I’ve become obsessed with my kindergarten graduation. Initially, the video was painful to watch: I am stimming, I am ticcing, I am moving — in ways that visibly differ from my peers.
But lately, I am resisting passing. When I teach, I talk through and about my stims. I fire my rubber bands across the room, trip over classroom furniture, flap and wrench my fingers, rock back and forth as my elbows grate against the whiteboard. This is me, I say. My body is narrating.
When I first read about The Loud Hands Project, I flashbacked to kindergarten and flashforwarded to my future as a teacher. I imagine a world where my hands roam free, where stimming is simply a part of being — and I created the video below as part of that imagining. I hesitate to call this video a poem (because a poet I ain’t). So, I’ll simply call it a stimfest. A captioned stimfest.
From the Loud Hands website:
The Loud Hands Project is a transmedia publishing and creative effort by the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, spearheaded by Julia Bascom. Currently, we are raising money towards the creation of our first and foundational anthology (Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking) and accompanying website.
Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking features submissions by Autistic authors speaking about neurodiversity, Autistic pride and culture, disability rights and resistance, and resilience (known collectively by the community as having loud hands)
I’m excited about this project, to say the least, and encourage you to read through the project’s website [preferably while hand-flapping]! Stim hard, people. Let your bodies be lively.
Fuck Yeah.
@Savannah: 😀
Oh, this is so perfect. It is like you wrote it about me… just with? a different gender, age, movements, examples, but otherwise exactly the same 🙂
Your video blog! LOVE! Jumping-up-and-down LOVE! Thank you!
I am figuring this stuff out about myself at the age of 59. Your video made me realize, a) that there are/were surprisingly few pictures of me as a kid, b) that that is odd, and I never noticed — neither noticed that they were missing nor that it was odd, and, c) they are missing because they caught me being geeky or goofy. Thank you and thanks to everyone involved in Loud Hands! You are giving me permission, at the age of 59, to STOP HOLDING MY BREATH!!!
For the most part I do allow my hands that freedom, though quite oft they will take it for themselves whether “I” will it or no. Gawd only knows what people think, though I suspect after a while they just stop noticing.
BEAUTIFUL! Both the video & you. Be yourself, stay yourself—you are perfectly made.
As a mommy who wants her boy to be who he is, this is encouraging to me…to stick it out when others might stare, to allow him to be who he is even when I worry that he won’t be accepted…I will love him no matter what and I pray that in my loving him, in my showing him that I believe God made Him on purpose, he will love himself and be himself in all ways, all the time. You’re beautiful.
I am going to show this to my 14 year old who stims a lot.
I love how you expressed “My body is narrating…”
Off to tell him to embrace his body being lively! Thank you.
Sexy as hell.