Autism Answer: A Book For The Leader You Are (willingly or not)

 

 

The Seven Senses of Leadership by Lynette Louise

 

You are in a Leadership position. Regardless of whether or not you've done this purposefully, you are. Not always, not everywhere maybe, but sometimes and in certain places, you are. I offer you my congratulations and my condolences, whichever you feel are warranted. ;D 

 

Now, obviously I can't help you get more or less Leadership responsibilities, but I can point you to a book that will help you always take on the role with purpose and even pride. This book will also help you choose your Leaders with deeper knowledge and intention. 

 

The Leadership we offer and the Leadership we choose is kind of a big deal, whether or not we decide to engage with it vigorously. The older I get (I'm finally 50!) the clearer it becomes that this stuff will not only affect me - whether I want it to or not - but it will affect my children, grandchildren (at the moment I have 5 of them!), great-grandchildren, etc. 

 

I'm not talking about political Leaders, but I'm not not talking about them either. They have so much power! But they are born out of and influenced by all the Leadership that surrounds us. Parents, educators, caregivers, friends, writers, creators, on and on and on. The way we step up, the choices we make as learners, purchasers, parents, teachers, content publishers, creators, voters, we are all in positions of power. 

Unfortunately the publishing company that originally released my mom's book The Seven Senses of Leadership has disappeared and the paperback is no longer available through them. 

 

Fortunately, my mom asked me to help her release the title as an eBook via Amazon Kindle - and though I confess the formatting is still less than stellar it is now available! 

 

The book is phenomenal. It is short, smart, compassionate, inclusive, and often times funny. If you are able, please read and review: The Seven Senses of Leadership: The Brain Broad's Guide to Leadership Sensibilities

 

 

"What you believe changes what you see. [...] If you want to control how you see the world, this is good news because you can do one of two things: You can change your physiology or you can change your psychology. Both are possible and either one will change the other." ~Dr. Lynette Louise ("The Brain Broad"), The Seven Senses of Leadership

 

Additionally: My mom will be speaking again at the Annual Leadership Summit America in Albany, New York - March 20 - 21 2025. The summit features top-tier speakers and offers attendees the chance to network and grow their leadership skills in an immersive environment. Follow this link to learn more: Internationally Renowned Brain Expert Lynette Louise, The Brain Broad, to Speak at Leadership Summit America

 

Our world is wonderful. But it is made more wonderful when people Lead well. When people choose their Leaders well. When people are aware and purposeful in their Leadership relationships. 

 

Whether by reading the book, attending the summit, or both, there are excellent tools to reach for!

 

Hugs, smiles, and love!!! 

Tsara Shelton (X.com)

Autism Answer: Nonverbal Communication and Telepathy

 

 

My brother, Dar

I originally wrote a version of this piece for my mom's newsletter, The Loop!

______________________________________________

 

"Nonverbal communication is the transmission of messages or signals through a nonverbal platform such as eye contact, body language, social distance, touch, voice, physical environments/appearance, and use of objects."

Telepathy is not on that list of examples, but it does say "such as" which implies the list is incomplete. Perhaps we can expect more examples to be told to us directly, in our thoughts. Telepathy-like.

If you have not yet been informed of the popular podcast and upcoming documentary The Telepathy Tapes, then my comment may seem rather unexpected. (I did try to warn you with telepathy that I was going to bring this up, but perhaps my aim was off?)

From their website: The Telepathy Tapes dares to explore the profound abilities of non-speakers with autism. These silent communicators possess gifts that defy conventional understanding, from telepathy to otherworldly perceptions, challenging the limits of what we believe to be real.

From me: I remember my mom (international brain change & behavior expert Lynette Louise, "The Brain Broad") telling us kids about a variety of times our autistic brother, Dar, and our mom communicated in this way.

In fact, at 36 minutes into the documentary The Indigo Evolution (click this link to watch on YouTube) mom shares a story about Dar telling her telepathically not to have an affair. (The story is funny but, as is mom's style, it is also deeply insightful and thought provoking... while being funny.)

People who spend time with autistics (or indigo children or similarly labeled individuals) are inclined to notice the unexpected and seemingly magical habit many of them have for feeling the energy and judgements in a room full of people; of making sudden and aware eye contact in answer to a thought in the mind of a parent or sibling; of laughing at a joke someone in the room is only thinking about telling; of projecting, or pushing, words into the minds of caregivers. 

