The first fun thing was my favorite one, and that was just to spend most of a day at the beach. I really enjoyed swimming in the ocean, and it was fun doing it with Ben and Becky. I’ve talked about this before, but the rhythm of the ocean waves is soothing to me. I feel more comfortable in the water than I used to, so I really enjoyed just being out there.  We swam some over a few different days. The last time was with snorkel gear and that was really fun. It is like being inside an aquarium seeing all the fish. I loved that.  

Another fun ocean activity was kayaking out to a small island with the King family. When we got to the island beach, there were several monk seals just laying there. It was awesome to see them outside of a zoo. There were also a ton of nesting birds all over the place. It was fun to hike on the lava rock around the island and watch the tide try to knock us off our feet.  

We got to spend a full day at the Polynesian Cultural Center learning about the cultures of not just Hawaii but other islands in the Pacific that I didn’t know anything about before. The food and entertainment there was awesome.  

We had a fun day hiking with Renee Dieperink who took us to a Japanese temple, a cool hike to a military bunker, a secret beach, and an ancient Hawaiian temple site. She taught us a lot about the history of those places as we went which was cool to learn.

On our last day, we also went to Pearl Harbor and to the museum there. We went on a boat to the USS Arizona. It was a good reminder of the sacrifices that our service members are willing to make to protect our country.  

I loved my trip to Hawaii and would love to go back someday.

Thanks to everyone we met there that worked so hard to make our trip meaningful. 

Aloha Hawaii

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I live in the mountainous state of Colorado. I love the cool, dry air and all the fun things there are to do in the mountains, but if I had a second choice, it would be on a beach. It was kind of rainy when we were in Hawaii, so it wasn’t exactly a lot of “fun in the sun,” but I still loved the 70-degree weather and the mild humidity.

Being outside is my favorite thing, and I could definitely get used to being outside all year without ever getting super cold. I also loved the green mountains and the huge variety of trees and plants that covered them.

Of course, the ocean was my favorite part. I love the soothing sound of the waves hitting the beach and watching the birds trying to grab their dinner before another wave hit. (The birds were also pretty good at grabbing their dinner from my plate of food at any outdoor restaurant where we ate.)  I love swimming in the ocean, too. It is fun to get jostled around in the water and to poke your head under and get to see pretty fish of all varieties. If I lived there, I definitely would be at the beach as much as possible.

I loved the barbecued meat and the shave ice. That was my favorite food. 

I hope that I can go back to Hawaii someday, and I want to explore some other beach destinations as well. Just like the woods, the ocean seems to absorb my anxiety and lets my brain function better. 

Here are links to my other Hawaii posts: The State of Aloha, Hawaii: the people.

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First, a shout out to my own family. Of course, I have to thank my mom and dad for making it happen and for giving us the chance to go together. It was fun to spend a week with my brother, Ben, and his wife, Becky. It was really the first chance to hang out with them since they got married last year, other than a couple of days around New Years. They are fun and are patient with me. I especially liked swimming in the ocean together.

Second, I was blessed to meet several people connected to the spelling community and really enjoyed spending time with them.  Renee Dieperink is an S2C practitioner whom I first met via email after she had found some of my blog posts and turned them into lessons for other spellers. That was very meaningful to me that she did that.  She happens to live on Oahu and volunteered a whole day of her time to show us some very cool places and teach us a lot about Hawaii. Thank you, Renee!  

The next day, we spent with the Kings. Don, Dane, and Beau took us kayaking on the ocean out to a small island full of nesting birds and a few lounging monk seals. It was really fun. The next day, they hosted a pool party at their house where I got to meet some other super nice people including Julianne King, Janet and Ryan Edghill, Cynthia and Dara Bartlett, and Hadas Gabai (who is almost finished training to become an S2C practitioner.)

Beau, Ryan, and Dara are all spellers like me. I enjoyed just being with others who share a common experience with me. We don’t need speaking conversations to bond with each other.   It was fun to make new friends. Thanks to all of you for sharing your time and your beautiful island with us. 

Finally, I loved learning about the cultures of multiple different island nations during our day at the Polynesian Cultural Center.  I love how important family and traditions are to the Polynesian people.  I could feel the warmth of their spirits and am thankful that they shared a little bit of themselves with me. 

The interaction with my family and many new friends was definitely the highlight of the trip for me. 

For other blogs about my trip, read: The State of Aloha

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Today I am feeling lucky because I’m writing this from Hawaii.  I have wanted to come here for a while, and we were able to make it happen this spring.

So many cool things to write about, but today’s topic is about the Hawaiian word “aloha.”

It has multiple meanings including “hello,” “goodbye,” and “I love you.”

“I love you” as a greeting and a send-off is super cool. I wish that we mainlanders would adopt a similar culture. From what I have seen and experienced here so far, it isn’t just something to put on a tee shirt but is truly how the wonderful people here live.

Thanks for sharing aloha with me and my family. 

More blog posts to come but here is a link to the next one about the people of Hawaii that I met.

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Every spring, when I can start going outside without bundling up, I love feeling the warmth of the sun on my body. It makes me look forward to summer hikes and seeing everything turn back to green. Colorado is a great place, but the winter doesn’t want to let go sometimes, so in between spring snowstorms, I appreciate the warm days.

Anyway, as I was outside enjoying some sun and pondering in the quiet, my thoughts went to Christ. He is the light that warms us all and changes our night into day and our winters into spring. He shines on all whether they accept that gift or not. But for those who embrace Him, He can take us away from the cold and darkness forever.

