Lessons without words,

Ask anyone what the key to a successful relationship is and they’ll tell you: trust & communication.

And up until February trust and communication were skills I felt I had mastered. After all, I am a lover of words. I enjoy talking with people [in fact as a child people even accused me of being superfluously verbal.]

Polite language has scripted and choreographed my relationships until now. I have shared honestly and I have listened and I thought that was enough to make me a great communicator. Then I started working as a disability support person and began to re-learn everything I thought I knew regarding the relational realm.

I met people who are unable to say what they long to share and I realized how I had been isolating members of my community by limiting my communication to language. Consider for a moment the slow progression of verbal communication:

1. There are polite one-line reflections [normally on the weather] we can say to strangers.
2. Socially acceptable topics we draw on when in conversation with acquaintances.
3. Anecdotes we laugh over with friends and family.
4. Deep wounds we tearfully uncover with our trusted few.
5. And secrets so hidden within our hearts that we only share them with our most intimate love--- pains so private they can only be safely revealed behind closed doors, with the lights turned out, by husband and wife lying close enough to feel each others’ heartbeat, under the covers, in their most hushed whispers.

When I began to care for nonverbal clients, I made efforts to decode the significance of a blink, the emotion reflected in sounds of different pitches, the meaning of each expression, the real implication of every oft-repeated phrase, and the message of the tears.

Within a month I had realized two things. (1) For people without words life is a battle to be heard, and (2) they don’t beat around the bush. On one level I always knew these two points. These “realizations” are easily assumed by outsiders to the disabled community, but in near proximity to lives deeply affected by an inability to communicate [in the most culturally recognized manner] the truth of the situation is heavier.

I began to view verbal communication as only effective when demanding honesty. I was disappointed with how many of the words I say are really at the core dishonest, wasted in a cultural dance—exhausted trying to make everyone else join. Conversely the more practice I got using non-verbal communication the more it felt like a return to honesty, to prayer.

I became thoughtful about what I shared. Often I spend an entire evening trying to communicate one message—“I am glad to be a part of your day. You are a terrific person. No matter how hard it has been today, I am here for you and I am listening.”

I learned that showing people you are there for them is harder than saying it, but it is more real. Nonverbal communication is honest. I can say many things, but action shows it to be true.

The work required in action is the real foundation of communication and trust. Nonverbal communication is requires action on both sides, and a relationship of trust must be built to scaffold the difficult effort of communicating.

It’s been beautiful and rewarding, and yet

I cannot be all rosy about these lessons in communication. The depth of semi-effective nonverbal communication is no balm for the ache of watching someone suffer and not be able to express their pain.

There are evenings when I leave work with a burdened heart because I know something is not right and I have no idea what it could be. It hurts even more when I think of how this “feeling of disconnection” in my relationship with non-verbal clients must be similar to the way they feel in every relationship.

I recently I read a description of the way autism can feel by an amazing young woman, Carly Fleischmann.

After 11 years of being silenced by autism, Carly found her voice—she went to a computer and painstakingly spelled out H-U-R-T, H-E-L-P, and then ran behind her coach and threw up. Since that breakthrough Carly has begun typing to communicate what she’s feeling. Her portrayal of autism gives a glimpse into the world which has been so hidden,

You don’t what it feels like
When you can’t sit still because your legs feel like they are on fire
Or it feels like a hundred ants are crawling up your arms…

It is so hard to be me
And you would not even under stand
I wish I could put you in my body just for one day so you can feel what it’s like…

What do I want?
I want not to feel what’s happening in my body
I want to stay at home and not go to the farm
I want to be like every other kid
But I can’t
Because I am Carly

I looked up Carly’s blog and poured over everything she has posted. She is so normal and so extraordinary at the same time. She is 14 in all its glory. So many of the things she writes about are exactly the feelings I had fourteen. She is sassy. She is articulate. She knows what she wants...

But the video footage I found of her revealed a young woman fighting to live in a body that betrays her and it is the unmistakably painful struggle that makes her words so poignant. She has been described as an autism angel because when Carly’s story was broadcast on Larry King and ABC news her voice became a voice for those whose speech is still silenced. Finally we do begin to understand how overwhelming input is that takes away their words.



It is painful to recognize that the women I work with are like me—hurting, frightened, overjoyed, and hoping--- but with no words to express the emotions building in them, but Carly reminds me how true it is.

And without words people do become blunt in their non-verbal communication, using whatever form of communication they are able to—smiles, laughter, tears, tantrums, even aggression to tell the people in their world what they need, what they like, or how they are frustrated and hurting.

The lengths I have observed people with limited ability to communicate go through to make themselves understood is further proof of that the need to be heard, understood, and validated is intrinsic the human soul. The desire for a deeper connection is strong enough to push through the static of autism and make another effort to be heard.

Still for the women I serve often all I can do is sit with them as they hurt.

Even sitting with the hurt is a lesson to me—a girl who has been given the gift of words and language. Words were given to me to give away, but they must be weighed and backed by action or my words will become as meaningless as a TV script. When I am careful with my words I know sometimes sitting with someone in silence is all I can offer.

Sitting quietly is my admission that I have no idea what to do…
I can only listen. I can only love.
And honestly this is most often the truth of me.