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Day 99: Like a Tree

| Aspergers Girls
Love–Peace–Joy

I have been cleansing my body through beneficial nutrients. I have been cleansing my mind through beneficial thoughts. Today, like a tree, I spread my roots into the universe and offer you these gifts of thought. May you be blessed with serenity and a gentle lullaby of peace. You are exactly where you are supposed to be. You are good enough. You are enough. 

* When I start to feel pressured, I realize I am the one putting expectations on myself by focusing my energy on the future, reflecting on the past, or judging a person or event. Today I release the feeling of pressure, and gently fall back into the bliss of serenity.

* Trust your gut feeling. Believe you are the barometer of truth. In regards to advice, direction, and strategy, listen twice to your inner being before listening once to another.

* In the entire world there is but one you. You are as unique as the water crystals, each line on your skin an intricate and delicate marker of the beauty you are.

* I once again understand these words I write are only words, only my temporary truth. Ever changing, these words are no less permanent than the tide of the ocean. I sweep forth treasures of shells and seaweed, and the occasional sneaker escaped from the sea. However, nothing is a truth, only a finger pointing to a possible avenue for a possible someone to find his or her own truth.

* Do not question when you will be tall enough to provide adequate shelter, adequate goodness. You are merely a tree set down to grow. Focus on nothing more than the growing, and in this you need not focus either. Because, as a tree grows, with proper nourishment and adequate environment, as shall you grow.

* Nothing is misunderstood, everything is miss-understood—simply missed as you stood under the essence and were not yet ready to grasp the concept.

* I remember today and always that words have a soul, and that we beings are each connected in our thoughts, words and actions.

* I am remembering to evaluate my choices when I feel off balance. I ask myself what is an area I can increase, what is an area I can decrease? I visualize the choices in my life on two scales. If one side is too heavy, I remove part of it. If one is too light, I add a portion. In this way I return to a state of equilibrium.

* I cycle through great grief, anger, forgiveness and acceptance. Through these four seasons I rediscover the unique messages of my soul.

* My mistakes on this journey are equally as worthy as my perceived triumphs. For in my falling, I am made to rise higher in a new found empathy and self-knowledge. Today I embrace my mistakes as much as I embrace my successes.

* Some mornings before I awake I hear a gentle whisper. Once I was told that the path to healing is the opposite of a short cut. The opposite of a short cut is a long mend. Life is a long mending of our emotional, physical, spiritual and mental wounds—the needle and thread is unconditional love, unbounded truth, dedicated service and unyielding compassion.

* When we give without expecting anything but love and healing in return, the universe gives back.

* I pray for a time when we each shine in our own uniqueness and authenticity. When the idleness of conforming has transformed to an active celebration of the masses’ manifestation of love, peace and service.

* In learning to greet the morning alarm with positive affirmations, I am training myself to think positive thoughts upon awakening. “Good morning Beautiful day. Today will be filled with splendor, awe and healing,” is more beneficial than “Stupid alarm!”

* In knowing our essence, we see clearly our true purpose. In renewed clarity of our authentic self, we are freed from victimhood. In this release from fear of injury or loss from circumstance, agency or condition, we are able to focus attention on healing service and the creation of harmony.

* As a human being it is my birthright to flounder, to question, to have moments of sadness and anger, to be fragile, to be vulnerable. In examining the facets of my being, I perceive no weakness, only the limitless ability to connect to others in my authenticity.

* To live fully, I fully forgive everything and everyone. I view each new day as an opportunity to forgive, to forgive self, others and circumstances. By participating in a continual process of forgiving, freedom manifests. No longer hidden behind a barricade of judgment, in forgiveness, I arise a beautiful songbird surrounded in a crystal sky of compassion and love.

* To see through the eyes of a child if only for a moment, to dwell in wonderment and awe, to realize this world is a gift, this I wish for today.

* Today I recognize infinite happiness resides within me. I embrace this sacred space and joyous light within and gently release the responsibility I have placed on objects, people and circumstance to bring inner contentment. I stand in compassion of all that passes before me, allowing the joy found in the concrete to linger momentarily, before blowing the essence softly forward like the seeds of a dandelion.

