❤️”A Life Beyond Words”, by Susan Baker. Released June 18, 2024📚 through online booksellers. @lifewithsusan ✨ #lifewithsusan #lifeloveandautism #empoweredliving #writingprocess #humanexperience #humanconnection #souljourney #inspiration #autisminspiration #useyourvoice #nonspeaking #personalgrowth #wordsfromandrew #presumecompetence #vulnerability #loveoverfear 🌈
Life teaches us that we can do this, but we have to live it to learn it, to be shown our capacity to keep showing up.❤️ From “A Life Beyond Words” by Susan Baker 📚released June 18, 2024, through online book sellers. @lifewithsusan ✨ #lifewithsusan #lifeloveandautism #empoweredliving #writingprocess #humanexperience #humanconnection #souljourney #inspiration #autisminspiration #useyourvoice #nonspeaking #personalgrowth #wordsfromandrew #presumecompetence #vulnerability #loveoverfear
Today and every day.🌱❤️ @lifewithsusan #lifewithsusan #lifeloveandautism #empoweredliving #writingprocess #humanexperience #humanconnection #souljourney #inspiration #autisminspiration #useyourvoice #nonspeaking #personalgrowth #wordsfromandrew #presumecompetence ✨
The why.💗 @lifewithsusan #lifewithsusan #lifeloveandautism #empoweredliving #writingprocess #humanexperience #humanconnection #souljourney #inspiration #autisminspiration #useyourvoice #nonspeaking #personalgrowth #wordsfromandrew #presumecompetence #vulnerability #loveoverfear ✨
This feels important: ❤️Please don’t miss an update! Join my email community for all the book announcements!📚 link above in my bio⤴️ OUR GIFT TO YOU: Andrew’s insightful words! As downloadable cards. Print them out or keep them on your phone for inspiration.✨ Excited to share our updates with you! Emails are 1/week. 📬 Grateful for this awesome community.🔥 xo Susan “A Life Beyond Words”, published June 18, 2024, through online booksellers. 📕 @lifewithsusan @ygtmedia.company #lifewithsusan #lifeloveandautism #empoweredliving #writingprocess #humanexperience #humanconnection #souljourney #inspiration #autisminspiration #useyourvoice #nonspeaking #personalgrowth #wordsfromandrew #presumecompetence 🌈
A favourite.💜 In my book, “A Life Beyond Words”(June,2024), I describe that sometimes the path is dark, but still, I feel we are being led. 🌳 @lifewithsusan ✨ #lifewithsusan #lifeloveandautism #empoweredliving #writingprocess #humanexperience #humanconnection #souljourney #inspiration #autisminspiration #useyourvoice #nonspeaking #personalgrowth #wordsfromandrew #presumecompetence #vulnerability #loveoverfear ✨
It’s been a while since I’ve sat in stillness. ✨Funny as I’ve a whole chapter about it in “A Life Beyond Words”📕(June 2024)! It’s okay,though: Stillness always welcomes me back. 🔊The message: “Do more of this.” This will be what anchors me through the excitement and the anxiety of the next three months leading up to the book launch. 🎉 Perfect timing to be called back into it.❤️xo Susan @lifewithsusan #lifewithsusan #lifeloveandautism #empoweredliving #writingprocess #humanexperience #humanconnection #souljourney #inspiration #autisminspiration #useyourvoice #nonspeaking #personalgrowth #wordsfromandrew #vulnerability #loveoverfear
📚Early reader feedback: Revealing on many levels…❤️ Owning my words. Exciting and very real! Scroll through.➡️ xo Susan @lifewithsusan #lifewithsusan #lifeloveandautism #empoweredliving #writingprocess #humanexperience #humanconnection #souljourney #inspiration #autisminspiration #useyourvoice #nonspeaking #personalgrowth #wordsfromandrew #presumecompetence #vulnerability #loveoverfear ✨
This is what I noticed when I finally started noticing things.💛 A yellow tree in a field of grey. It was just after I noticed how tall Andrew is now. And how handsome. How quickly time has gone by. Fifteen years.🌳 But first, I was annoyed. Nature is prescriptive, but I was annoyed at being out. It was cold and windy and grey, and I wanted to be writing my book, the book of our story. Not out.🌲 And that’s when I noticed it: that the story, life, is in the interruptions. 📚 xo @lifewithsusan #lifewithsusan #lifeloveandautism #empoweredliving #writingprocess #humanexperience #humanconnection #souljourney #inspiration #autisminspiration #useyourvoice #nonspeaking #personalgrowth #presumecompetence #vulnerability #love #nature #noticing ✨