This is too common to be ignored.

Exploring the communication of telepathy is wonderful, and I have experienced it myself. My mom and I shared dreams a few times when I was little, before I learned not to believe in it. I suppose we may have shared dreams after that as well, but by then I chose to presume coincidence or consider it crazy.

Knowing that our non-speaking brothers and sisters do have things to say, things that are unique to them and their perspectives, is oh so necessary. Exploring the variety of ways in which they express themselves and choose to communicate with us is what it is to care, and to do science.

However, we must be careful! We must avoid magical thinking - ooohhh, they have special powers and are beyond us! 

And we mustn't turn the story into one that denies disability. 

All too often a fight for acceptance trips over into a fight to indulge our instabilities or disabilities.

When one sense is lessened we often enhance another. This we know. But it's not like the superpowers we see in film and comic books, and I think we know this too.

When my mom first adopted our autistic brother, Dar, my little sister and I watched the movie The Boy Who Could Fly with fascination. The boy in the film is autistic (a term we had never heard before mom adopted Dar) and though the boy did not talk, it turned out he could fly. So, our new brother must also be able to fly! We waited, we asked him, we closed our eyes and told him to do it while we weren't looking. Eventually, disappointed and disillusioned, we came to realize that our brother was not going to fly. We gave up asking him. In fact, for a while, we sort of gave up on him. Our poor brother. He probably wanted to fly away from our disappointed attitudes. 

Our dear brother. His lifelong quest of attempting clear communication has been fraught with challenges. When he was still in school and practicing facilitated communication, his ability to push words into mom's mind, but not often the mind's of others, was initially frustrating and eventually dangerous, causing a few terrible situations. One leading to a painful court case. She explores all of this in candid detail in her phenomenal book Miracles are Made: A Real Life Guide to Autism (published 2011).
  

Neither mom nor I have yet listened to The Telepathy Tapes, but we both appreciate their relevance. My mom more so. Not only because of her own experiences but because of the conversations and challenges she sees in homes around the world. For more than forty years my mom has been discussing this phenomenon with families from every culture, economic background, and belief system. It is not an uncommon issue and it deserves to be explored. Carefully. 

If autistics can communicate using more of their senses, it follows that most of us have the potential to do so as well.Whether it is telepathy or other advanced skills of nonverbal communication it is worth our attention.

The power this science can have to guide - or misguide - us as a community is clear.

Not the science itself so much as how we handle it. 

Let's handle with care. 

Hugs, smiles, and love!

Tsara on X.com

 

 

Book Review: The Way of Men by Jack Donovan

 

 

Even before I became a mother to boys, I was unexplainably curious about what it meant to be a good man. No, that's not quite right. I was curious about what it meant to try to be a good man, to contemplate it and to make choices in pursuit of it, to wrestle with those questions as boys becoming men. 

I don't know why I was so interested in the quest for manhood. I was (and am) a girl. A girl who was (and is) quite happy being a girl. More than happy since my ultimate dream has always been to be a mom.

Eventually I become a mother. And as luck would have it, I am the mother of four boys. Boys who have (and still do) wrestle with the questions of manhood. 

My interest in the subject of being a good man, and being good at being a man, obviously increased.

This book then, The Way of Men, hits that nail on the head.

That's not to say I considered it the answer to my questions, but certainly it explored the theme and explored it well. 

In the preface the author, Jack Donovan, claims the book is his answer to the question: "What is masculinity?"

I think the book does a good job of examining that question. It is straight forward, thought provoking, ballsy, interesting, often funny, and powerful. It offered ideas I don't think I would have imagined on my own. 

By stripping away much of the mess we make in creating civilization Jack Donovan boils things down to their basic elements; to the core of men and the nature of them. I appreciate that he doesn't stop there, though. He admits that he likes - believes in - an element of civilizing and ease of living. He believes in seeking a healthy balance, for the sake of men and masculinity. He explores civilizations and the dangers they often present to The Way of Men; he also offers suggestions and warns us of the harm in not making necessary shifts. 

