Samantha Craft’s Updates August 2016

August 14, 2016August 30, 2018 | Aspergers Girls

last updated August 2018

You can find me at Spectrum Suite LLC and email me directly at marcellelinn @ icloud . com. Spectrum Suite will soon be offering vocational coaching, life coaching, and spiritual coaching. Stay tuned!

Thank you for your support through the years. I couldn’t have wished for a kinder and more accepting community.

This blog was open from 2012 – 2016. I make updates from time to time with new news.

Sam’s other blog can be found at Everyday Aspie.

Both blogs are retired, after many years of writing, except for occasional updates about happenings related to autism, the autistic community, and the book Everyday Aspergers.

New book I contributed to here

BOOK INFORMATION
· Amazon US link
· Amazon UK link
· Amazon Australia link
The soft back version is available in USA on Amazon here.
Current updates can be found at my company Spectrum Suite.
Please consider posting a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads.

THANK YOU ~ SAM

Marcie Ciampi, M.Ed (AKA: Samantha Craft)

Craft is best known for her prolific writings found in her well received book and blog Everyday Aspergers. A professional educator, she has been published in peer-reviewed journals, been featured in various literature and venues, including Aspien Women, Autism Parenting Magazine, The Mighty, Spectrum Women, Project Aspie and Different Brains. She is coauthor of the book Spectrum Women: Walking to the Beat of Autism and speaks on the topic of neurodiversity around the world, including at the Love & Autism Conference (Fall 2018) and Southwest Washington Autism Conference (Fall 2018).

Craft was the Community Achievement Award recipient at the ANCA World Autism Festival (2017), her works have been translated into multiple languages, with her list of traits for females on the autism spectrum shared in counseling offices around the world. Since 2012, she’s had the opportunity to correspond with over 10,000 individuals on the autism spectrum. Her blog Belly of a Star features her paintings and drawings and over 100 poems and spiritual writings. Craft also serves as the Lead Job Recruiter and Community Manager at ULTRA Testing, an innovative technology company with a neurodiversity hiring initiative.

What’s Up?

March 26, 2016April 5, 2016 | Aspergers Girls

Hello!

I have missed you. Everyday Aspergers (EA), the book, is coming along quite well. It’s in the final draft stages and I hope it will be ready for your eyes by this early-May. (And the cover is awesome!!!)

As some of you know, I have spent countless hours editing . . . I recently had a huge aha moment: being dyslexic I ought never ever try to edit! But alas, it’s a bit too late for that. I have ‘literarily’ (notice the non-risqué double entendre?) edited my book more hours than I can calculate. And the book started off at 1,200 pages! Don’t worry, I have a professional editor. Good thing because I still have trouble with sneaky homophones, like verses and versus. Who ever invented the English language sucks.

What’s been challenging is grammar rules—there are lots and lots of rules, and not everyone is in agreement. In addition, commas hurt my eyes, if they are not placed in the correct place; correct as in where it seems I ought to sprinkle a little dash based on the rhythm in my head; not ‘correct’ as in rules. So that’s been an interesting predicament. Also, hyphenated words fall into a similar spot as commas: the inconsistent box. And it doesn’t help that I went through a happy-to-hyphenate stage and a put-a-comma-everywhere phase. I am still recovering.

The other, (likely Aspie-related), recent challenge has been chopping up my previous blog posts,(there’s over 500), rearranging, refining, omitting, rewording, embellishing and realizing that this process is not LYING or being dishonest in the slightest degree.

And the most laughable moment to date, regarding this book journey, (at least according to my autistic partner), is when I said, “I don’t think my book is autistic enough,” with weeping puppy-dog eyes, and he adamantly responded (after asking if I was PMSing), “If you are not autistic then I am not autistic.” So that set things straight. He then added, in his arrogant Aspie-genuis tone, “Plus, you’re like the poster child for Aspergers.” Still processing that one.

Publishing a book is kind of like childbirth—had I known the pain, I doubt I’d ever have started; however, once I see my baby, it will be worth every agonizing moment. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.

I do have to say that my psychological metamorphosis has been fascinating: One moment confident, next moment terrified. One day never wanting any human to read my words ever again, next day, over sharing my works. It’s kind of like the publishing process has intensified my autistic extremes! Go me!

Oh, and I’ve had ample opportunity to sit back and listen to LV (little voice inside my head) burst aloud fret after fret. I think she’s grown a small pink cape monogrammed with ‘insecurity.’ First off, I apologize for the short phase (about 1.5 months) in which we (me, LV and Sir Brain) we’re never going to have ANYTHING to do with AUTISM ever again! This was largely due to the ebb and flow of opinionated jerks online (something I swiftly swam away from), my tendency to hyper focus almost to the tipping point of my sanity, the way my life drips and oozes of autism (partner, son, ME, job, writing, reading, social media platforms, blogs, book, research, friends, so forth …), and my forever search for balance (psychological and hormonal!).

For a short stretch of time, I figured I’d be a hermit in the back room, behind my garage, and just obsessively paint, never to resurface, except out of loyalty for the occasional chocolate bar left outside my door. After some retreat and reflection, I realize autism is in my bones—and most definitely in my genes—so not really a smart plan to try to escape it, entirely. Still, I am attempting to not let my special interest consume me. But alas, I likely will always have my all or nothing tendencies, despite my best efforts.

With all that said, my prolific abilities for writing and off beat wit seem to have resurfaced. This following two years of gradual rehabilitation from a weeklong hospital stay, in which the trauma to my system greatly affected my executive functioning ability; I mean I couldn’t even open an envelope for months. Took me three months to be able to sit up for more than an hour. There was some major healing that had to take place. But thankfully, I feel about 95% back to normal. Except now, my premenopausal brain-frying hot flashes and hormonal extremes–seem to be affecting my dyslexia and dysgraphia. Kind of like someone turned up the omitting words, mixing up words and letters, and forgetting thoughts dial to about the umpteenth power. So that’s been fun. Good timing, don’t you think?

Talk soon,
Sam the Ham
(Now I want to list words that rhyme with ‘ham.’ Yep, I’m back!)

My recent interview about females and autism:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/positivelyautistic/2016/03/05/positively-autistic–jeanettes-autism-show

To support this book journey please join our Facebook Community listed on this blog in the side section or follow this blog. Here I am on Twitter

Aspergers Letter: Be the Change

May 3, 2012May 3, 2012 | 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/