Tea messages for life. ☕️❤️ @lifewithsusan #lifewithsusan #yogitea ✨
Your person, your presence, your purpose, your ‘vibe’, YOU!— ALL of that!🔥 Who you are and how you show up. We truly are more powerful than we will ever know (…though I think we *do* know).❤️ xo Susan @lifewithsusan ✨ @gabbybernstein
It always begins with us.❤️🔥 xo Susan @ lifewithsusan (IG) Life, Love & Autism (FB) #lifewithsusan #empoweredliving #humanexperience #humanconnection #souljourney #inspiration #autisminspiration #lifeloveandautism #useyourvoice #nonspeaking #personalgrowth #vulnerability #loveoverfear ✨
Capturing the journey.💜 The vulnerability of this process is raw - especially in making it visible. But I am here to share. And I am grateful to those who bear witness to this journey! xo Susan @lifewithsusan ✨ #lifewithsusan #personalgrowth #spiritualgrowth #humanexperience #vulnerability #stillness #growth #resistance 🔥
❤️The revelation: How easily my centre is thrown off balance. Of course! - These are my kids, it’s my son. But for me to have my own (sustainable) journey, I will need to practice “healthy detachment” : anchoring in to my own needs while still holding compassion *and* taking action, when needed, for my child. THAT⤴️ has been the gift from yesterday’s ‘hard’. And I know I’m not alone. (Mamas, tell me I’m not alone!) Words from the blog.✨Full story: link above (in my bio section). xo Susan Follow the journey: @lifewithsusan (IG) Life, Love & Autism (FB) #lifeloveandautism #lifewithsusan ✨
“Ah… showing up for yourself”, she said to me. “I love that!” The girl at the cash; she liked my outfit. I had put on a new pair of jeans (🙃wide-leg style) and wore them out with cream boots, sweater and a scarf - just to the health food store, which is why it was so notable; I’m only ever doing errands in hiking-tights and fanny packs (refer to all Summer 2022 posts) (and nothin’ wrong with that)! As she cashed me out, she said, “I love your style! Where are you off to today?” And I laughed when I answered, “Here, then home.” That’s when she said “Ah… showing up for yourself, I love that”. 🔥 And she was right; I *did* show up for me that day. In that way. Some days, I show up in my writing (wearing joggers). Some days, I show up in a conversation with a friend. Or in how I choose to nourish myself. And some days, I *don’t* show up; some days, I just don’t feel like it and I’m okay with that, too (and in a way, that’s still showing up). 💛 It takes courage (and energy, and will) to show up for ourselves— in whatever way that looks for each of us. 💥What does “showing up” look like for you? Wishing us the desire to show up *for ourselves* - today, and every day, in whatever way matters. xo ✨🥂
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💜I feel this. You? What do YOU do when you’re “tired of everything”? ⤵️ 💟 xo
To living.❤️🤸♂️🎢 @lifewithsusan
If you are/live with a person who is energetically sensitive… So much of life is felt.💛 Sometimes it’s hard to label it. And even harder to trace it back to any one thing. Last week, Andrew wrote on his letterboard: “I am feeling a dramatic range of highs and overwhelm these days.” His volatility, though his own, often reflects what is being felt by the world: sadness, grief, tragedy, darkness. Andrew writes: “I feel it all.” ❤️🌏🌍🌎✨ And although my tendency is to reach into my toolkit for any number of supports (EMF-protection; vibrational tools like Healy; homeopathy; Rescue Remedy; etc 🌿) , the message I’m getting is : Just be with it, be in it, with this person, in this moment. ❤️🩹 Hard as that is. Can we just be in it? - even when we feel helpless, even when there’s so much going on, even when it physically hurts our heart to bear the pain of another human’s experience? Is this what true empathy feels like? To feel and not fix? ❤️Have you been here before? xo Susan.