As I work on understanding how to truly feel the power of the atonement in my life, I am trying to visualize the Savior by my side during all my struggles and my triumphs. I know that He knows me and loves me and understands me. That is so comforting. He died so that I could live.

I am thankful that I can know Him, too, by study, prayer, and by trying to live like He did. The sun warms my skin, but the Son reaches deep into my heart and nourishes my soul.

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A nice man was in there shopping and when he heard that I was the author, he immediately bought the last copy and asked me to sign it. That was cool and it checked off a goal of mine that I made several years ago: to see my name on the spine of a book in a bookstore.

It’s just a reminder to myself and hopefully you too that setting goals that seem a bit out of reach helps you push yourself to new heights. Unfortunately, today, we forgot to get a picture of me with my book in the store before the customer left so I didn’t get to document the occasion, but it sounds like we might get to do a book signing there so I’ll have another chance.

Cheers to a new year and new dreams!

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I hope you are all doing well. My thoughts today are related to a lecture that I just wrote for a neurodivergent advocacy conference that is happening this week on-line (The Nurture Programme). The conference theme is “radical acceptance” of those of us whose minds function in a different way than the majority. 

My topic was about how easy it is for those who have limited verbal language skills to be overlooked or ignored in our society, effectively making us invisible or anonymous.

I love the term, “radical acceptance.”  My understanding of the word “radical” is something that is dramatically different from the norm. How cool would it be if society suddenly began accepting and celebrating the uniqueness of each person rather than trying to get everyone to conform to a predetermined standard that motivates us to try to be different than who we are? Who gets to decide that standard anyway? 

It would indeed be a radical idea to always find what makes our friends, family members, colleagues, and even competitors different, special, and unique. 

Isn’t it the contrasting colors, textures and perspectives that turn a regular painting into a masterpiece? The world could be a masterpiece. It would take a radical approach.

Be radical. 

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Today is the Motormorphosis conference in Herndon, Virginia. For those who aren’t familiar, it is the flagship conference of the International Association for Spelling as Communication (i-asc.org). This is a wonderful organization that help people with limited verbal language communicate by spelling.  I was supposed to be at the conference but got sick with Covid this week so we had to stay home. But my older brother Ben and my sister-in-law Becky are there on my behalf. They showed me what it was all about over a FaceTime call. It was fun for me to see other people with autism like me who are using their talents to advocate for improved awareness of our abilities.

The feeling that I got, even over the phone, is that these are my friends. In school, I never really had a friend. I’m not trying to write a sob story; I’m just telling the truth. There were plenty of people who were very nice to me, and I even had some peer support advocates who were my age and were very kind. But that is not the same.

A friend is someone whom you can share your feelings with, and they understand you. They want to be around you just because. Autism is a stingy beast. It takes away that capacity to be able to communicate socially and that makes it hard to interact with others.  And even though it would still be tough to have a typical friend relationship as most people would define it, it makes me happy to just know that there are others out there who truly understand me. 

So, cheers to my new non-speaker friends at Motormorphosis in Virginia!  I hope to meet you all in person someday soon. Because I know that you know that just being together is enough.  

Aaron  

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It has been a while since I have written a new blog post. I guess I’ve had a bit of writer’s block and couldn’t think of anything that I thought would be of interest to others. But someone asked me a question on Facebook, and it has given me some new ideas. So, thank you to that person who reached out to me. She wanted to know how I learned to spell before I knew how to express myself with typing. I didn’t start typing until I was around fifteen years old, but my relationship with letters goes back to almost the beginning.

I was between two and three years old when autism began declaring itself in me. I really can’t say if I was unaffected before that. My parents didn’t see any outward signs of it. Anyway, this is the same time that I was learning things like the ABC song and watching Toy Story. As autism took over, those things got trapped in what I would describe as a very sticky mind.

My mind seems to me like a spider web that captures my thoughts and suspends them in midair. I think most brains act as better filters or filers of thoughts and memories. Those brains file memories away in a deep recess somewhere and occasionally conjured them up after an appropriate stimulus. My brain doesn’t seem to have deep recesses, and my memories are always swirling on the surface. I remember things from very early in my childhood that others apparently can’t. It is a blessing but also a curse because all those thoughts are on a carousel in my mind that never stops circulating.

Anyway, letters occupied a large chunk of that space early on, and they became almost like friends or comfort items. I had bins full of plastic or wooden alphabet letters, and I knew every one of them, including what color they were and what set they came from. I would get very upset when any of them got lost.

When I started with ABA and began learning to spell simple words, I became even more fascinated by their power. I started thinking about letter combinations constantly and began experimenting with different sounds. I also began listening for new words or watching on building signs or billboards. I never had the patience to read on my own, but I was learning how to read in my mind just from my environment.

In school, my teachers tended to set the reading bar very low and never raised it by much because I wasn’t able to show them what I knew. But thankfully, my parents always read me age-level books which kept my mind stimulated and learning new things. I especially listened for new words and never forgot them. I figured out what they meant from the context and thought about how I would spell them. The alphabet has rules, and once you figure those out, most words make sense. Of course, the exceptions have to be memorized which I did once I started typing, either because my parents corrected me or I would watch the computer prompts as I spelled and then corrected myself as I typed.

I think most of us non-speakers figure out on our own how to read and spell long before we can actually teach our bodies to cooperate. That is why it is so important to assume competence and teach to our age level. It would avoid so many wasted years and a lot of frustration. I am proud to be part of a group of people who have shown such life resilience and am so happy that many of us are finding our voices. Hopefully by making our voices heard, things will be better for those behind us.

Thanks for reading.

Aaron

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