Update: Life and #AutismPresentation (Help?)

So, it’s been a while since my last update. Not as long as some intervals, but definitely a while. In that while, a lot of things have happened.

My middle sister got married (yay!). (It was lovely, small ceremony.) I was diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis (answers, at last, to the pain and inflammation!). I joined the Newfoundland and Labrador Centre of Applied Health Research Autism Research Exchange Group (as well as two other Research Exchange Groups). I applied for and became a member of the Newfoundland and Labrador Autism Action Council (which will be working on the provincial Autism Action Plan – let’s hope it has better final results than CAPP did!).

Today’s post is about a presentation that I’m doing on Thursday to the Autism Research Exchange Group, on sensory issues.

Continue reading

Link

So. Here is the preliminary video of the autistic advocates’ panel at the CASDA 2018 Summit. This is not the official video, which CASDA is working on getting professionally edited; this is basically the raw footage with a few edits (title and removing the final remarks of the day) by me. Once the official video goes up, I will remove mine and put a link on this post to the new one.

CONTENT WARNING: The video is just over an hour long, and as I state up front, there are some very difficult and painful things to hear (including mentions of suicide and filicide).

Comments are welcome.

😐 tagÂûght

#ASNLPanel: Housing/Residential Options

About 3 hours ago now I was a participant on a panel done by the Autism Society of Newfoundland and Labrador about Residential Options for those on the autism spectrum – difficulties and possible solutions. It was livestreamed across the province and is available on YouTube (the MUN School of Music channel). It was an excellent panel and a lot of issues and possibilities were discussed. (Note: Forward the time to 8:52 which is when it actually starts.)

Note that tomorrow I will be interviewed by VOCM! 🙂

#CASDASummit2018: Day 2 (Pt 2) – #UnspokenPriceOfAutisticAdvocacy

So, as mentioned in the last post, this post is focused entirely on our panel – First Voice Perspective – The Unspoken Price of Advocacy. Note that the panel was recorded, and I’ll be putting up a link to that recording when it goes live.

The panel consisted of myself, Corey Walker (from BC), Patricia George-Zwicker (from NS), Jackie McMillan (from ON) – all of whom were on the CAPP Advisory Group with me – and Daniel Share-Strom (from ON). There was supposed to be one more, Bruno Hache (from ON), but unfortunately one of his best friends committed suicide on the Monday, so he couldn’t make it.

But before I get to the contents of our panel, I want to share a picture with you – a picture that was taken of pretty much all the attendees of the summit. (It’s not loading into this post, so here!)

Read on, please.

#CASDASummit2018: Day 2 (Pt 1)

Day 2 of the CASDA Summit (Thursday April 19) started out on an interesting note. And by “started out”, I mean 1 am.

I spent the first two hours of the 19th working on the script for my portion of the “First Voice Perspective” panel – finishing writing it out, and then reading it out loud and making edits. (I spent from 1am to 2am doing the latter.) Then I managed to crash – for a while.

The Summit Day 2 session itself also started out on an interesting note.

Read on, read on!

Jetpack “Like” Button Issue

It turns out that there’s some kind of bug in the connection between WordPress 4.9.5 (CA_EN version) and the Jetpack “Like” button setting, so I have removed that from my site for the moment, and contacted Jetpack support about it. Once that gets fixed, I will remove this post and return the Like button.

#CASDASummit2018: Day 1 and Self-Care

First day of the CASDA Summit of 2018 (Wednesday April 18). Woke up earlier than I meant to, which was irritating. Read an article from the Ottawa Citizen written by Senator Jim Munson, and got upset about some of the terminology used. (He saw my tweet, and apologized both on Twitter and in person, I definitely have to respect that.)

Got to the summit place (same place as last year, the Shaw Centre, which is attached to the Rideau Centre, which is kitty-corner from the hotel), grabbed breakfast and chatted to various people, including the other ASNL staff and board member there, and then settled up front at the “autistics'” table. 🙂 (AKA the table that most of us sat at, including all of us who were on the “First Voice Perspective” panel.)

Just a warning note before I get into the day’s panels: I was only able to note down certain comments (as opposed to the whole speech of each panelist – thinking of recording certain panels next year for my own info), so I went for the ones that struck me as particularly important in what each of them were saying.

Read on for more details of the morning (I skipped out on the afternoon) and what I did the rest of the day