Autism Acceptance and Autism Awareness...
Awareness: is the state or ability to perceive, to feel, or to be
conscious of events, objects, or sensory patterns. In this level of
consciousness, sense data can be confirmed by an observer without
necessarily implying understanding
Acceptance: is a person's assent to the reality of a situation, recognizing a
process or condition without attempting to change it, protest, or exit
Now with those two things now described, I can write what I wanted to write.
When it comes to Autism Awareness, it seems that we, within the community know very well the drive to make the outside world aware of Autism. There is the "Light it Blue" Campaign in April. Which was great when it first got started by Autism Speaks. Now, not so much as it has become more about money than the actual cause. There are so many memes out there that scream AUTISM AWARENESS ( I admit that I have made a few of those) that state that we want the outside world to notice the fact that we have Autism or it is in our families and to be aware of it. The interesting part about many of these memes is that it denotes that the person in question should be singled out. I mean yes we know the autistic person has feelings, breathes air, eats, sleeps and functions. They are human. The trick is, is that they do all those things on their own level. Which brings me to Acceptance.
You can be aware that someone does things differently than yourself. Sometimes its a personal preference or sometimes its just the way naturally you do things. When you accept that someone does something different than yourself, that is when you can respect that person for doing something different. For the Autism Community, Acceptance is the key. I know that all of you are aware that Autism is out there. But Accept it. Accept the person that has it.
So when you see an Autistic person who is doing something differently, accept that. You might just learn something from that person. You might see another way of looking something.
You can be aware all day long, but accepting and acknowledging the person for who they are.. That is key.
We are always aware, just not always accepting.