I like, too, that he separates the ideas of "Being a Good Man" and "Being Good at Being a Man". Throughout my life I have been curious about the plight of being a good man, but it hadn't occurred to me that being a good man and being good at being a man could be two different things. By looking at them separately, I felt invigorated and armed with a clearer way of understanding people.

The Way of Men came to several conclusions I for sure don't agree with (and a few I was devastated by) but it also laid out some well constructed concepts I think are important.

This isn't a book I'm compelled to run around recommending but I wouldn't avoid suggesting it either. 

If it calls to you and you do read it, I recommend reading it with a willingness to consider the ideas presented without prejudice, while also remembering to examine them as ideas, not ultimate truths. 

So much of this book is of value. All of it is of interest and valid. And even though I strongly want to push back on a fair bit of it I also can't deny the necessity of considering it as a whole.

Part of me wishes I had read it when my sons were still small, but part of me is glad I didn't. I'm not confident that the me I was back then would have been aware of the aspects I think need to be reconsidered, re-imagined, or simply thrown out.

Of course, the me I am going to be several years from now will probably have such different things to think about everything, including this book. 

Oh, life. How you unceasingly seem to evolve me. 

 

Thank you for offering me literature that helps me influence that evolution. (Such is The Way of Reading).

Hugs, smiles, and love!

Tsara Shelton (X.com)

Autism Answer: Linger Longer

 

 

My mom (long hair) and her friend Conni (short hair) laying on a towel in the grass when they were twelve years old

When I was a little girl I used to look deep and long at photos of my mom when she was a little girl. I would focus, unfocus, refocus my eyes, will myself to fall into it; into my mom before she was a woman.

The woman I looked up at with all the love in the world had been a little girl; was still a little girl in those photos. A little girl, like me. 

But not me. 

How? How was my mom once a girl? What did that mean? 

I wanted wanted wanted to know her thoughts, her experiences, her dreams. I tried to imagine them, but it was tainted, wrong, it was me imagining. I wanted to KNOW. I'd ask her, and lucky for me my mom was the sort of woman who would answer these probing questions from her daughter. And I was confident she was answering honestly. But they were the answers of a woman, shared with a girl who was not her, and I knew that fell far short from knowing. 

I'd try again. Bringing mom's imperfect answers with me I'd fall into the eyes of the girl in the photo, try to disappear most of the girl that was me - hold onto only enough of me to remember what it was I was seeking from the image of my mom as she was, which was a moment of my mom as she became... 

This is what it can be to look at and imagine. To take our time, think, wonder. Linger. Linger longer. I was not the only one doing it, I'm sure.

Lately, though, I notice so many people looking merely for seemingly superficial purposes. Quick successive jolts of image inducing reactions, it seems like? Perhaps for the jolt of chemicals our brains release when seeing something beautiful, shocking, sexy, rage inducing. 

I see people look quickly, move on; seek more. 

There is less moving within, moving along, allowing more, thinking and wondering and exploring the images; going where they take us, thinking about things along the way. People still linger, but it seems they stay only until the initial jolt of emotion has waned and then they move on for more of that, more closely related to the jolt. Reading and leaving comments is too often a way to stay jolted, it is not often enough a type of deeper exploration. 

It is entirely human to engage in emotion through our senses. I think this is what I was doing as a little girl desiring to know my mom as she was; to feel myself be known by her as well. Yes, I think I was doing that too. Wanting the little girl that was my mom to know the little girl that was me. 

But I worry that without the longer linger, without the deeper explorations and thoughts, the adjusting of ourselves along the way, the noticing of our thoughts and the recognition of our limitations, we are merely addicts. Brain-chemical junkies. 

Not all of us have vision, or are able to use sight in this way, but those of us who are able might want to consider lingering longer. Listening to what we are thinking, and exploring why we are thinking it. Teasing out the motivations - our own, the image sharers - and allowing the chemicals to run their course before we seek the next hit. 

We are relentlessly exposed to images intended to make us want, hunger, hate. 

Images intended to make us smile, laugh, feel peace. 

These images on their own can also encourage us to think. But if we do not linger long enough, they simply encourage an addiction to more images giving us a feeling. 

A feeling that is our own, yet we are too easily allowing outside images to do the job of jump-starting our emotions. Of corralling them.

