Now is the time for vision

In this pre-conference webinar, you’ll hear from Darcy Elks, an educator, consultant and human services evaluator who has spent more than 30 years working alongside people who are societally devalued to build full, meaningful and inclusive lives. Darcy also draws on her experience as the parent of three adult children, each of whom has a disability.

Darcy explores why creating a clear, shared vision for a good life is one of the most powerful ways families can safeguard the future. Her presentation covers the role of vision in guiding decisions, shaping opportunities, challenging limiting expectations and helping a person with disability move toward a rich and meaningful life.

She also explains why vision is not something we create once and then set aside. It grows and changes over time, and becomes stronger when it is written down, shared with trusted allies and grounded in the person’s gifts, relationships, hopes and valued roles.

Meet Darcy Elks

Darcy Elks is an educator, consultant, human services evaluator and international advocate who works alongside people who are societally devalued to build full, meaningful and inclusive lives.  She has over 30 years’ experience teaching Social Role Valorisation, developing workshops on devaluation and inclusion, and draws deeply on her life as the parent of three adult children, each of whom has a disability.

 

Transcription

Please note that this is an automatically-generated transcription which may contain errors.

Jan so kindly asked me to come and talk tonight. Well, your morning, my evening. I live in Pennsylvania in the eastern part of the United States, and we have three kids, and they are a lot older now.

So, our daughter Mary, with an intellectual disability, is now 32. And our middle child, our son, is 30, and our youngest, believe it or not, is 25, soon to be 26.

So, it has been quite a journey. And in fact, since I have spoken for Imagine More, actually, my three kids have ended up having different kinds of disabilities, and I’ve always been so grateful for the information that I learned early on in the journey with our daughter, Mary, who’s our oldest.

And one thing that we have firmly stuck to is the idea of vision.

And I’m sure some of you have heard me talk about this topic before. I’m very, very passionate about it.

Now, the overall picture for this is safeguarding the future. And you heard about decision-making and how important decision-making is, and helping people to learn how to make decisions with support that is part of safeguarding the future.

Secondly, is the vulnerability in medical settings, right? And knowing that so you can get the needed – or your family member can have the needed supports, that is a safeguard for the future.

And this third topic, having a vision, is definitely a safeguard for the future. No matter where you are in this journey. If you’re starting out with a young child and thinking about the school years, if you are accompanying or your family member with a disability is moving into young adult life, you know safeguarding the future with a vision is just so important.

If your family member is in the middle years of their life or the older years of their life, the vision is really, really important. Of course, I hope that everybody here has a vision for your family member, and if you don’t, I hope you’ll have an opportunity to spend some time thinking about that.

This is one of the things that we are really firm on in our family, Mary. Now of course, in the beginning, when our kids were younger, we had a vision for all of our kids. This is not unusual for parents to have a vision for their children. But of course, as they become older, you know this, they start to develop their own ideas about what they want for their own vision. And we felt that this was so vitally important for all of our kids to partake in developing a vision for themselves. And mainly Mary, the oldest of our kids, actually brought the other two into this idea of a vision.

And as I get older, because I’m thinking more about it, I am ageing and I think about what is going to happen after I’m no longer here and my husband is no longer here. And this is something that every single parent lives with. And you think about that for all of your children. And if you are thinking about it in relationship to a child or an adult with a disability, it’s even more prominent in your mind.

And, so, I have been thinking about how important vision is in terms of safeguarding the future. So, your family member having a vision of what he or she wants in their life and how we’ve been trying to teach Mary through the years. How do you talk about what you want? How do you think about what you want and who can you talk to about it?

And then thinking about who are the really important people in your life that you trust, that you feel safe with, that you can ask to help you to think about what you want in your life. And so in this presentation we will be talking about now is the time for vision. Wherever you are in your journey with a person with a disability, it’s really important to think about it, to think about them safeguarding as well the future with a vision.

Now, my line of concern in my life, and also my work, has been largely spending time with people who live with disabilities and their families. And so I just wanted to write down some of the visionary families in Australia that I have come into contact with.

I don’t know if anybody here knows Ethel Tembe. She has passed away now.

Ethel was one of the first visionary families in Australia. She had a big vision. Her child was in an institution, and she had a big vision of how he could live outside of an institution and actually made that happen. And this was years ago. We kind of take this for granted now as families. Ethel Tembe was a real leader in your country and a real visionary.

And then there’s Judith Ellis. So, Judas and Judith Ellis live outside of Sydney. She has a son with very significant disabilities. Judith was determined that her son, Matthew was going to live in a home of his own. Now, that’s not so unusual in these days, but at the time that Judith was thinking about this, it had not been done in Australia.

