Finally feeling the beauty in Augmentative and Alternative Communication

February 09, 2017

Amongst the social theory books I have read this year, two of them explicitly mention alternative communication methods as a valid and valuable way of engaging with society. This makes me emotional and perhaps feel more significant, because it's taken me the majority of my life to even start to see that there's a glimmer of beauty in AAC. It's not that I didn't accept my lack of speech, and utterly value and recognise it as part of my lived experience, but it just creates so much frustration, upset and isolation, that I have always found it hard to embrace. Yet, there's really is clumsy beauty, and intrinsic worth in the different, intimate and messy kind of quality of the way I express myself, and the way I connect to others. I allow myself the necessary space and patience to really feel comfortable with my crippled existence. Or whatever.