I’ll trade your Awareness for something much better

April is Autism Awareness month. There’s just something about the word awareness that bothers me. In fact, I wrote about it last year too!

Let’s just take a look at the dictionary definition of awareness:
It’s a noun that means “knowledge or perception of a situation or fact”.

A noun is a person, place or thing. It is not action. It just is. So that means that awareness is just “knowing” about something. It would be us saying, “Hey, there are people with autism out there.”Ok, so if you are aware of autism then you know that autism exists. Great, huh? No.

What if we traded awareness for acceptance?

Acceptance describes the “ACTION of being received as adequate or suitable, typically to be admitted into a group.”

Action is moving us closer to where we should be.
That would be nice if we acknowledged people with autism as part of our own groups – at home, at school, in our neighborhoods, in our churches, in our businesses. There would be no need to talk about “us” and “them” because it would just be us!

I would love to see more groups asking “What can we do to make sure that all people – including those with autism – can be part of our group?”

Even better, what if we traded awareness and acceptance for appreciation?

Do you know what it means to appreciate someone? To recognize the full worth of. Wow.

Imagine what our world would be like if we recognized the full worth of people with autism? The crushing isolation and emotional distress that many autism families face would vanish. Why? Because everyone would see that every person – even those with autism – and sometimes especially those with autism – have gifts to offer. We would count people with autism as our friends. We would seek them out and realize how much the world needs them and their unique viewpoints.

This would mean us saying, “I’m so glad that we have people with autism as part of our group. They bring a totally new perspective to what we do!”

So, wear blue and have a blue light bulb on your porch. But don’t be satisfied with awareness only! Move toward acceptance and appreciation.

Special thanks to my friend Debra Noonan-Elber, mom of 2 great kids with autism. Debra’s FB post inspired this blog.