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🖼️ It exceeded my expectations. Yes, the museum itself (Aga Khan, Toronto), but being there with Andrew. 🙌 We went with another letterboard-friend. We spelled and made noise and took up space! 🔠🌈 And that’s when it hit me. In that ‘evaluative’ moment of deeming it a success, I realized it’s me that sets the bar; the un-said pressure of a good experience.😅 Poor me, poor Andrew! And I get why - the risk, worry, anxiety, dread, even, of managing the potential challenges of a dysregulated body in a public space. And so you breathe a sigh of relief (and even take in a moment to enjoy) when it “all goes well” (or “better than expected”). But I immediately felt bad at that pressure, that hope, that expectation I realized I had carried into it. It’s just the truth. Is that maybe just the dichotomy of life within disability? Is that just parenthood? 🙃 I can apologize or celebrate or just “be” in the (emotional) experience and awareness of it all. I found it hard to put this into words. (Did it make sense to you, my community?) Andrew would have done a better job — like when he reflected on the Afghani Sufi poet, Rumi’s, quote about emotions being like guests: “Yes, life in this body is like that. Not just in welcoming these guests, but in not getting attached, too.” Andrew, age 14, nonspeaking autistic 🔠 on his letterboard Rumi’s full passage in the pics above 📸 Perhaps I can practice a bit of welcoming that detachment to these guests, too. ❤️ xo ✨ Follow the journey: @lifewithsusan Blog (FB) : Life, Love & Autism #lifeloveandautism #lifewithsusan Aga Khan Museum, Toronto @agakhanmuseum 🏙️
❤️Andrew adds: “Yes, life in this body is like that. Not just in welcoming these guests, but in not getting attached, too.” 🔥 Andrew is 14, nonspeaking autistic and uses a letterboard to communicate🔠🌈 xo Always in awe.✨
Yesssssssss….❤️ xo
Monday inspo.✨ YES / NO? 1. Dark chocolate🍫,coconut clusters, lipbalm @bareenglish 2. Book power hour🔥 bluelight glasses 👓 3. ☕️chai latte @fouroclocktea 4. 🎶Amy Winehouse 5. Brene Brown✨ 6. Courage over comfort.❤️ 7. Pom seed snack 8. ⚠️Safe + healthy! @joshgitalis 9-10.☀️Cheery tunes, soul vibe. 🙌 xo Susan @lifewithsusan
🔥Current words of inspo. Required.❤️✨
💛Just need to leave this one right here before she gets any bigger. xo ☺️❄️🏂 #abigailjoy
✨Said in another way. 🙏
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✨ I believe this to be true, and yet I wonder what Andrew’s autistic body thinks? Controlling his body is one of his greatest challenges.💛 Will ask. Stay tuned. 🔠UPDATE: Andrew’s words in comments below ⬇️ ✨ @spiritdaughter
🔥Words from Andrew: “When I am present in my body I am present to everything else - sound and nature and spirit.” Andrew, age 14, nonspeaking Sound and nature and spirit.✨ Came about through a conversation about hiking vs tobogganing vs skating.🌲Andrew likes hiking, and he likes it because “hiking allows me to fully be present in my body”. I get that. Love it.💛
❤️”What we have once enjoyed deeply we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.” Helen Keller Opportunities to remember.🎄xo #christmastreetakedown #remembering #lifewithsusan #loss #empoweredliving #writingprocess #humanexperience #humanconnection #souljourney #inspiration ✨
A reminder.❤️ Andrew wrote this regarding nonspeakers but states it applies to all of us. ✨ I believe him. 🙏
(With kindness.)💜 This is coming up for me. It will take practice, but like a muscle, with every flex, the reflex gets stronger.💟☺️
Thank you, 2022.🥂✨Taking a few valuable moments to reflect on the year, on where I am, and on what’s coming forward. Beautiful.💜 Do you feel it? Lots available to us, and lots to be revealed. Stepping in! 🙌💟 xo Susan
What are we bringing into 2023?… Worth thinking about.✨
Maybe you feel it, too. An undercurrent of anxiety around the break. A slight up-level in adrenaline. How lovely to have the time💛😳though my stress goes to: where are they, what are they doing, are the plants okay😂 (ripping leaves & paper again 🪴🙄), how/will autism show up, will I have patience, will I have solo time, will I lose it, who will I lose it on- including husband (whom I’ll have home some days and I can’t imagine it solo but I know people who do it). It’s just the truth - it can go up *and* down. 🎢 The antidote: breathe and stay in the present.🙏💛 (Also: magnesium helps, as does meditation and/or margaritas.)🥂✨ Love to you all! 🌟 Thank you for sharing in the *real* of it with me. xo Susan
