Talkative Ted

On October 14 and 15th, our old friend TED made his presence felt at the Electric Lodge in Venice through the voices of over 30 individuals whose lives have been touched by autism and other disabilities.

I can say that it was as amazing as I hoped it would be.  Families, professionals,  interns and individuals with disabilities were in the audience, both live and remote, where wisdom was shared 15 minutes at a time.   And as I had hoped, themes kept reappearing and added to the sense of a community gathering to share its knowledge.

On Friday at the end of the day, Dr. Ivor Weiner shared his experience living with a group of young adults beginning their university experience. One of the things that he found most challenging was their strong desire to remain unidentified, costing them a lot of energy and isolating them.  At the end he was approached by several of our GAP  students who shared their own experiences and the fact that finding out they had autism had actually explained many mysteries for them. That presentation just goes to show how FACTx inspired learning both through presentation and audience conversation.

On Saturday, we were treated to an unbelievable panoply of artists from Filmmakers to comic book artists were  proud to share their experience.  I learned how music art, drama, can enrich lives as we were treated to performances by gifted singers and musicians.

Now my job, should I choose to accept it and I do, is to weave all the segments into theme based modules.  These includes things like how to develop executive function and flexibility, taking care of your child for life and letting go, and more. But most importantly, I need to implement the wide amount of knowledge that I gained to best inform my practice in a multidisciplinary lens. There is so much that goes into disability practice and hearing all these different perspectives gives us all a little bit to consider when encountering disability in life. And learning all these different facets means I now see my practice and myself as adopting all of them to serve our FACT family as best as I can.

And so I would like to extend a big thank you to all that presented at FACTx! You have provided some incredible insights that we can all take and apply to our lives.