Tag: self-advocacy

”Real Supports for Real Lives: Whose Life is it Anyway?”
Closing Panel, with Dr. Rich Villa, of CalState University San Marcos-
University of San Diego Autism Conference
“Autism Spectrum Disorder: Real Supports for Real Lives”

Peyton Goddard
June 16, 2012

Self-Introductions

I am me, Peyton Goddard. I pine for a worry free world where value and pertinence penetrates the peaceful rest of all persons. So I wrote my story, i am intelligent—from heartbreak to healing. For decades, quietly I was captured by pity. Errored and pouting, segregated, silenced and sad, I heard treasures are absent in I. Looking for nuggeted jewels in I is a powerfully challenging feat that I tune each day. News nifty is I’m awesomely now eased to ignite my lips and begin to speak my typed words, aquaed by I’m finally feeling I am dear to me.
Saw that in my freedom dawned in joy, I’ll write freeing others. I’m trying to awed journey to testimony treasure each of the great Creator’s poppy persons

“What types of supports have been most valuable in assisting you to become the successful person that you are?” 

     A quote from Laura San Giacomo, mother, actor, advocate, and my golden friend–“Most people take communication for granted. For some it is a simple task, mastered in an automatic, unconscious way. For some it is a quest. But for all, it is a basic component for a fulfilling meaningful life.”
     First, and utmost valued support, I reply, is the insurance that a dependable mode of communication, Facilitated Communication aka supported typing, supplies me! For that I exclaim “Thank you, God” and “Thank you Anne Donnellan and Darlene Hanson” and thank you “All my facilitating friends.” Please let voices not yet freed know you will never stop pursuing facilitating their waiting voices until they can be heard. Wastes must stop. You can help.
Second, sweet readying to move my body is journey I chase. Being I is messed by maddening mover motions that shame my heart and strip the reason to live right out of I. Tastes of fears powered get weaker as I saw yes you understand my ceaseless moves. There I wear hope as dependable movement is my trying goal each waking million moment. Motor eases I reality hunger for. I need sweet support that rests my boggy, scared body that frets, worried that I cannot move it as my mind requests, upping red fears I will fail. I point to swept moments where I can mope nothing, greeted by your help easing I to believe I can regulate dependably my emotions and my motions. It is cuttingly imperative you ask which support I need: (i.e. communication, sensory, emotional). Quest I awesome trust in you questing I’m best as I can be.

What types of support provided to you in the past have been a barrier to your achieving success?

Supporters that devalue me are my great barrier to succeeding. Wherever I’m treasured nil, therefreed I’m scared that I waste in agony yet another opportunity. There it masks utterly my moving to join in. There it estimates I’m pity pout. Pity poses powerful treasons of dread. There I’m nervous I’m farther fail, and distresses in I get punishing. There I’m not understood. There I’m jestered, appearing a buffoon, nullifying my success. Each dark tunnel is lit by easily net of my yearning you try see me as worthy and not as unequal to you, because there I’m lunged into poses of pity that freeze I or tip I to jungles of jitters. Under fret, I fall limp or flail. My success is gestated by how you read me. If you read me as ogre, I’m wasted. Years I lived there, swept away in fear of my own settled-never, seethed-as-less, littered self. I need you to see me as equal, as I’m watered pity or pretty by you. You seed my new news there that I’m awesome as I am. This feeds my desire to be me. Please try to understate no one.

“Peyton, what do you hope to accomplish by writing your book?”

Because I saw a life I’ll never want anyone to teach as acceptable for any human being — including decades of understaters uttering I’m no one, I’m broken, moldy bread, throwaway trash, great leper — I have written my story. Yes, nothings need to be heard. In my book i am intelligent, my bloody beared truths are for telling this worrisome world that yearns are in all persons to be verifiably valued and supported by their sisters and brothers. In it I hope readers are eased to understand there is vast value in all humans. Trying I am to urge tip each reader to understand that, though different-each, we are in human union one, and to urge each person feeling peaced rest we can reach by being together in treasuring each person.  A new world sounding tunes of harmony will help our looking angry world.

Closing Comment

Weeds grow where reporters say ritual of separating people with differences is needed as lips wise.  Wherever all are together, truer wisdoms are greeted.  In togethered, sweet hastens data that reasserts angers appeared neared never. Mutters of persons betting on segregation are full of errors that rupture our planet.  Therefreed irregularities that fry our guts, awe our poppy persons, and try our sweetest pinings for peace.  Ethers of ease I’m trying to find.  It’s best pouring is in purely supporting all.  Some will worry how, but our best leaders worry not equalization how, and will ready us to sweetly support all persons together, importantly measuring their strengths and plotting their progress. Try please, all of us.  Thesis is ones needing support are everyone.  We are all our best together. So, let us return to valuings of all persons. Wedded in our oneness, dear each pure pretty pertinent person is.