I enjoy writing and I have found that it is therapeutic for me, in a way because of how my thought process works. But there are things which work against me in being a good writer, like my poor language skills and the nature of my disability.

My cerebral palsy has added both developmental delays and cognitive deficits to my disability. How does writing help? The way I write seems help me overcome those handicaps. Writing helps my thought process in a sense that it helps me organize my thoughts. So it helps me think faster.  Putting down those thoughts and ideas where I can see my thoughts being written as I type is also helpful.

Sometimes something sounds good in my head, and I write it down. And after I’ve typed it out and read it, it still makes sense to me. But once my editor reads it back to me, I realize that’s not exactly what I meant, even though somehow it still makes sense to me. So I have to re-write it in terms that other people can understand.

The usual CP things affect my brain and often make it hard for me to write well. My mind wanders and it’s hard for me to concentrate on one thing all the time. I am easily distracted by things going on in my environment and I startle easily, which causes me to forget moments, and then I experience missing time. Like for instance if a phone rings, I jump and it throws me off my groove, and I find myself thinking about something else. I call it a brain fart. Or if I see something out of the corner of my eye it throws me off and then I have to think of what I was just writing. When I think, there are a lot of thoughts going through my head at once, so it is hard to focus on writing. Especially for a twenty minute talk or presentation or this blog, which are big projects for me. And of course, like anyone else, I have to be motivated and not be nagged by other people to write, otherwise I shut down.

I have a very hard time concentrating on one thing at a time. That is how my brain works, and is due to my Cerebral Palsy and Athetosis. If one part of my body jerks then the rest of my body jerks. So it is like that with my brain: if it jerks, I think of something else and I will do it instead.

My cognitive delays get in the way of how I think and that is hard to overcome. That’s why I can’t think as fast as others who have less or no developmental delays or cognitive deficits.

My education also affected my communication and language skills. When I was going to school they taught me grammar, but unfortunately it never stuck because I am non-verbal. So I never got a good education in grammar rules, especially during junior high and high school. Because the teachers never thought I would be able to write because I was non-verbal and sophisticated AAC devices were not available then, most didn’t push me to improve my language skills. How could I prove to teachers that there was more inside my head if I couldn’t communicate except by just answering yes or no questions? I couldn’t. And it wasn’t until after graduating high school that I got my first AAC device and was able to try to teach myself. I am still struggling, partly because of my poor education. That is why it is harder for me to think, because no one challenged me when I was young.

I’m sure some disabled people who also have these delays might have gotten a better education than I did and might be better communicators or better writers than I am because of their education.

Because of those obstacles, writing talks or presentations takes me months as I organize my thoughts and write something. It’s harder if I have to think about a subject on my own when no one gives me a subject. Even so it still takes at least three months to write pretty much anything. Having a developmental and cognitive disability means I sometimes have to think about what I’m going to write, and it may take me a few weeks to a few months to actually start writing.

But I enjoy writing because it helps me think and it also makes me think of words that I never used before, so my vocabulary has grown because of writing. And yes it is sometimes difficult to write because of my delays, but to me it’s worth the effort.