You are Perfect as You Are- by Vicky Westra

One of the things that is most common in the human experience is having a feeling of unworthiness, which translates to feeling like you are not enough or that there is something wrong with you. This feeling can keep good things from flowing into your life and can keep us stuck in a place of self-criticism, self-blame, anger and even despair.

I was talking with a young lady diagnosed on the Autism Spectrum the other day and she told me how she just wanted to feel “normal” and if she didn’t have autism, then she could feel good about herself. Because the stigma of autism is real, we may blame all our challenges and problems on the diagnosis. The reality is that almost everyone uses things they don’t like about themselves to keep them from living their best life possible as well as see the amazing person that they really are.

My daughter and I have both experienced this in our lives and I can tell you from personal experience that it’s no fun to live this way!. From early on, we blamed Autism for capturing our daughter somehow. It was like a separate entity that took her “real” self and shrouded it under a dark cloud. Since we felt that way, she did as well.

In her younger days when she played on her iPad, she would somehow find all the videos of children with Autism having a meltdown or tantrum. This was her view of autism and she wanted no part of it. In fact, she would beat herself up for being on the Spectrum.

I, on the other hand felt like a terrible mom for feeling this way about the diagnosis and my daughter and oftentimes not knowing what to do to make things better for her and us!

At some point I questioned this stigma. How can something that feels so bad and conjure up such negative emotions and thoughts really connected to who we really are? When we love ourselves and feel good about who we are, we are aligned with our highest power, whatever that might be for you ….God, Universal forces, our inner being or however you refer to this. When we don’t feel good about who we are, we are still believing the stigma or lies that are intended to keep us stuck.

So how do you feel about yourself? Whether you are on the Autism Spectrum or a Parent/Caregiver or family member of someone who is, when we start feeling good about who we are, including Autism, we will not only empower ourselves, but we will also empower our whole community.

I see communities in history , much like the Autism Community who were at some point considered lessers in the eyes of the general population. In order to change this, there were those within each community that made a decision not to believe the stigma of their community and start feeling good about themselves and their rights to live their lives on purpose. This includes those in the Civil Rights Movement, The Women’s Movement or more recently the LGBTQ Pride Movement.

Won’t you join this movement of people in the Autism Community who decide that they are worthy of being able to love themselves just as they are and have that translate to living their lives on purpose? We are so proud that you’ve already taken the steps to move in that direction. Now, let’s keep this movement going!

Our goal with the lives we touch is to say, YOU ARE AMAZING just as you are! You don’t need to change or be anything other than you are for this to be the case. We just focus on learning some things that will help us become the best version of ourselves. That’s the process of our own expansion

With Joy and Love,

Vicky