Absolutely.✨Thank you to all of you who show your vulnerability and allow me to do the same.💛🙌
💜45 years of growth. At least 45 to go.☺️ Thanks y’all for bearing witness to my journey! 💟🎉 xo Susan 🥂✨
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this! 💯%✨❤️ xo @lifewithsusan
Learning.💛 (Gifts are definitely in the present.) ✨
A preventive day off. Perhaps for both of us.🌲 We used to do this all the time - “Wednesdays with Andrew”. (Remember?) A day to re-set.❤️ So even though he spent the morning asking for “Bus” and “School” with his pictures, we set the intention for a “day to chill”. We made apple crisp and ate it for lunch. We went for a forest hike with the dog. We listened to silence. Then we listened to “happy hits” in the car and skipped all the songs we didnt like. (One after the other.😂) I didn’t ask him anything with the letterboard, and he didn’t volunteer anything*. We just honoured the silence and went with it. It was just a day. And it was a day we both needed. xo ✨ *Never (rarely) does Andrew pick up the letterboard himself; it is a limitation of apraxia (his mind will want to spell- and will know to go get his letterboard and bring it to someone, but he is unable to execute the motor task of doing so). But, often, if we pick up the letterboard and put it in front of him, he has something to “say” (pointing letter by letter, forming words).🔠🌈
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💛Five years ago 📸➡️almost to the day, we found the letterboard.🔠 (I like to say that it found us.)🌈 That’s when the answers came. Years that asked questions culminated into one single life-changing event: the day we started spelling to communicate. The day we presumed competence above all else. The day we decided to abandon conventional autism thinking and believe in possibilities. 💫 It was the day that changed everything.🌈 Nov.5 2017 📸
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Andrew’s words✨on living in harmony with why we are here… Andrew is 14, nonspeaking autistic 🌈🔠He spells to communicate on a letterboard: "Even though I understand so much of why I am here, I need to actually live in harmony with that." Can you share part of why you say you are here? "To show others how to live in the silence of who they are." And how do you do that? "I do it." 💛✨ Follow our journey: Life, Love & Autism (on FB) 🌈 Susan Baker, Toronto, Canada #lifewithsusan #lifeloveandautism
Andrew is 14. Not even four years ago did we have any idea he had this much to say. He doesn’t speak, but these are his words.❤️🔥🔠 Full responses from his most recent book club on Embers by Richard Wagamese, Canadian indigenous writer + storyteller. 📕 Andrew: 🔠 on his letterboard ⤵️ “We finished listening to the whole book. The audio was like storytelling. We loved it! Especially my mom. The author's words brought up excitement and truths from deep down for Mom. For me, those words are where I live.” “Richard’s words are universal. That's why they ring true. They resonate within us because they are our words too.” 🔥❤️ Me: And what have you learned, Andrew? Andrew: “I love how the same insights and wisdom can come through all different windows and traditions. We complicate it by putting titles and labels on it. Religion, faith, spirituality all come down to the same truths. We are starting to see this now. Humanity will get there. Back to the unity of love.” Me: Wow! Yes. And what did you love about the book, Andrew? Andrew: “Everything.” Me: Can you be more specific? Anything in particular? (Sometimes I have to press him for more.) “No. It is a beautiful book.” Me: Okay. What about his words on Love in discussion with Old Woman? Andrew: “So perfectly stated. Love is more than anything else. It is why we are here. To show love. To be love. To reflect love.” Me: Is there more? “There is nothing more to love than that.” ✨❤️🙌 Nonspeaking does not equal nonthinking. It is ‘autism month’ here in Canada. Time to help the millions of other autistic individuals and their families find *their* voice. XO Susan Baker, Toronto, Canada Follow our story: Life, Love & Autism on FB #lifeloveandautism 📚Andrew’s next book club runs mid-Oct to mid-Nov— one of the best ways to learn the insights and opinions of nonspeakers. For anyone, any age, speaker or non. Join us! Dates + times to be determined.