She had a vision that it could happen. I’m not saying that there weren’t people living in their own homes, but her son has very significant disabilities and needs people with him 24 hours a day, literally to continue to live and be safe. She figured it out. She worked with the government and figured it out. And boy, I know this was a struggle because the government kept saying, there are places for people like that.

You don’t need to create something new. Okay. Another person, another family member, Jane Barrett, a long time ago, her daughter had such significant impairments. And her daughter. This was years ago, like 35, maybe 40 years ago. Her daughter went to college (university) at a time when nobody was thinking that somebody was significant. Intellectual and physical disabilities could go to college. And she made it happen.

And Anita O’Brien, who is another great visionary mum who was determined that her son would have access to the good things in life. And there are many more people. And obviously, I’ve added Jan here because when I met Jan, she was just pretty new on this journey, and she had a vision that, you know, that really there needed to be a gathering place in your area for families.

Right?

And so she pulled together and created the organisation with the help of others. But Imagine More. That’s vision, right?

So, these are examples of families who’ve done these amazing things. You probably haven’t heard of a lot of them. And they’re all over Australia. They’re all over. You probably know people in your own lives who’ve done amazing things.

Families have done amazing things, and they were driven by a vision. Right. So, I’m just encouraging you today. It’s not only people who are really gifted in vision who can have a vision, right? Every single one of us here can have a vision that will be a safeguard for the future.

So, I thought we would start out with some basic definitions of what vision is. Jonathan Swift says it is the act of seeing things invisible. And Andy Stanley has written a whole book called Visioneering on vision.

I love this definition, he says: It’s a clear mental picture of what could be fueled by the conviction that it should be. So,, I can think of so many people who had that clear mental picture of what should be. And deep, deep down, they have the conviction that it should be.

And vision requires imagination.

So, all the great visionaries, you know, and those families that I mentioned to you, they imagine things that did not yet exist. It wasn’t like they were looking through the directory of services. Right? They just imagined the possibilities. And so this is another, you know, good definition. I think that vision is the ability to see something that’s not actually visible, you know, through mental acuteness or foresight.

In other words, you can’t see it with your eyes. It is the force and the power of imagination. And so whether you are at a point in life where you are imagining for your family member, if they’re young, certainly it’s really important as people go along in their life path, to give them these opportunities to use their imagination of what could be possible.

And, you know, there are all different ways of helping to spark people’s imaginations, right? By talking to other people, by looking at pictures, by hearing other things that people say. And you would know the best way for your family member to be able to have their imagination provoked.

Mary did go to university and honestly, it was such a struggle with the school. They had never had someone with an intellectual disability go to university, and the day that Mary came home on the first day of going to university, she walked in the door and she said, This is the life! This is the life!”

So, when she was asked to speak about her experience, we asked her, ” You know, what do you want to name this presentation? She said, “This is the Life by Mary Elks”. She is working tonight. Otherwise I would have asked her to share this with you.

So, some of you on this call had seen this picture. This is Mary when she was days old. She was our first child. I think parents can all identify with this very early stage of life. Right. And I just remember being so excited, you know, I brought her home and we were standing there as my husband Martin, and running through my head where all of these ideas…

I just hope she has a great life. I really hope she has friends, and I really hope if she wants to, she can travel and I really want her to have a good education. And, you know, I hope that she figures out what she’s good at and is able to get a good job. These are all pretty typical things that parents think for their kids, right?

And I wouldn’t have called it a vision at that point. But what it was, was a vision. And while we had some very excellent professionals working with us early on, you know, they weren’t really thinking that they were more focused on what to do to help her to improve her physical ability as well as her mental capacity and so forth. But when we were thinking about the, you know, developing skills and so forth, we were always thinking we had this back here, the vision.

Okay. So, in a way, I wouldn’t have used the same words, but in a way this was a safeguard for Mary’s future, our vision. It was always there, and it provided, you know, the guidance for the next steps, the next steps, the next steps. And of course, you have to keep redoing the vision, right? You don’t do a vision for your life and that’s once and done.

And so, I have learned, I think we have all learned that here are some metaphors for vision. So, we say the northern star, we the North Star. Right. I think you say the Southern Cross. Am I right about that southern hemisphere? So, if you use it the same way that we do with the North Star, it’s like the destination. Like you’re looking to navigate by the North star.

It helps you to navigate when you’re out. Right. You’re looking to that for direction to reach your destination.

Another metaphor for a vision is that of a compass. So, it gives you the compass for the journey.

For example, you know, when Mary said she loved theatre, she said, “I love theatre, mum, I love it!” …  Well, that helped us to set the compass, right? So, we knew kind of some of the direction that she would be heading in and what kinds of opportunities we would have made for her and the telescope to see far away clearly, right?

