Category: Survivor Story
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Isolated in Vermont: Trauma lasts a lifetime
I want to preface this by explaining that I only write this anonymously because I don’t want colleges or future employers to look my name up and read about my childhood trauma. I attended kindergarten through 4th grade in a Vermont Public School. I am now in High School. Last year a letter was written…
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How proper support and a service dog named Koko helped Mason
Back in the day, I would usually start my IEP (Individualized Education Program) meetings with a statement like, “Restraint should be the last resort, or things will go downhill quickly.” Every year it seemed to get worse after the first restraint would happen. It was just the beginning of a long road ahead for my…
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Don’t punish us for being autistic
Schools punishing students with autism for running (elopement) is sad. I was a runner when young. Please know that it is not to misbehave, but rather to escape the experience of autism’s confusing world. Your world is bearable, but ours is often jumpy or noisy or spinning. Running and feeling air swirling about can help…
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The healing power of cooking
Our son Cole was born fifteen years ago with Down syndrome, and I often say that when he came into this world, he flipped our world upside down in the best possible way. Cole has always been a compassionate, good-natured, and funny guy. He has taught us more lessons than I can possibly recount. But…
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I kept screaming that I can’t breathe
My trauma started at 2 years old after my parents divorced when my dad would beat me. Having a trauma background, I was 6 years old in the second half of kindergarten, as I had gotten kicked out of the last school I went to that couldn’t deal with me, where I was first secluded…
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Locked in the safe room
I was hospitalized 13 times during my childhood. It has to be well over 500 times I was restrained but I honestly could not tell you it was that much and that bad. Once I was stripped down naked and given a paper top by male staff while an inpatient and then locked in one…
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An autistic self-advocate’s journey and voice
Often it can be hard to remember things related to trauma (probably because the data is stored ‘in the back of the mind’ in the cerebellum rather than the prefrontal cortex). My earliest memory of abuse/neglect was as a toddler and I was left outside or locked in a room by myself sometimes for hours.…
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The Places That Stole Me
have a unique way of leaving reality behind them. A child playing dress-up puts on a cardboard crown holds their plastic staff, does a royal wave, and becomes a queen or king. A child opens a box of crayons, colors the green of jungle leaves, the blue of a running river, the yellow of a…