Insights Archives - Page 2 of 2

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What Autistic Pride means to me by Maura Campbell

June 18, 2017 Spectrum Women

“What’s wrong with him, then?” The man gawped at my nine-year-old son, taking in his noise-cancelling headphones, the belt around his waist and the strap attaching him to the dog. He then turned his full attention to me. He stared, demanding a response, expecting a justification to be provided for why we had brought a dog into the shop and were queuing beside him. Darragh was impatient for us to pay and leave so that he could enjoy his chosen treat for being a great boy that week at school. “Nothing. There’s nothing wrong with him. In fact, he’s wonderful.” […]

Insights

Making Myself Proud! – Reflections on Autistic Pride – Yenn Purkis

June 18, 2017 Spectrum Women

June 18 is Autistic Pride Day. I usually pop an Autistic Pride themed meme on social media and tell everyone to ’get their pride on’. I see myself as a proud Autistic but I never really unpacked the concept of pride and why I identify with it. It just seemed an affirming sentiment. I saw something this which got me examining my thoughts on pride. Someone had posted on a friend’s Facebook timeline, ‘Why would you be proud of something you can’t help?’ This had me thinking — why do I say I am a proud Autistic woman? Why do […]

Featured

Why I Write… A Spectrum Women Collaboration

June 12, 2017 Barb Cook

Inspired by “Why I Ride”, Barb Cook’s love letter to motorcycling published in Spectrum Women in October 2016, some of the Spectrum Women Writing Team have decided to share their thoughts on their shared passion for writing… Jeanette Purkis I am Autistic and also have schizophrenia. I often joke that it was pretty much guaranteed I would end up being a writer with those two diagnoses and the creativity which so often comes along with them. I started writing young. I got to read out my poetry at school assemblies from about the age of eight. High school English was […]

Autism April

Attracting the Kind of Life that You Want and Stepping out of the Bubble – Rudy Simone

April 8, 2017 Spectrum Women

There are people in the world who spend their whole life chasing happiness from without. They buy boats, cars, planes, trains, corporations, islands, trying to amass as much stuff as they can to see where the happiness lies. Maybe they have a great time, but if wealth (and fame) were everything, so many rich people wouldn’t be overdosing in hotel rooms across the globe, entering rehab, and/or psychotherapy. Sometimes people spend all their time and money searching and when they don’t find it in material things, they do a 180 and search for a higher power—doing good works, praying, lunching […]

Insights

Living Life as a Formal Event

August 18, 2016 Spectrum Women

Ever since I found out about my Asperger’s my life has really changed… Or better said, my perception of life changed. Suddenly everything started to make sense, all the answers I never thought I’d get were just coming and I even found lots of people that spoke my language who were looking for the same answers. It was very enlightening and liberating as most of you who are reading this are already are very much aware of and have gone through the same (or a similar) experience. After feeling engulfed by this wave of energy and excitement, that only such […]

Insights

LOVING, VALUING AND RESPECTING YOURSELF – THE BEST OPTION by Yenn (Jeanette) Purkis

June 17, 2016 Spectrum Women

Little Jeanette was similar to the current iteration of me in many ways. She was determined, motivated, curious, confident and smart. Little me had no reason not to love and respect herself. She had a loving family, enough food, a warm house, no neglect or abuse. And then she went to school. After thirteen years of being given negative messaging about who I was by many of the other kids at school, pretty much constantly and then enduring sexual violence as a teen, I started to hate myself. In fact, at twenty years-old I was so negatively focussed that I […]