So, you notice these are all metaphors of travelling. And that’s what I do have in my head. It is a journey, right? This journey of vision that, you know, changes as you go throughout life. So, the telescope to see far away and, you know, thinking about you know… If I think about our daughter’s life, she’s 32, right? So, thinking about what will Mary’s life look like when she’s 42, when helping her to think about what do I want as I get older? And also the idea of an anchor for turbulent times.

So, I have found this to be true all the way through, okay? So, when Mary was little, I’ll give an example. School was just this one particular year was horrific. Okay. It was horrific. And this was grade nine, which for us was the beginning of high school. And Martin and I, who are pretty skilled in advocacy, we’ve done everything we knew how to do.

We’d help Mary to do everything that she could do, and nothing was changing. And it was horrible. I bet you you’ve had those times in your own life, and I’m sure that families can think of a time that that has happened in their family member’s life. And you know how painful it is. It’s almost easier to take it for yourself than to see someone else you love go through it. Right?

And I just remember being so overwhelmed, and I was doing the dishes in the sink, and I had removed the stopper for the drain. And I picked it up and the water was, like, going down the drain.

And all of a sudden it occurred to me, that is exactly what is happening to you. You’re so distressed and so upset. You’re not really being much help to Mary, to be able to provide support for her. I didn’t know what to do because we were not going to be able to fix the situation at school that particular year. We had to get through it. Right? But I thought, let me go back to the vision.

So, Mary and I and her dad went back to the vision that was written, and one of the things Mary had said is, “I want to earn my own money”, okay? And at this point, she was 15 and we said, “we can’t fix school, but here’s something we can work on”. And so we actually were able to help our daughter to get her first job at 15, which is legal in the States and get her first paycheck.

And it was a wonderful job and she just loved it. And can you imagine how that really helped her sense of herself, right? And really encouraged her when she was being treated so poorly at school? I don’t know if I would have thought of that if we hadn’t had a vision. Okay, so for safeguarding, the vision is such a safeguard and it can provide, you know, real direction during the good times as well as the hard times.

So, of course, vision comes from a number of different places, from your beliefs and your values, right? From your conviction in life.

I think probably most people who would be here today would have the conviction that people with disabilities belong and have something to offer to the world, and should have opportunities to be in valued roles in typical places, right, with typical people. And I think vision also comes from learning from other people. So, I’ve always found it’s really important to have contact with people, other families who are developing visions, who are a little further ahead than we are.

And in achieving the vision, because we need to learn from each other. And so organisations like Imagine More are so important. And there are other ones in Australia as well where families get together and they work with one another, they share with one another. And vision is something that comes from deep inside of us, right? It’s from our heart, our soul and our minds.

So, the tricky thing for me is finding other people – and Mary finding other people – that will really engage with her in thinking about vision and embrace the vision that she has for herself. Deep down, you know, not just a surface. It’s okay to have kind of surface contacts with people who can offer you ideas. But, you know, for safeguarding the future, you want to have people who are kind of deeply embedded in this kind of thinking.

So, vision is very powerful, right? It’s a motivating force. I think, you know, we would have many examples of people here who would tell us of times when having that vision really motivated them to go, you know, and do something, right? I also have found as a parent that vision is the deep burning “yes” that helps us to say “no”.

So, this is taken from the work of Stephen Covey, actually – the deep burning “yes”. So, if you have a vision, you know, or your family member has a vision of what that family member wants for life, right? When people come along and offer something different, okay, the vision helps you to say “no”, right?

And rather to say, to have that deep burning sense inside. This is what I want. No, I don’t want that. And as a mother, I experience that. And I do see my daughter as well, having had those kinds of experiences. So, as a mum, Mary has always been included…. and school, you know, would continually offer us non-inclusive options as being best for her and so forth.

And I couldn’t do it… that deep burning “no”, we’re not doing that because the deep burning “yes” was inclusion.

So, it’s something to think about. I think people who have been in challenges with systems, whether it was school or whether, you know, was with adult systems, you may have had this experience of being able to say “no”, because inside, you know, you had that vision, which was, yes, we can do this.

Yes, we’re going to do this.

So, vision becomes really empowering, right? Really empowering.

And through the years, which I think again with safeguarding, this is something to think about. Your family member being empowered by vision. So, I’ve met lots of parents who are empowered by vision. Is your family member learning vision and to really engage and be empowered by it? Does your family member own the vision? You know, so they feel empowered to say to people who are supporting them, you know, in a support circle, for example, this is what I want. No, I don’t want that.

So, vision really affects the choices we make. So, if we have limited vision, we’re going to tend to make choices on what is right in front of us. And so many times I see this with supported employment… that young people their whole lives in front of them… of work, right? And what they are offered, you know, is you can either do this or this, and neither one is really compelling to the person. It’s not something they really want to do, you know?

