April 2nd. WAAD. Officially World Autism Awareness Day, though I can’t think of an autistic I know who doesn’t feel it should be World Autism Acceptance Day.
This was going to be a very short post, because today I did most of my “getting my point across” on Twitter. But then I decided to look at this a different way – what have I done over the past year to contribute to Autism Acceptance?
Because for once, I can answer that I’ve done more than maintain my blog.
Last year, I wrote a letter to the ASNL about Light It Up Blue (which the ASNL continued this year, unfortunately) – it’s also been passed out to Autism Canada’s leadership.
Since then, I have also joined both Autism Canada’s ASD Advisory Board, and the Canadian Autism Partnership Project ASD Advisory Board. I have been part of discussions about creating conferences specifically for autistics in Canada, and about building a Canadian Autism Partnership. I’ve made friends with more autistics throughout Canada by this – really good friends at that. And those have helped me gain the confidence both in myself and my views of being autistic to speak out even more.
I have also started work on the project that my Social Club group is calling Spectrum Storybooks. It’s going to be a long-term project, but will be so useful. Something like that is needed, and we’re going to help fulfill that need.
So I don’t know about the world as a whole – there’s still a lot of things wrong with the public view of autism – but I’ve done things this past year that I can be proud of. And that? That’s something worth celebrating.