I like the idea of lingering longer.

Of exploring what my inside is telling me - not only from the first jolt but on into the day. To allow thinking and exploring to be organically my own, not overly influenced, though admittedly influenced.

I like influence, I like sharing, I like learning from outside of me. 

I like seeing my mom as a girl, looking into her eyes and asking what she sees and how she hopes to be seen. 

We are what we consume and those of us with sight are obligated to consume images. 

When we linger longer we can find time to include the nutrition our capacity to think, care, and understand truly requires. To exercise those muscles; that skill.

Happy New Year friends!

I hope you'll linger longer with me!

(Even though I used the word exercise. tee hee!) 

Hugs, smiles, and love!! 

Autism Answers with Tsara Shelton (X.com)

Family portrait: my aunt Delmarie, my grandma, my grandpa, my mom (left to right)

Autism Answer: Heavenly Home and the Words we use to Describe it

 
 

 I originally wrote this piece for my column on Disabled World. I am sharing it here with permission.

 

Louloua Smadi and Lynette Louise

 

A few years ago I was taking minutes in an important business meeting for All Brains Grow….

Okay, I will be honest with you. I wasn’t taking minutes exactly; I was taking notes. I wrote “taking minutes” because that asks you to picture me in a specific role; one where I am professional and potentially necessary, but not overly responsible for what is said or done. Taking minutes in a meeting is a requirement of many businesses, whereas taking notes is less professional sounding but a good idea.

In the meeting I was encouraged to be engaged, to include my thoughts and opinions, to recognize areas that were not being addressed or were hard to understand. Mostly, though, during those beginning meetings between Lynette Louise, Louloua Smadi and their team, my action was to take notes while they designed a website and online course meant to share the behavior, bio-play, and neuroplasticity knowledge they teach to families and schools around the globe. Responding techniques and brain science that effectively helps people with special needs and/or traumatized brains. All Brains Grow and they want to share with as many people as they can how to grow them with intention, confidence, and expertise.

I am Lynette’s daughter and personal assistant. I have been her daughter since my birth (unlike several of my siblings who came along at older, sometimes even teen, ages) and her personal assistant fairly consistently since my teen years.

Louloua is not my sibling, and though I feel sometimes like she is I am kind of glad she isn’t. If she were, I might have to be jealous. She is beautiful, multilingual, holistically intelligent, and ever so empathetic. More than that, she is enthusiastic about taking up the torch and partnering with mom while I am enthusiastic about being less hands on and more of a sideline cheerleader. I am not being self-depreciating, I do see my value from the sidelines, but I am also aware that my unwillingness to be in the hands-on position leaves me in a more comfortable less vulnerable space. Hence, I might be a little bit jealous of Louloua if she was my sister. (I recognize this because I am a little bit jealous of Brandessa, my hands-on leadership sister. I am also her enthusiastic cheer leader.)

Being invited to take notes and offer ideas to the All Brains Grow team as they began building an online course for parents around the world, using their combined experience and expertise, their delightfully different styles and cultures, I was full of gratitude.

As neuroplasticians, play therapists, moms, siblings, and individuals these women are aware and experienced in the art of caring about special needs and learning disabilities. They focus on environments and families.  Never on a broken child. A broken person.

They teach the science and skills of neurofeedback and bio-play.

Bio-play takes the science of biofeedback, the learning enhancement of play, and the knowledge of everyday living, and brings it together into a lifestyle of easy living while learning.
They are gifted at giving parents and caregivers the understanding and information necessary to become experts in the lives of their children and the home they are building. As I said years ago in my notes: Making bio-play effortless so time at home is easy and everyone grows smarter and healthier. Heaven at home.
 
And now, Heavenly Home is the name of the course.
 
And it is names I want most to mention here.

Due to their combined years of making change happen in lives that were desperate for it, making miracles happen with behavior science and persistence, knowing what needed to be taught and exampled in the course they were building wasn’t as hard to hash out as knowing what words to use in their lessons and literature.

And this is the thing: they work and live in different places around the world, languages change and people they work with most often struggle with communication, yet people are easily emotionally charged and ready to react unnecessarily strongly to word choices.

