Carlys+voice

Carly is a young woman who is living with severe autism. She is nonverbal but through the use of technology has found her voice. She has written a book about herself and her experience living with autism. I read a speech she wrote to introduce Temple Grandin, her idol, at the Ontario Autism Conference. Carly describes the similarities that she shares with Temple and that their mothers likely shared when first finding out their daughters had autism and were nonverbal. Both mothers were determined to do everything they could in order to allow their daughters to communicate and learn. Carly describes how, like Temple, her attempts to go to school was met with challenges and skepticism from others outside her family. Carly says that living with autism has been challenging but that people like Temple give her hope for herself and others like herself.

There are a few other pieces of writing on Carly’s website. In them, you can hear her personality and her sense of humor. She also mentions in multiple speeches how much she loves chips – so you get a sense of even more of her personality! Although not from the speech I described above, here is one quote from Carly that was particularly striking. “The way I see it, how is anyone really going to know the truth about living with autism unless someone with autism talks about it? They say autism is one of those things that even doctors and experts don’t really understand yet. So, like I tell my readers, why go to a duck to find out what’s wrong with the horse when you can go right to the horse’s mouth?” ([])