* Each day is another opportunity to choose to partake in the process of discernment. In using discernment, instead of judgment, I stay on equal ground with all. In judging I automatically give up energy and view myself as lesser or greater. In observing, while gently releasing judgment, I remain energized, at peace and available to serve.

* The message I have been told since childhood is to serve and to love. The message I have been told since my young adulthood is to give without need of recognition or monetary gain. Only in giving unconditionally can I honor my true intention of love and service. Only in giving unconditionally without expectation can I be the most effective teacher and student.

* Tomorrow as I wake up, before I recognize where I am, who I am, and whom I am with, I shall recognize the awakening of a glorious and love-filled day.

* I Imagine a book of instructions for the globe, where each day has a deed: one day I help an elderly person, one day I offer a stranger an envelope with money, another I clean a neighbor’s home, and then on some days, together across the globe, at the exact same moment as other lights, I focus on the thought of love and peace…..I Imagine.

* I was reminded this morning that we are each like the flowers, in that we grow to our greatest potential when we are planted in fertile soil, have pure water, and are surrounded in the clean air and sunshine. Today so many are searching. In nature we can find the answers.

* In accepting my mind’s limitations, I choose to stand equal, unchanged in perceived controversy and chaos, for I know not what I see, not what I judge, except through the shattered scope of my narrow viewing.

* There are but two ways to walk in this world, as a blind man in search of safety or as a wise man in search of truth.

* To many honoring the soul’s quest require guidelines, e.g., authenticity, discernment, giving, and loving; though, in honoring our true intentions, there is an innate ever-changing removal of requirements. Thus there are no rules, guidelines, or examples, except what each individual person creates. Above all be true to thyself, thy own beliefs, thy own calling—there are no answers except within.

* In relationships where members strive to be authentic, accept the inevitable differences between them, and express thoughts, feelings and needs, a light of truth shines the way to self-growth, inner wisdom, and confidence.

* I have an infinite capacity to serve others. Whether through a positive thought, helpful word or silent prayer, I serve. And as I give, I grow in clarity of mind and energy of spirit. In this way of mindfully serving, I refuel my entire being. So exists an endless cycle of giving and receiving that need only be powered by the intention of goodwill.

Quotes collected from the roots of Samantha Craft’s thoughts. Spread your roots.

More and more divine images found here:
https://www.facebook.com/TheOfficialJosephineWall

I love you. Thank you for partaking in my journey and helping me to heal and blossom. “I’ll stop the world and melt with you. You’ve seen the difference, and it’s getting better all the time. There’s nothing you and I won’t do. I’ll stop the world and melt with you…the future is open wide.” ~ Modern English

Day 97: Fact or Fiction Double Challenge: Guess and Press

| Aspergers Girls

Fact or Fiction Double Challenge: Guess and Press

Fellow Bloggers: Your mission, if you so choose, is to (1) Read this list; (2) Figure out what number below is fiction; (3) Write in the comment area the number you think is fiction;  (4) Copy and paste this introduction onto your blog; (5) Compose your own Fact of Fiction list on your blog; (6) Return here and in the comment section put a link to your list.

Fellow Non-Bloggers: Your mission, if you so choose, is to (1) Read this list; (2) Figure out what number below is fiction; (3) Write in the comment area the number you think is fiction;  (4) Compose your own Fact of Fiction list of three or more things in the comment section below.

My answer will be in tomorrow’s post. If you don’t partake the aliens will get you!

parcbench.com/

 1.  I had three sets of braces. Three! I had to have them all yanked off when we moved to the east coast; only to have those new braces yanked off and replaced when we moved back west, eight months later. As if that wasn’t enough, I also had this torture device called a Frankle—a double retainer gadget that made it impossible to eat or talk.

