Presenting at the 23rd Annual San Diego People First Self-Advocacy Conference

EACH PERSON IS VASTLY VALUABLE

Peyton Goddard. Learn about one woman’s journey from segregation toward inclusion. Discuss how we can use advocacy to help the world understand that we belong together and are better together.

 

May 11, 2013

Introduction to my presentation.

I am glad to celebrate with you that all persons are PEOPLE FIRST!

In this reported worrisome, hurtful world, you and I care to help all understand that each person has valuable gifts to share. Vast peace will be created when all people are treasured, respectfully supported to be their very best sweet seeded self.

Proclaim I—you awesome are! Greet your sweet self as feeling wallowed in freed worth. Get ready up pepping , “yes very valuable I am.” New destinations are best tread by yearners freeing their stresses and steering their courageous truths to try, try. When hit by others’ hurtful horrors, we can reply by either hitting bitter back, or say try I to understand that injustices are inflicted by those who try falsely to feel their value by needing to hurt others. Estimate I that anger in this pesty world is because pierced persons think hurting others will strip their own hurts away. Saw I that revenge hurts most the person storing it.

After decades of torture, still each dawn I struggle to feel my worth. Each dawn I activate my peppy, “being kind to me” voice. I say, “You awesome are. Let your awesomeness feed your tread to be the very best you! “ My quest now is to quell my nerves and verbally speak again. Whatever your quest, know you awesome are, and very each of you awe me!!!!!

“Breaking” News

A two-part response to the Philadelphia Inquirer’s article: “Medical debate: Should autism block a man from getting a heart transplant?”– August 15, 2012.  http://www.philly.com/philly/health/20120814_Medical_debate__Should_autism_block_a_man_from_getting_a_heart_transplant_.html

Autism is a neurological difference, not a “mental problem.”  Describing an autistic person as having a “flawed mind” is blatantly incorrect, dangerously ignorant, and psychologically hurtful to a recently estimated 1% of the world’s population. How do I know? I listen to my 37-year-old daughter Peyton. From her, you will hear no despair about her neurological differences, but an appeal to be seen and treated as a real person, supported to share her gifts as a valued member of her community. A committee of doctors deciding who gets a chance to live should begin with truthful understandings.  Denying opportunity for treatment to those labeled autistic is murder, and it is pre-mediated.

–Dianne Goddard

I’m Peyton Goddard, called by you autistic. Wherever I look, I’m pitied. I’m pointed to as trash. I’m esteemed as exempt. It hurts. And I’m tired of it. I’m trying to find peace, but powered pointers say I’m expendable. It is a life painfully sharp and feared. I’m no fool. I’m a real person whether you like it or not. I’m eased where you see my quest to live potently and I’m greeted as a real person. Poignantly I want you to stop jeering at me as feared, fretted murder by tyranny of killing persons of differed gifts. It is treasures in each that ready us for peace where I’m freed to live. I’m ready to greet you, nary to error you. Are you ready to error me no longer? Yearn I you see this as way to greet peace.

–Peyton Goddard

The Dangers of Labels

Peyton:
Pleasured I am pointed to hearing your understanding that lasted, large, limiting, linear labels are hulking jungles greeted by limitations. Keeping one limited is to measure there wastes of their great gifts.  One’s tears taste lime. Understares, terror builds. One washes their tears by return try freed to their Creator, as rest there they hunger. Polling my limits I kettled boiling red, as heard I’m trapped. There I wasted my lived times in pity.

Limiting labels murder poignancy of sweet journey. I watered my liking to keep open living by questing for others better lives poignantly sweetened by encouraging swiping labels away. Wastes caging pertinent persons must stop. A trepid heart needs verses assuring “I’m deared by this very looking world. I can be me. My heart need caw no longer.” There joy is heard. These awesome pertinent persons can be freed to limitless. It greeted I hurrah.

Dianne:
I spent much of Peyton’s first twenty years deliberating and comparing the severity of differences in persons labeled with disabilities that I met or read about. In the early years, this private, internal discussion between me, myself and I, offered some relief to my worries over Peyton’s delays and differences, as her challenges did not seem insurmountable if I therapied her enough. And professionals agreed.

In the days before Internet could bring me many children to compare her levels of functionings and measured progress to, I found I could usually comfort my fearful self with observations that the few children we met with disabilities seemed to have much greater challenges than hers.

A case in point was my own cousin’s (on my father’s side) son who was several years younger than Peyton. When talkative Wilson was three and not walking, he was tested. Duchene’s muscular dystrophy was diagnosed. Devastated and sad describes our entire family. Debilitating muscles until death in his early twenties was the best case scenario. Pity him I did. And compare I did. While Peyton would be continuing to improve, he would be suffering a slow and sure death.

Not so. Peyton lost functioning and filled with a suffocating sadness she could not begin to shake for well over a decade. Yet Wilson lived happy. At his celebration of life five years ago I reflected on my foolish attempts to comfort myself by comparing the severity of challenges, and how thankful I am for new understandings of acceptance and valuing Peyton for ALL she is. Above all, I am comforted knowing she can really feel my love finally.