It is not the opinion of thinking people that we should not discuss the power our language has. Indeed, Lynette and Louloua are wonderful at pointing out how the language you use in your home will indicate deeper meaning and influence behaviors. However, whether you use terms like special needs, learning disabled, autistic, brain dysfunction, or neurodiverse, does not mean you are more or less “right” but more likely means you have adopted language based on what you hear and see around you. The names and words we use are worth examining. They are always worth considering, and changes in the way we speak of and to each other do make changes in the way we see ourselves and each other, leading to changes in our ability to gain skills and grow healthy.
 
But arguing about the words is not the point: considering them is. As I took notes that day, I listened to the women consider and care about the language.  Not to pander or push back but as a result of how much they consider and care about people.

This is the part we want to hold onto and take the strongest action on: the people we are talking with while we use our words. The people are the point, the words are our attempt to connect.

Those conversations and my notes are a few years old now. Since then there has been much filming, transcribing, consulting, and teaching. All Brains Grow is now a website with an online course for parents and caregivers of people with special needs that is being utilized by parents around the world. It is a beautiful way to use technology in order to help families in their homes, in the space they spend most of their time and where intentional informed responding most needs to happen.

Heavenly Homes is about creating a heaven at home by knowing what to do to help your family grow healthier and more skilled. Happier.

Heaven at home is knowing when to give attention and when not to give attention, knowing when (and what) to play and when not to play, knowing when to punish and when not to punish; knowing when to be scheduled and strict and when to be free and spontaneous. Heaven at home is being armed with knowledge so you can be a quick effective responder.

The name of the course is Heavenly Home.  Heaven is used because that is the feeling they want to create, the feeling the word evokes. It would not be impossible for people to choose to be angry at the heaven inference. They could decide it is blasphemous. Or they could infer that there is religion involved and choose to avoid it. Even scoff at it.

But Heavenly Home got its name on that day I was taking notes when the team talked passionately about wanting to help families create a space at home that was wonderful. Where they knew how to encourage growth, acceptance, and skill acquisition and be their own experts. Where they would know what to do when challenges presented themselves.
 
Knowing what to do is a heavenly gift.

However you choose to say it. 

Hugs, smiles, and love!!

~Tsara

 

Autism Answer: Shoes - an Invention.

 

 

My shoes by a tree

Like a slightly cool tickle on my skin, that's how the early morning breeze felt. Summer's second half in Quebec offers the mornings I missed so deeply when living in Texas. 

 

Wearing a t-shirt and shorts I stood on our driveway, facing out toward the river across the street. I am not a particularly visual person, but it is a wonderful view. I focused on the feeling of my hands wrapped around my mug of coffee. It is a little warm, but more than that it conjures up an image of myself as a woman. In my youth I pictured a woman in nature, sipping coffee and contemplating the world slowly, as the iconic woman. The woman to aim toward becoming. By focusing on my hands, I was that woman. 

 

Next, I stepped my bare feet off of our concrete driveway and slipped them onto the grass of our lawn. 

 

The first thing I felt was the coolness, quickly followed by wet. The dew is delightful and refreshing on my feet. It feels like camping. 

 

The pleasure I take in each sensation is remarkable; you might think I don't do this most mornings. But I do. The pleasure does not fade. 

 

The thoughts that tumble through my mind are rarely brilliant, sensational, or earth shattering. But they are lovely. 

 

Informed by the environment and the sensations, my delight in the feeling of feet on cool wet grass this morning led me to think about shoes as an invention. 

 

As I moved around on the grass, under the maple tree and then away from it, sipping my lukewarm coffee and being that iconic woman, I imagined people ever so long ago moving about in bare feet and knowing no other way. Their feet would have been different from mine, and the sensations would have been different as well. There is something healthy about bare feet. But they also would have gotten deep cuts that lead to infections. They would have been unable to inhabit certain spaces or move as quickly in them. They would have been frostbitten. Their bare feet would have been much stronger than mine, but still bare. As foot coverings were invented they would have been celebrated, I'm guessing, by many. Also, I imagine, they would have been scoffed at. The feeling might have been weird and unyielding, and the disconnect from the earth might have felt unfamiliar and awkward. But the perks of protecting feet are very real. Life saving. And the ability to more easily go where we once struggled to go is always appealing. 