2. Stardom: I once went to a movie theater in Carmel, California and John Travolta and his wife were in the far back row. He is as sexy in person. I once was in a bar with Clint Eastwood. My uncle dated Patty Hearst. I lived around the block from Shirley Temple Black.

3. My husband and I won the newlywed game on the cruise ship. My husband’s was the winning answer because he guessed his annoying habit that I had spilled to the entire audience. I was disappointed because our prize was a couple of wine glasses. Show me the money!

4. I was a swimsuit model for a travel catalog for a Malta hotel. The photographer complained about my double-jointed arms and how they looked awkward during the photo shoot. “What’s wrong with your arms?” he groaned.

5. I was a perfume model for Macy’s. One of those dressed up gals that annoys people by spraying them with chemicals and asking how they like it. I made big bucks but only could handle one day of spraying strangers. Much like a male cat, I felt.

6. One of my front teeth is mostly gone and has a fake tooth over it. Underneath the fake tooth is a little toothpick shaped stub. Originally, before the expensive repair, I had a root canal without any pain-killer. During the procedure the dentist asked if I wanted to see the root, and I said, “Are you crazy?”

7. I met my husband by writing a personal ad in the newspaper. Interesting men listened to a recorded message in which I outlined FIFTY specific traits I was looking for in a mate. I rated each man on a scale of one to ten, based on his response. This was before internet and speed dating. I screened about 100 guys over the phone, met fifteen, and chose my husband. It was between him and a lawyer with a limp. I rated my husband an Eight.     (No offense to people with a limp; I limp often.)

8. Throughout my childhood I had detailed dreams about how my pets would die. I would wake up in the night and go running to my mom’s bedroom. About seven days later following my dream, the pets would die exactly as I had described. I had a pet cemetery in my backyard.

9. One of my most embarrassing moments in high school happened when I reached into my purse to grab some change and accidentally flung out a sanitary napkin across the crowded school cafeteria. Three of the most popular boys were standing nearby, and one bent down to retrieve the pad for me.

10. The one time we went to Maui, we experienced the worst storm they’d had in years. The sewers overflowed and the beaches were all closed. We spent the first few days inside the condo watching television. At night I worried about the water rising and taking my life. Later in the week, I threw up on the whale watching boat. The instructions were to throw up over the side of the deck. No one told me this didn’t mean from the top deck. My son screamed, so the whole boatload could here: “Stop Mom, you’re killing the fish!” But he didn’t have to worry, as I threw up all over the bottom level of the boat.

To Ponder 

My son with Aspergers, as I tucked him into bed last night, completely serious tone, said:

“I can’t wait to live in a retirement home. So everyone will take care of me.” ~ Joe, age 13

 

 

To Motivate

Kindred Spirit Posted a Great Series of YouTubes Wayne Dyer on appreciation.

Kindred Spirit this reminds me of you: “No Limit People are human beings that take what they are and accept it. And don’t tell themselves that somehow they are deficient because of anything about themselves.” ~ Wayne Dyer

 

 

To Remember

I love you just the way you are.

This is dedicated to my new friend Alien Hippy.

Strum for Me 

Strum for me

Sweet gentle man

As guitar as to harp

Muses fuse

And harp beats still

by Samantha Craft, May 2012

 

 

You are so Beautiful to Me. This means you.

Aspergers Letter: Be the Change

| Aspergers Girls

Dear Sir or Madam,

Thank you for taking the time to read these words.  Please know you are making a difference. My penname is Samantha Craft. I am an educator (M.Ed.) and a mother, and I have Asperger’s Syndrome. I live in the state of Washington in the United States. I am forty-three years of age. I was first identified with having Aspergers in December of 2011 by a mental health practitioner.

Before I knew I had Aspergers, I spent decades searching for answers. I searched for logical reasons to explain my extreme sensitivities, empathy, fixations, imaginings and fears.  A keen woman, I sought out answers through 12-Step, medical doctors, therapists, psychologist, psychiatrists, priests, ministers, educators, shamans, and counselors. Not one person whom I sought out for assistance mentioned Aspergers, because not one person knew how a female with Aspergers presented herself. Many professionals didn’t even know this word: Aspergers.  Person after person assigned me an incorrect or incomplete diagnosis and non-beneficial methods of treatment. For years I suffered, knowing something was “wrong,” but not understanding why.

