"So that was mind blowing..."

     Hearing that you have to attend a presentation during your only lunch break on an already lengthy day of classes doesn't inspire much excitement. At least not within me. I sluggishly walked into the room, not knowing what to expect and feeling a little irritated at my grumbly stomach, so starved for attention. Pleasantly surprised, I spotted a good friend of mine from another class and slipped into the seat next to him. However, that was not the only surprise awaiting me.
We were all given packets of text split up into sections. My friend was handed a microphone and told that he was going to be our first reader--I was the second. And I'm not going to lie, even though I'm an extremely extroverted person, this was toeing the line of my comfort zone. But the woman passing out the papers, whom I later found out was nicknamed SS (Barb's Smiling Shrink) went back up to the front with Barb Retenbach, our main speaker. We all waited patiently, silently, slowly as Barb typed out a message to us, one letter at a time. In the time it took her to tell us to "B u, b enough, b light, with u, B" I kept thinking how difficult it must be to have to communicate so slowly. That her brain must be moving a lot quicker than her typing. For how much I yap and run my mouth a mile a minute, I can not begin to fathom trying to get my points across that slowly. It shames me to say but I was feeling sorry for her in those moments waiting for SS to repeat what Barb was typing. But boy did my thinking change through out that much too short hour. My thinking changed when she talked about the change in her thinking. I had never heard the term "neurodiversity" before. But that really is the best way to describe it. All of our brains work in different ways. Some people think in words and words alone. My very pale freckly sister thinks and dreams in Spanish fifty percent of the time. Our teacher said she has a friend who sees colors when she listens to music. I, on the other hand, listen to music and immediately imagine and feel ways that I can move to it. There is truly such a variation in thought processes, more than we probably know. Barb telling us about how she learned to type was truly eye opening. She said that her brain doesn't really "do" language. She doesn't think in words or sentences. Explaining it differently, she compared it to listening to someone speak German. You can try and mimic the sounds, but they don't really have a meaning attached to them. Hence talking, speaking, and the ways we normally communicate, are not how her brain works. But through an object, through learning how to type out words, she is able to converse. Now she calls herself a collector of words which is extremely appropriate seeing as how her vocabulary is 3 times the size of mine. I can not even begin to express how inspired I was by the things she wanted to communicate to us. "B u, b enough," she said. I've struggled with this my whole life. It's something we hear all the time--through our parents, through teachers, through sappy movies and songs. Be yourself. Don't try to be anyone other than yourself. Be the best "you" you can be. Just do you. But a lot of the time those phrases and cliches just come across hollow. A hollow reminder thrown out there to make it seem okay that society is constantly bombarding us with a prototype of what we should actually be wanting to be. But Barb's encouragement to be ourselves had more depth than any previous reminder I've ever had. She told us to choose to be enough. That "none of us are enough until we say we are." No one else can determine our value for us. No one can decide our worth. We choose to be enough. We choose to be someone we want to be. It's inspiring that she doesn't view her autism as a crutch, as a factor that devalues her life or her being. She is a child of God, created in God's image just like the rest of us. She is enough because she chooses to be. (In my mind she's more than enough.) She also encouraged us and inspired us to be the kind of teachers to instill this in our students, to not be the teachers that offer this message out as a hollow suggestion. She commanded us to be that one teacher for someone. After all, "it just takes one." Imagine how many lives teachers can change if they took her advice to "teach to the heart, from the heart, like God is watching." I'm going to write this quote down on every single lesson plan I ever write. This quote itself will be my motivation for teaching. The only thing more inspiring than her desire to communicate was the method that she chose to communicate with. Goodness gracious is Barb Redenbach witty. This moves us to her command to "b light." She strides through life with such a humor that is so refreshing. She joked about her autism and autism in general. I already shared with numerous friends her versions of hallmark cards for autistic people. Humor is her niche. She decided she can be the brunt of jokes and she can make some herself, too, so that is what she does. Because of this she brings so much joy into life. Be light. The hour listening to Barb and SS came to a close much too quickly. As I gathered my things, I could not mentally process how much I learned, how much I realized I didn't know before. I could not gather how much my thought process changed throughout the course of one single hour. As we were walking out, I turned to my friend, both of us silent and at a loss for words. We were all the way down the hallway when I finally could speak. "So...that was mind blowing" I said. And that was an understatement.