 

And then from simply covering our feet to creating shoes. I imagined two long ago cavemen as I moved from the grass back to the concrete pavers of our driveway where I enjoyed the rough texture and tiny runaway rocks - the grit - under my feet. I imagined these men discussing, with invisible to me communication, the invention of these shoes. 

 

One was adamantly against it. They made us less connected to the earth, they made our feet too soft and sensitive, they made people move into places on the planet not meant for us where we proceeded to beat it into submission, to renovate it for our own purposes. This would not be good, he communicated with grunts and motions and invisible understandings, for the way of life. 

 

His companion was declaring the ridiculousness of resisting progress. Nay, the cruelty of it. These shoes save lives. Not only by protecting feet but also by granting them the ability to move farther, beyond previous limits. Imagine the food they could forage! The food they could hunt! We had not been granted such thick paws or hooves like other animals, but we can make them. Make something better even.

 

As I imagined, I moved around again. Back I went to our lawn, bare feet on wet grass, the grass relieving me of the tiny pebbles that were sticking to the skin of my soles. The morning was beginning to pick up and a few cars passed by. There is a small road, as well as a bike path, between our lawn and the river. I like it. 

 

I sipped my coffee and imagined those cavemen recognizing that they were both right. I moved back under the maple tree to step up onto the wooden bench placed beneath it, granting me a neat feeling of being a little taller (standing on a bench) and also a little hidden (in the leaves of the maple tree). 

 

I imagined them sitting on boulders and wearing traditional caveman garb (I've seen the Flintstones so I know the style of the times.) while continuing to debate the various issues of their topic. Shoes. 

 

My bare feet were planted firmly on the bench, the skin of my legs and arms pleasantly tickled by the breeze, the sound of the leaves dancing in the tree above me, rustling, invited my lips to curl upward as I closed my eyes and tuned in. How I adore that sound! 

 

I imagined these cavemen knowing that shoes were not a bad invention, they did not disagree on that, but they could not agree on what was more important - limiting certain things or forging forcefully forward. 

 

As I stood on that bench in my bare feet, loving the option to walk this way in our grass, I noticed the cars becoming a little more frequent. I tried to sip my coffee and noticed there was no more to sip. I recognized it was time to head indoors and drive my step-daughter to her bus stop. 

 

Whispering a quiet imaginary goodby to my imaginary caveman friends I made my way into our large home with a pool, a solarium, five bathrooms (one ever so fancily outside by the pool), and climbed comfortably with my step-daughter into our 2016 SUV where she paused her tik toks (but did not remove her Bluetooth headphones) in order to chit chat with me while we drove through the light traffic, past a plethora of homes in a variety of sizes and styles, careful not to hit the many squirrels that like to fritter from tree to tree despite any roads between them, to her bus terminus. This I did happily and comfortably. 

 

But guess what?

 

I chose not to wear any shoes. 

 

Hugs, smiles, and love!!!

Tsara Shelton (X.com)

Book Review: Left Neglected by Lisa Genova

 

 

Left Neglected

Book: Left Neglected
Author: Lisa Genova
Publish date: July 2011
Paperback Pages: 352

 

I didn’t think my mom was lying exactly. It’s just – I don’t know, I couldn’t fathom it. I mean, she couldn’t see anything on her left? Only on her left?

My mom’s left hemisphere neglect – the result of an injury to the right hemisphere of her brain (she hit her head hard while working in Paris) - was short lived and minimally disabling, in part because mom is a brain and behavior expert with the skills, tools, and knowledge of how to help herself immediately.¹  Due to my mom’s ability to turn things around and make good use of them, it became like so many things happening to my mom: something that makes her seem weird while giving her a deeper knowledge and understanding of brain and behavior.

However, for so many others (including Sarah, the main character in Left Neglected) it is far more life changing and challenging.

Left Neglected is the second novel by Lisa Genova, author of Still Alice. Both books center on super successful women who are compelled to re-frame their own versions of success when confronted with neurological dysfunctions.

In Still Alice, the dysfunction is early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. 

For Sarah in Left Neglected it is left neglect, an arguably less famous but still significant condition.