I am not alone. By no means am I alone. Thousands upon thousands of women have Aspergers and have been misdiagnosed, overlooked, and/or misunderstood. Notably, In these days of advanced technology, this lack of awareness regarding Aspergers is shifting. Today, thousands of people a month are learning how Aspergers in females presents itself. However, a large majority of the people searching for answers are the females with Aspergers themselves and their family members. The word about the female experience still needs to reach the people who are equipped to identify and help this subgroup of women. Particularly professors at universities, teachers in elementary and secondary schools, medical doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, and mental health care practitioners.

In hopes of spreading awareness, in February of 2012, I began a blog called Everyday Aspergers. I have since been writing for 95 days straight, and will continue to do so for the stretch of the year. My hope is  to present a cohesive presentation illustrating a female with Aspergers. The pages are not filled with troubles and tears, only some: because I am human and my human experience stretches far beyond the one word Aspergers. The pages depict the inner workings of a female with an Asperger’s mind—her thought processes, her deep philosophical prose, her poetry, her story.

My hope is you will choose to pass this link on to a professional, (e.g., grandson’s teacher, sister’s doctor, colleague, university dean), so the many women still searching for assistance and answers regarding Aspergers will have a tomorrow filled with awareness, understanding, assistance, and acceptance. Assistance cannot exist without knowledge. Acceptance cannot exist without knowledge. In choosing to directly send this link to one professional, you are choosing to spread the knowledge and effectively change the lives of thousands of women.

With the knowledge we will forever change the face of Aspergers, with the knowledge Aspergers will no longer be unknown, misunderstood, and/or perceived as a taboo, and with the knowledge we can begin to provide hope and needed assistance, and begin to celebrate our unique gifts, I sincerely thank you. May your day be filled with peace.

Link to pass on:  https://aspergersgirls.wordpress.com/2012/05/03/aspergers-letter-be-the-change/

Sincerely,

Samantha Craft

Everyday Aspergers

 

You may also print Be the Change letter, if all the information remains on the page. Thank you.

 

Resources on this blog:

10 Traits of Females with Aspergers:

https://aspergersgirls.wordpress.com/2012/02/10/aspergers-traits-women-females-girls/

Unofficial Checklist for Females with Aspergers

https://aspergersgirls.wordpress.com/2012/03/31/day-62-females-with-aspergers-syndrome-nonofficial-checklist/

10 Myths about Females with Aspergers

https://aspergersgirls.wordpress.com/2012/03/06/thirty-seven-10-myths-about-females-with-aspergers-syndrome/

Discrimination regarding Aspergers

https://aspergersgirls.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/day-44-the-abcs-of-discrimination-i-will-not-be-made-to-feel-ashamed-of-aspergers/

Day 94: Samtastico the Avenger’s Gobbledygook and Missing Slipstream Download

| Aspergers Girls

Sometimes I am an intense painter opening the art gallery doors to the crowds; only to observe the patrons scratching their heads in confusion at my masterpiece that I have come to slowly realize resembles an abstract of a close up donkey butt.

Free Wallpaper at fwallpapers.com/view/funny-donkey

Sometimes I am a self-inflated preschooler that longs to share hygiene facts, like the garlic cream I rubbed on my shoulder to try to erase these weird skin growths I’ve acquired since occupying the dark and humid northwest.

Sometimes I am an overloaded sponge of thoughts and images pounding my head in rapid procession into the pinewood computer table.

Sometimes I am a teary-eyed poet dripping my melancholic prose across the space called cyber.

Today I am Crazy Frog rocking out and longing to paint a donkey butt abstract.

Be Happy. Sing with Me, now!

By the end of this prose you will be one of the privileged few people in this universe that understands the title of this post. This understanding will gift you with undeniable powers to peruse through almost any of my other writings with a knowing nod of recognition and sympathy. Welcome to the Sam Zone!

