, I thought that Danny didn’t really like being in the ocean. I knew he liked walking by it. Because whenever we’d try to bring him snorkeling he’d just be really uneasy, really anxious. He’d go kayaking sometimes,
but we just thought we’d be making him do something unpleasant if we tried to push it And actually, he loves it!
A: And Josh too! And you’re snorkeling – I’ve seen you, that’s so awesome!
D: It is so amazing with communication how our lives open up!
J: I agree
T: And Josh, you’re very active, too – you’re involved in all sorts of things, which I think is really amazing
D: So inspiring that you do so much even though you are still so young!
T: So Danny just wanted to say that he loves the chance to speak more to Jeremy [Joshua] and he wants to ask him so many more questions as would I, but he doesn’t want to tire Jeremy too much so he wants to give the option to…
A: You mean Joshua?
T: Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry
A: I know you guys see Jeremy a lot, so All these “J” names
T: Thank you for correcting me Yes, there’s so many J names and you and Jeremy kind of look the same, Josh – the dark hair, tall, slender… Sorry, I’m so sorry Josh.
Danny wants to make sure he’s not stressing you out by keeping you on too long so he wants to give you the chance to say any parting words. And if there’s any additional things you’d like us to include, you can always send them to us later. But Danny wants to be really sensitive to your energy level, Josh.
D: I love talking with you but don’t want to stress you out!
J: It’s really uplifting! Well, I’m okay to keep talking
T: Great, I’m glad to hear it, Josh!
D: Fantastic! Can I ask you what you think about conservation and what we nonspeaking folks can contribute?
J: I think there’s so much we can contribute, like what the importance of depending the planet is. We know, looking in the same truth, everyone who is autistic will illuminate equality of experience in nature.
D: I absolutely agree, Josh, and our perceptions of nature are so profound and the world could learn so much from us!
T: I liked the word you use, “illuminating”
D: So Josh, how are you feeling now?
J: I’m feeling tired, but I love this!
T: Oh good. Danny, you’re feeling kind of the same, huh?
D: Haha, same indeed. Well I have one last question, and that is: when will we surf again?
J: I think soon. This summer.
A: We’ll have to arrange something
T: Definitely! We look forward to it
D: Totally, my surf buddy!
T: Danny spells, and I echo, thank you so much for your time and energy. I appreciated the chance to get to know more about your ocean journey!
J: I loved it, kind friend
T: Great!
D: See you soon in Arizona!
A: Alright, well this has been so great
T: Thank you so much, Josh and Amy – Josh, I’m so sorry I kept messing up your name. I did not get a very restful weekend so my Monday’s starting off very scattered. I do apologize again.
A: We know the feeling. Okay, done now I think!
D: So nice, you two! Bye!
Dear Friends,
My goodness, I am so touched by how many have liked and commented on and messaged about and shared my last post on Instagram and Facebook! Over 650 on Instagram. And now over 2000 followers on Instagram and 1500+ on Facebook. Wow. I am so amazed that you care about what I have to say. After decades without communication, and also being ignored by educators and society in general, this is an unfathomable shift for me.
I am so wonderfully surprised by the kind and interested welcome I have had since starting to share about my journey on social media. I know that social media can be a place of conflict and trolling and awful rhetoric, and that nuance and authenticity are often ignored. My sisters advised me of this when I was deciding how to best share my story. And I know it is entirely possible that skeptics of my communication method might one day crash this party. But I am mentally prepared for that and other challenges.
What I hadn’t fully anticipated was the magnitude of positive feedback! I know my reach is modest compared to major influencers, but I am so amazed that even a fraction of you are following me. I feel a sense of responsibility to represent my peers, and to also foster a sense of empathy and mindfulness and thoughtful awareness toward the diversity of nonspeaker experiences. And of course the story I can best tell is mine alone. So I hope you can learn from it while also keeping an open mind to how other nonspeakers might differ from what I share.
I also want to apologize that I cannot reply or otherwise interact with you to the extent I want to. It is a shame that my energy levels and slow communication limit what I can do. I hope you know that Tara shows me your comments and messages and that I love them! I wish I could reply to every single one.
Thank you so so so much for being with me! It is such an absolutely amazing feeling.
Your Friend,
Danny
Dear Friends,
Wow, am I ever feeling run down. I have been pretty low in energy the past couple of weeks, and a busy couple of days at the end of last week really drained me. It is so frustrating to not have more resilience in my body, and tough to understand how I am physically feeling and to identify possible causes for how I feel. Maybe it is a bug trying to get me, or something has thrown off my gut biome, or there is some change in external conditions, or my mental and emotional state are somehow altered, or who knows! I struggle to try to gain insight on these times of distress.
I am so needing wider understanding that my flavor of autism is such a physical disability. And I know many of my nonspeaking autistic friends have many more physical challenges than I do. It is such a central part of our disability: our bodies are not wired to function as we wish or need them to.
I am so proud of progress I have made in my coordination and motor control in the past couple of years, with amazing practitioners and near-constant inner work through visualization. I used to have autonomous and accent-less speech as a cherished goal, mainly driven by a desire to fit in but also of course a need to communicate more easily. I now know it is a very unrealistic goal, and that is a hard realization to accept. But I will keep working on my speaking, and I know I can still improve in that and many other motor skills. It is just a bit tough to acknowledge how much work it all is.