The novel begins by dropping readers into the non-stop chaos of Sarah’s home and work life. Both Sarah and her husband, Bob, are competitive high achievers. They have three adorable children (I fell in love with them instantly!) and their oldest – a first grader – is struggling both at school and at home to follow directions and complete assignments. With both parents working all hours and paying for two homes they are blessed to also have the help of a twenty-two-year-old nanny, Abby. She lives ten minutes away, has a degree in psychology, and adores the children. 

The pace of their life, of the story, of Sarah’s inner dialogue, is go go go. There is always something needing to be done, someone needing to be delegated to do it, and goals to keep an eye on. It is hurried, but not unhappy. The group works well as a team and though they rarely take a moment to enjoy it, they are enjoying it. It fits into the dream they have for their lives.

However, Sarah is in an accident on her way to work and wakes up missing the entire left side of her vision. She cannot see or attend to anything on her left. The speed with which she moved through her life is no longer available to her.

It is hard to describe what it’s like to have left neglect. In Sarah’s experience (as in my mom’s) she thinks she’s seeing everything. Everything appears whole to her, yet she is consistently unable to see, feel, or attend to the left. For example, she’ll finish eating all the food on her plate, be certain it is all gone, yet everything on the left remains. She is not seeing it, but she also cannot recognize that she is not seeing it. Walking and dressing are nearly impossible at first because her left side does not exist for her. It isn’t paralyzed, it isn’t missing, it just isn’t.

In therapy she practices focusing on moving, seeing, feeling, and being aware of the left. These descriptions are fascinating and hard to hold onto. As a reader I both could and could not quite understand. Which, of course, is true of trying to understand anything completely foreign to our experience.

As the story goes on, now hindered by Sarah’s inability to see the left, we slow down. (Though Sarah does not do so easily! As in keeping with her character she plans to beat this thing; to impress everyone with her ability to win therapy.) In slowing down we see new things. Sarah’s mom reenters her life and it is a turbulent reunion. Sarah has anger toward her mother for not being available to her as she grew up. She struggles to allow her to be there for her now.

Sarah’s hardships inspire a new kind of connection with her oldest son, and together they discover creative ideas for their challenges with homework and reading.

Sarah’s internal debates about being handicapped are candid. At first, she refuses to accept herself as a disabled person. She feels certain that she can push and work her way out.

Hence, as adaptations are presented, she wrestles with the question of whether it is giving up to accept tools designed to assist her as a disabled person. Is it giving up to snowboard with assistance when she really wants to ski without it? Will she become complacent? Will she stop insisting on healing?

Lucky for us she chooses to accept the opportunities offered by the New England Handicapped Sports Association (NEHSA)² – a real organization – and we go snowboarding. Sarah’s world becomes bigger.

With this new movement, this new momentum and adaptations, Sarah sees a new idea for a different life that might suit her and her family well.

The book does a lovely (though not exactly subtle) job of reminding readers that many of us are voluntarily neglecting entire aspects of our own lives, for a variety of reasons in a variety of ways.

Because of Sarah’s brain trauma she gains a new beautiful relationship with her mom, she finds time and meaningful ways to be with her children, she accepts employment that feels holistically fulfilling. She does not judge the life she was living before, and indeed misses elements of it. However, by adapting she has also created something more suitable and sustainable for her family.

It is a nice reminder that we can be proud of who we were even when we choose to be someone new, evolving and progressing does not have to include disliking or disapproving of the past.

Left Neglected is a good book with a lovely message: that left neglect is a real thing so maybe my mom wasn’t making it up when she said she couldn’t see anything on the left.

(Hmmmm? Pardon me? I see, I’m being handed a note that tells me my mom was not, in fact, the moral of the story. I will rewrite that.)

Left Neglected is a good book with a lovely message: that a single moment can derail everything you’re becoming but if you do the work of adapting, if you do not neglect the opportunities and people around you, life can become a different yet equal success.

 

1.    If you are interested in my mom’s work as a brain and behavior expert, or simply curious about such a weird and wonderful mom of eight, you can visit her websites to see books, videos, and so much more, here: www.lynettelouise.com / www.brainbody.net

2.   To learn more about the New England Handicapped Sports Association you can visit their website by following this link: https://nehsa.org/

 

Hugs, smiles, and love!!

Autism Answers with Tsara Shelton (Facebook)