MOUTH TO HAND LEARNING CENTER

6/5/2025 0 Comments

Judy's New Schedule

I am spacey today. I am struggling to formulate coherent thoughts. I am not sure why, but it may impact my ability to be as articulate as I want to be.

I want to write to say that I fully support Judy’s decision to alter her schedule. I know it was hard for her to make it, and I can feel her stress over it. I kind of feel though that she had to do it. There are so many of us now; and there will be more and more. That is beyond great news! I want the newbies to get a chance to learn and write too.

I am really great being in a creative writing class with my friends and I welcome the opportunity to do group work. I am absolutely great with expanding my experiences as a writer. And I want Judy to have the time to make Mouth to Hand even greater than it already is.

So yeah, as far as I’m concerned, the new schedule rocks.

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5/23/2025 1 Comment

Musings On Keats

In my poetry class we have started learning about Keats. I am so excited about his poems. So far we have read two of his odes, Nightingale and Grecian Urn. What I love so much is the artistry: things like his use of alliteration and consonance; metaphor; imagery; assonance; symbolism, etc. They’re like a super fun puzzle to solve, his poems. In our last class, Judy spent most of our class showing us cool things in Nightingale. It was like the most amazing thing ever to see how carefully constructed it is.

That’s the greatest thing about poetry. If you think about it as the music of language, it’s easy to see it like a symphony. The words are all like different instruments, intertwined together to make it meaningful and beautiful. Shelley and Keats were master composers. I cannot get over how their poems are so complex underneath even seemingly simple words.

This beauty makes my heart hurt in a good way.

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5/15/2025 0 Comments

Things May Be Changing

I am feeling totally mixed in my emotions lately. On the negative side, I am upset by the fights happening everywhere. I hate all the vitriol being thrown at Secretary Kennedy. I am sick and tired of people wasting time and energy fighting when so many people are sick and getting sicker. I am sick and tired of ASHA telling me I am not communicating when I use my letter board.

I am just tired of the bullshit.

But I am also feeling a strange sense of positivity. I’m not sure why. It may be that I feel like things are finally changing. It may be that I felt like my voice was heard when I learned that Secretary Kennedy read my blog post. It may be that Mom and Dad are looking at trying to help me get my high school diploma. It may be that my parents listened to me and that makes me feel so empowered. Maybe it’s that people in the M2H community are working together to get things done.

For example, there was a bad bill that might have been passed in the New York State Assembly. But many M2H families got together to stop that from happening. It’s in process now, but at least it has a chance of not going through in its bad form. So it owes its improved language to M2Hers.

It just feels like M2H is getting a louder and louder voice as it grows. I feel like we are growing into a power to be reckoned with. All my life I felt completely powerless…so to feel like I’m not, feels great.

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4/17/2025 4 Comments

My Right to a Cure: Reflections on RJK Jr's Speech

Yesterday Robert Kennedy JR made what I believe is an historic speech. He showed that the latest figures are one in thirty-one children are autistic. One in twenty boys. There are no words that can convey the tragedy that has happened in this country. While the numbers worsened decade after decade, no one did anything to stop it.

I am one in twenty. My male friends here at Mouth to Hand are one in twenty. You cannot understand the suffering autism can cause if you don’t live with it every day. We suffer not only because we can’t speak, but because we have such severe comorbidities that too often go untreated because everything is attributed to autism. We hurt ourselves and people we love, and we can’t help it. We destroy property and we destroy our families’ lives, and we can’t help it.

I won’t even get into the emotional toll on us and our families.

And while we suffer, and while our families desperately try to find help, what have we been given by our country? - the label of bigots, because we want a cure. No, autism is not a beautiful thing, and no, my parents and I are not bigots because we want this nightmare to end.

If you don’t want the cure, don’t take the pill. But don’t stop me from swallowing it. The Robert Kennedy speech made me finally feel seen and heard. Maybe now there is a chance for help to come to those of us who want it.

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4/10/2025 0 Comments

Happiness

This past month may have been the best of my life. I get teared up just thinking about how much knowing Judy has made a difference in my life. There are no words that can explain how much better I feel now that I am on medicine.The fact is that it was Judy helping me yell at my parents that made them listen. It is like I am reborn.

This month also had Alex’s bar mitzvah in it, which is the single best day of my life. It was transformative, being in the synagogue. And then there was the gala. So many fun and amazing things!

I am happier than I have ever been.