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*Way* better. Love that. Think we all need the reminder to consider this possibility. ✨🔥❤️ #lifewithsusan #lifeloveandautism #empoweredliving #personalgrowth #humanexperience #souljourney #inspiration #beopen #surrender ✨
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Oh my goodness, what a week. From welcoming a companion dog into our home, to an allergic reaction, to finding out it’s poison ivy, to having to do some deep digging personally on control, life, and letting go. The vulnerability of sharing this (documented in my stories this week!) felt necessary and cathartic. Thank you to those of you who continue to bear witness to my journey, to our journey. 💟 Susan✨ P.S. More to come! 🎥 Hilarious and revealing chat with Stu, plus how this companion dog - our new dog! - came to be! A true story of synchronicity and surrender.❤️🔥🐕 xo Susan
🎢There are things we *can* change, and things we can let go of…🥂 I just didn’t know that lessening up on ‘control’ would be this hard to even entertain! My grip is tight. This may take time. We are all ‘life in progress’. ☺️💛🙌 xo @lifewithsusan #lifewithsusan #lifeloveandautism #empoweredliving #personalgrowth #humanexperience #souljourney #inspiration ✨
What a process! To my fellow moms who are also currently letting go of their child (even just a bit!) …with the uneasiness of moving forward themselves. Allowing the “nothingness” of a clean slate. Letting it be. Versus satiating ourselves by being busy. Even acknowledging the vulnerability we might feel in allowing ourselves to experience joy. It almost feels like grief, like grieving. (Wow, wild!) Letting go of old wiring💡(brain/mind) and being brave enough to forge new paths.🔥❤️⚡️ This is good. It’s just new. It’s all okay. Being aware. Noticing. Allowing. All part of the process.🎢💛 Day by day. 🙌 ~ Susan @lifewithsusan #lifewithsusan #lifeloveandautism #empoweredliving #writingprocess #personalgrowth #humanexperience #souljourney #inspiration #useyourvoice #autisminspiration ✨
💟Love that! xo 🙌 #lifewithsusan #lifeloveandautism #empoweredliving #writingprocess #personalgrowth #humanexperience #souljourney #inspiration #useyourvoice #autisminspiration ✨
✨Uncertainty is very, very hard for me. But I will say, I have a thick book of beautiful + rich chapters with titles I could never have imagined for my life. ~Susan ❤️🔥☺️ #lifewithsusan #lifeloveandautism #empoweredliving #writingprocess #personalgrowth #humanexperience #souljourney #inspiration #useyourvoice ✨
Yes- in a good way.❤️ This is our story, 💯%. The gifts come from being *in it* versus wishing it were different. ✨ #lifewithsusan #lifeloveandautism #empoweredliving #writingprocess #personalgrowth #humanexperience #souljourney #useyourvoice #wordsfromandrew #nonspeaking ✨
On Surrender❤️ The laughable + honest truth about how HARD it can be to let go + trust on this autism journey. Maybe especially this fall.📚🍃✨ xo Susan 🎥6-min vulnerable share.☺️ #lifewithsusan #lifeloveandautism #empoweredliving #personalgrowth #humanexperience #souljourney #useyourvoice #wordsfromandrew #nonspeaking