This is a bit rambling, but my main point is that for me and others like me, our apraxia is not just about our speech. It is our compulsive movements, inability to sit still, low interoception, strange noises, and even injurious behavior. It is why I can’t go out in public unsupervised except in rare situations (like on a sheltered beach away from roads), why I can’t cross the street on my own, why I am so nervous when I see police or security guards who might overreact to my odd behaviors, why I can’t always clean myself properly after using the toilet, why I express frustration or fear through screaming and gritting my teeth and stomping and galloping, why I am so easily tired. It is why I can’t cry even when my heart is breaking, why I can’t be sure I can call 911 if there were an emergency and no one able to help me, why I am often panicked when I realize I urgently need to relieve myself.
I am so new to thinking about my disability as a physical one. But that is such a central defining component of my disability: my physical limitations. It is a helpful shift in perception for me. I am clearly still in the early stages of elucidating what that all means. For today, however, I needed to share my thoughts as they are.
Your Friend,
Danny
Dear Friends,
During therapy today, my amazing therapist and I were discussing contentment and the tendency for trauma to leave a legacy of hypervigilance and anxiety. I have been working so hard to manage these, so so so hard, and making progress and growing more resilient. At one point, I realized: it is so much work to be content, but it is also so much work to live without contentment, so I choose to strive for contentment.
It helped me so much to chat about these things. I am hoping it helps some of you, too!
Your Friend,
Danny
Dear Friends,
Two years ago, I wrote my first real class assignment! It was for Modern & Contemporary American Poetry (ModPo), a course on Coursera taught by U Penn. It so lit up my life, and opened up my world to the power and art of poetry. The professor, Al Filreis, was so welcoming of me, and so were the other students. And I so fell in love with the poems of Emily Dickinson, who was the first poet we studied. Something about her understated strength in her words captivated me. Imagine the thrill of discovering a new passion after decades of stagnation! Wow. It so absolutely illuminated my soul!
Here is a copy of that poem and my brief discussion post on close reading it. I was so happy to post it. But then the professor read it aloud during that week’s live meeting, and I felt stars beaming out of my heart! Then several classmates responded how my interpretation changed their view of the poem. This felt like a dream to me, after never being acknowledged for my ideas! This was the most recognized I had been in my 35 years of life.
I went on to complete the course and earn the first meaningful certificate of my life! And I took another course at a local community college, which I enjoyed and aced, but from which I realized that formal education is not something I need to achieve my goals. But I still love learning from experts in diverse fields, and I enjoy sitting in as a Community Teaching Assistant for the ModPo course each year. It changed my view of myself and what I could contribute to the world! I am so thankful to the professor and the ModPo community for being so open to me.
Your Friend,
Danny
Title: Resonates with my autistic experience (written Sep 2020)
This really spoke to my perspective as an autistic, apraxic, minimally-speaking man. The imagery of her dwelling in the world of Possibility is akin to the constrained yet limitless world of my autistic mind.
The words “A fairer House than Prose” reflect the wonderful universe in my mind clashing with the structure of the neurotypical world. The latter seems so limited in its capacity for other ways of thinking.
The line “And for an everlasting Roof/ The Gambrels of the Sky” is evocative of the infinite wonder in my mind. Yet the notion of the impregnable chambers speaks to the challenges of being understood by the outside world.
The windows, to me, suggest an ability to look outside. This is a heightened ability in autistics. We are able to observe so much of what is around us. Yet the world outside rarely looks in.
The visitors are those thoughts that fly into our minds. They need no doors to open. They freely enter and keep me company.
The gathering of paradise is exactly what I do in my autistic house. The routine, rule-filled, prosaic world outside is so restricting. Yet my limitless world must exist within it.
Screenshot from The Poetry Foundation (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52197/i-dwell-in-possibility-466)
Dear Friends,
This is a reminder that I have an online magazine Leo in Bloom about nonspeaking autistic experiences, including my own. We just wrapped up August’s issue on the theme Blooming into Communication, and I hope you are able to peruse and enjoy!
Your Friend,
Danny
Dear Friends,
Here are some tough feelings I have been heavy with this week. Thank you to Unrestricted Interest for sharing this in your newsletter, The Listening World (I recommend subscribing for more poems from neurodivergent authors, including some of my friends)! Link: https://thelisteningworld.substack.com/p/all-i-can-say
I am so hoping this resonates with you.
Danny
This poem expresses the deep and unyielding truth: my disability limits me. It is an unflinching message that I and many others reckon with internally, but often feel afraid to share. We are so pressured to be beacons of hope and inspiration, to make others feel better. And for much of my life, I have been told by ignorant educators that I am more limited than I actually am, so I am also reluctant to acknowledge my real limitations.
It sucks. To put it more eloquently would be to sugar coat it. It doesn’t mean that my life is hopeless or worthless or not full of beauty and joy. It is the unvarnished, grainy truth. And of course it gets me down. I am human and I feel disappointment and frustration. I don’t need comfort, but I so need compassion.
Those who know me are aware that I am generally a positive person. I love much about my life. My autism can truly be a wondrous experience, full of light and color and intelligence and mirth and profound feelings. And I hope that I can convey that acceptance of the challenging parts of my life is a part of truly acknowledging my existence in its totality, along with my many joys.
All I can say: Sometimes I have to face that being disabled sucks
I love the word absolutely
And its emphatic authority
For excitement or for firm denial
And I love the word wow, wow exclamation point,
And also totally,
And I so love so,
So so so much
I love to spell hmmm…
And truth be told I love to spell profanity
Not the word profanity, but that subset of words deemed impolite
And I feel my heart flow out of my body into the world
When I string together my poems
But it is one of those days when
I feel so absolutely, totally
The so so so harsh reality
That I laboriously, painstakingly, so fucking painstakingly
Have to point out each little letter
And so much of my glorious so glorious
Universe can never be shared.
by Danny Whitty
Danny With Words