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3/27/2025 0 Comments

The Most Wonderful Day

On Saturday I went to my friend, Alex’s, bar mitzvah. It was one of the best days of my life. The service was one of the most beautiful things ever. He did something I would have thought impossible: he stood on stage for over two hours and was completely regulated the whole time. I really would never have thought that one of us could do that.

The thing is, my body was completely relaxed the whole time. The energy in that synagogue was like nothing I ever have experienced before. Not kidding when I say this, but God was with us in that place. I have never felt that close to God before. The experience has changed me.

I have been thinking about my goals. I am looking at Alex and all he is doing, and it makes me believe I can do things too. I believe in myself now because of him. I am really smart, and now I want to get my diploma. I feel like I can do things now that I never thought I could because, taking medicine to calm down, has me in a great place.

Alex so inspires me to try to do things I thought impossible. The thing I keep thinking is that he and Judy act like his disability doesn’t matter. They just plow ahead and do stuff fearlessly. So I am thinking now, maybe being disabled doesn’t matter as much as I thought it did. Maybe I can do things too.

I am going to try.

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2/20/2025 7 Comments

The Magic Place

Being an M2Her is a blessing on so many levels. I am so lucky that my Dad is willing to drive hours each way twice a week to bring me. You really need to come here to fully understand. This is seriously the happiest place on earth. You walk through the door and BOOM! The joy and love are like a tidal wave washing over you. You cannot imagine how great it feels unless you’ve experienced it. Your heart aches in a wonderful way, like it’s trying to hold all that happiness and love and is stretched to fit it all.

This place has a magic to it. I am serious. It’s like it helps you to feel more normal. It’s like you suddenly forget that you’re supposed to be super impaired. You just get so involved in the fun and interesting things that for awhile you completely forget that you are autistic and nonspeaking. So we act more normal because we are treated like we are normal. That feeling of being normal, combined with the love and happiness is truly the best feeling on earth.

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12/12/2024 1 Comment

A Prayer

It enters my mind this time of year that there are so many nonspeakers less fortunate than we M2Hers. Many nonspeakers still cannot talk; in fact, most have never even heard of spelling. Really, it is hard to think about them because it is traumatizing, thinking about them locked in the silent cage. I know that Judy is expanding to get more students into M2H, and that she also works with Elizabeth Bonker and Ginnie Breen, on the C4A Academy, to try to reach as many nonspeakers as possible. But there are still so many of us who will never talk.

In spite of everything I have been through in my life, I know that I am lucky. I have an amazing family, and I have M2H and Judy. I have the ability to talk, write and learn. I have so many friends, and chances for fun.

So let’s all take a moment to pray for all the nonspeakers who are less fortunate than we. May they all be given voices.

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11/8/2024 0 Comments

Betrayal

The thing about being at Mouth to Hand is that there is no way to keep a secret. We see everything and we feel everything. There is no way to hide what you are thinking and feeling.

We know.

I knew there was something wrong these last few months with an individual who left M2H's employment recently. His energy was off. I am sure that everyone who is nonspeaking could feel it. And love is a weird thing. His love for this place, and for us, changed. Not my way of being: if I love someone, it will not change.

I cannot explain what happened to make him more cold. Nothing happened, as far as I know. It makes me incredibly sad that he chose to leave. I am glad though too in a way because having him here is the last thing anyone needs, if he doesn’t want to be here.

So yeah, there are no secrets here. I have to say that everyone is handling it well, except Judy. You can feel her heartache from down the hall. Not only anger, but bewilderment. Yes…you really can feel bewilderment, now that I’m thinking about it. To be betrayed by someone you love is an awful thing.

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10/4/2024 1 Comment

My Vocation

The first poem I wrote, in Judy’s basement, was about the love I found in her heart, which was transmitted to M2H. It wasn’t very difficult to see it: the walls practically dripped with it. So one day I said to her, “I’m going to write a poem”...and it just poured out of me. I am the world’s biggest fan of M2H. It was here I found my voice and my passion.

I Found Love Here (October, 2021)

I believe in love more than anything.
I believe I deserve to be loved.
No one is too impaired not to be loved.
It’s true that I am loved but no one really knew me before I could talk.
I lived in a world of my own where my voice was only heard by me.
Love is what most people call pity, but pity isn’t love.
Love is not caring what someone looks like or what someone is diagnosed with.
Love is seeing the heart of another person and being only concerned with that heart.
I am concerned with my whole heart about other people’s hearts. I am not concerned with pity.
I am not concerned with anything but love.
I learned love here and I learned to have a voice so that I could sing about love.
Calm remains my voice inside because I have inside me a voice that sounds like love.
Really love is all that matters.

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