What are we afraid of?

Sarah Stup
Tito Mukhopadhyay
Ido Kedar
Tracy Thresher
Keli
Larry Bisonnette
Philip
Emma
Naoki Higashida
Barb Rentenbach
Chammi
Baxter Wilson-Rul
Henry Miles Frost
Will Schuetze
Michael Weinstein
DJ Savarese
Carly Fleischmann
Andrew Rhea
Sue Rubin
Amy Sequenzia
Kayla Takeuchi
Jamie Burke
Peyton Goddard
Tom Page

In case you don't want to follow each link -- though I really hope you will -- the commonality among these people is that each is an autistic person who types or uses the letter board to communicate. Some need support and some communicate independently. All of them have put in a tremendous amount of effort to get where they are today. All of them endured what my son did: years and years of silence while being thought by others to have low intellectual capacity. Upon finding their voice in adolescence or adulthood they each described their autism as an experience of being locked in a body they could not control. Indeed, there is a growing understanding of autism as a motor control disorder.

These are just some of the people who have found their voice through written language. Their stories are compelling. There are many others. Their voices, all, rise up wanting to be heard. As Oliver wrote a few weeks ago:  

You should try to listen more to people that can finally tell what it is you are trying to understand. We want you to hear us so our lives can be easier. 

Why are so many people afraid to believe that these individuals are unique in anything other than opportunity? That similar stories might be told a thousand times over?

I would write more but instead, I will leave you with a link to the more eloquent words of Tracy Kedar.