➡️I’ve shared this before: me, writing.📚 The difference is, this is the first time I’ve ever really taken a bigger picture perspective: of my words, of our story, of why it matters.🔥❤️ It’s what has caused me to pause, step back and re-route the path to self-publishing this book. I’m up-levelling and it scares the cr¥p out of me! 🙌😂🤸♂️Our stories need to be shared. This is me stepping up to share it with more people. I’ve got a team. And it’ll now be a year in the making. I’m excited and nauseous☺️😆💃🏻and I’ll keep you posted! xo Susan #lifewithsusan #lifeloveandautism #empoweredliving #writingprocess #personalgrowth #humanexperience #souljourney #useyourvoice 🌈
Feeling a shift happening: in our family, in my focus, in my writing.💟 Having to “let go and trust” (aka surrender) to the timing of this book - the writing of our story + the self-publishing process. But IT’S A GOOD THING!🙌🤸♀️ For the first time EVER, I’m seeing a way bigger picture. Exciting + vulnerable + full of possibility! More to share as it unfolds… 💜 #trust #trusttheprocess #surrender #lifewithsusan #lifeloveandautism #empoweredliving #writingprocess #personalgrowth #humanexperience #souljourney #useyourvoice ✨
The experiences keep coming.💛Summer can be like that, but this summer has been a summer above all. This time: traditional summer camp.☀️ When I called months ago to register Abby, the camp director asked when Andrew was coming. I laughed. I shouldn’t have laughed. She was serious. ➡️ Full story: link above (in my bio) His sister asked him: “Andrew, what are your top 3 favourite moments at camp?” “I like when the boys want to hang out. Going out in a kayak is magical. Being with people who love the outdoors like I do is like being with old friends.” 🌲 “And are you tired?! You must be so tired!” “I love how my body feels at the end of a camp day. Exhausted and thankful.” 💛 When his sister and I picked him up on the final night, I grabbed his head and kissed and kissed and kissed him: “Andrew!” I said. “You did it! You did it, Andrew! You went to camp! I am so, so proud of you.” ➡️Full, beautiful story☺️ : click link⤴️ in my bio above xo Susan ✨ #lifeloveandautism #lifewithsusan #empoweredliving #writingprocess #personalgrowth #humanexperience #souljourney #useyourvoice #wordsfromandrew #nonspeaking 🌈🔠❤️
I read this to mean: Keep going. NOT at the expense of self, but at the knowing that there is something else, something more - maybe even something great - ahead. To not give up, even when we are weary. ☔️💜 It was a weary few months there, for a while. But it has been an epic few months now and I am relishing in the joy of it all. ☀️🌳 Sometimes, it’s just the way.🎢💛 #lifewithsusan #lifeloveandautism #empoweredliving #personalgrowth #humanexperience #souljourney #rumi #thisistheway #trust #surrender ✨
We both know it.😌 We’re spending time together (that’s her baby book we’re working on!) but Mama’s mind is preoccupied. And that’s okay.💛 With her big bro at his first true☀️summer camp🏕experience, we’re *both* actively wondering how he’s doing. Abby is a gift for that reason: ‘forcing’ me to be present but compassionately knowing I’ll just need a bit of time. As Andrew writes,🔠 “It gets better every day.”🌳✨xo For updates, see our stories!⤴️🙌❤️ 🎥 Also, our camp announcement post from Aug.13/22.✨ #surrender #lettinggo #lifewithsusan #lifeloveandautism #empoweredliving #writingprocess #personalgrowth #humanexperience #souljourney #useyourvoice #nonspeaking 🌈