One of my blogging pals, a cool male kindergarten teacher and natural poet, calls my writing Samtastic.  Sometimes. Well, at least twice. Now that I’m thinking about it, I’ve written ninety-four posts and he has only used that word two or three times. What is that percentage?

Regardless of the stats, the word Samtastic is part of the reason I contemplate changing my legal name to Sam. How cool to have the mantra: Samtastic. I’d add a letter O to the end though, to make the word pseudo-Italian. I dare you to say Samtastico without a smile and without moving your hands in gesture. Anyone craving calzones smothered in mozzarella besides me?

Those that have been reading my prose—aka: contemplative poetry, quirky tales, vivacious rambles, verbose lists—have likely heard mention of The Geek Posse. Well, they’ve been collaborating in a Samtastic way to assist me in reaching conclusions about my little life. Go team brain!

The collaboration is akin to having an extended coffee chat with a dear friend, laughing and crying hysterically together, and then sharing that mutual glow of having just solved all the world’s problems in one sitting! Only with the Geek Posse, the participant is just solo-me and select spheres of my brain.

With the help of the posse, I’ve recently realized (probably nine weeks later than my longtime faithful reader: aka George) that in the passing months, I inadvertently ventured into a warped time zone, and magnificently morphed into Asperger’s Woman: Avenger of all Things Aspie!

See my little cape? It’s red and blue starred with purple zigzags and lemon drops.

I’m finally coming out of a tailspin into Aspie Land and realizing my life is much more than Aspergers.

Amazing. I know!

This decreases my abstract donkey-butt longing from boil to simmer.

Sidetrack: Many Literary Advice Books ardently advice would-be authors to not use adverbs too often. But the combined ly letters intrigue me. The books also warn not to ramble, go off tangent, and use made up words. That’s why I burned all my writing manuals and used them as a source of heat when we had the three-day power outage during January’s snowstorm.

Back to the Geek Posse, two days ago, while fasting and listening to mantras, guru me had a wonderful series of images flash through my mind regarding my association with Aspergers. I call this experience of seeing images fly, flap, and belly flop across my mind: downloading. During downloading, I receive information, possibly from galactic powers, angels, or intelligent interactive bacteria. It’s quite a Jungian experience, liken to the collective unconscious slipstream propelling me forward in extremely vivid thought.

This time after downloading the information and reading the words to myself, I heard a very serious female voice, similar to Captain Kathryn Janeway from the Starfleet Starship USS Voyager.

Look What I Found! Totally Unrelated and Totally Awesome!

Sidetrack: How do I know Captain Janeway’s voice? Remember I married a science major, a euphemism for smart geek who likes all things Trek-like. Remember, too, I have Aspergers, so I was rather clueless about what a science major really meant beyond the periodic table. The same cluelessness I had about three boys equaling perpetual dirty area under toilet.

Awesomeness in Geek Format!

Sidetrack: I just looked up Fun Facts about the Periodic Table and there was nothing fun at all. Just a bunch of confusing questions, like: Which is the lightest element with an atomic symbol that is also a US state postal code? Really? That’s fun?

I also found Periodic Table Puns like:

What do you do to flowers? Platinum

What a doctor does to his patients – Cur ium, Hel ium, or Bari um

I’m still trying to decide if this means the doctor is giving a barium enema or burying them. One of my superpowers is the ability to crack myself up, and I guess also composing downloaded prose from beyond and hearing the voice of female space captain. Hmmm? And they let me teach children.

Tomorrow, I’ll read some more of those Periodic Table Fun Facts before I write, so I can be in a serious mood when I introduce the downloaded slipstream. For now, all the serious parts of me Argon. So be good until tomorrow. Because I’ve got my ion you! HeHe (2 isotopes of helium).

Samtastico Quiz. Pass or fail. If you can now understand the title of this post you pass. If not, at least you learned a barium joke!

I wonder if this person is one of my followers. That would make sense.