And so if they don’t have a big vision, right? People tend to just take what’s in front of them.

So, this again, thinking about safeguarding the future, really important to have people with your family member who understands the idea of having a big vision, you know, not just a limited vision based on whatever is offered.

And another lesson that I learned from the work of Stephen Covey is if our vision is based on the social mirror…. In other words, what typically happens in society… We tend to make expectations or choices based on the expectations of others.

So, if we make and I have met so many families where this is true, they’ll say, well, I know other families that made this choice, and the teachers want us to make this choice, or the employment organisation wants us to make this choice, or the day program wants us to make this choice.

And, so, and I know other families that have done it and they’re perfectly happy and their family members happy. So, that’s not good grounds, is it, do you think, solid grounds to, to make a choice like, you know, maybe you take that information into consideration, but you don’t want to make, you know, a choice about a vision based on societal expectations.

So, there are a lot of people here who I am sure have gone against societal expectations.

And I think this is something that again, when I think about safeguarding the future and the people who are in Mary’s life, her siblings get this because they’ve lived it with Mary. But there are other people in Mary’s life who are really nice, really they treat Mary respectfully and they’re kind.

I don’t know, honestly, if somebody came, you know, if they were in a meeting, if somebody came up and said, well, why doesn’t Mary do something like this? You know, that’s more like a stereotypical kind of job. I don’t know if they would say, well, let’s think about Mary and what Mary can do, and let’s turn to Mary and ask her what she wants.

And if Mary can’t say, are there people who will present options to her that are not just the typical that are offered to people with disabilities in the society?

So, vision challenges the status quo… It stretches us in our thinking and also our practice. I am sure there are people in this presentation today that they weren’t quite sure how they were going to make something happen, but they made it happen.

A vision really stretches us and teaches us and gets us to do new things that we wouldn’t have done before.

And we all need vision to come together and move forward. So, you know, I live in the States.

It’s a very, very, very divided time in our country. And as a result, I don’t think we’re getting a lot done in terms of making new, bringing new visions about and creating new possibilities, at least on the federal level. Not much is happening. So, we really need a unified vision to come together and move forward.

Stephen Covey writes a lot about vision. He’s the guy who wrote the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People years ago, and he has several other books. So, I love to think about families with this. You could think about the different family organisations in Australia. So, this idea of we need vision to come together and move forward.

The passion of shared vision empowers people to transcend the negative interactions that consume so much time and effort, and deplete the quality of life.

Haven’t you found that to be true? That actually when people come together and they have a shared vision, you’ve got energy, you’re enthusiastic, you’re helping each other. You’re coming up with new ideas, sparking ideas with one another. So, vision, so powerful. Personally and also broadly.

And when you’re thinking about vision you want to think of different areas of life. So, we could call these domains of life. I’m not going to go through all of them, but I will do some that have been really important for Mary.

So, education, you know, is really important. So, all through school, you know, Mary has gone through all the steps of school or first graduation, elementary school, graduating from high school and going to university. We have now some initiatives in this state that are very helpful to people with developmental disabilities who want to go to university.

There was nothing when Mary went, so we had to figure it out from scratch.

And then what about your fun part of life? Right? So, you think about what do you do for fun? So, Mary’s always danced. Until she reached, like 24. And she said, I don’t want to do this anymore.

But she had a lot of fun with it. Going out with friends… she’s discovered all kinds of different drinks now for her. You know, that’s part of the good life.

And taking vacations… so, she loves going to the beach. And fortunately we are near a beach

And what about work? So, Mary started with… work was always pretty important in our family, you know. So, we started with chores like most families do and then doing volunteer work. So, this was putting together boxes of toys to give to kids at Christmas. And this is Mary’s first job. So, you remember that desperate time I described to you when I was looking at the sink and feeling like I was going down the sink, and I went back to the vision and it said work.

I said, Mary could get a job. Can you believe it? It was in the days when they had DVD stores. We don’t have them anymore, right? You don’t either, probably because everything’s online now. Okay, Mary, every Friday night went to the DVD store to rent DVDs for the weekend. Unbelievable. We went to rent DVDs and there was a little sign in the window “help wanted”.

So, Mary went in. I went in with her. I helped her to ask, you know, did they still need help? They said, yes. A young man who had waited on Mary every Friday night, who knew her, said, yes, we do. We need people to scan the videos in and out. We need people to put them back on the shelves, etc. And Mary said, “I would like that job”.

And he said, come back and talk to the owner. And Mary got the job, so she had her first job, first paycheck. Right? And that was a really amazing part of her life. And she has worked ever since.

So, when she was in university, she had summer jobs. She was a teacher assistant. She said, “I don’t ever want to do that again”.

She was clear. She loves clothes and stuff. So, she worked at this clothing store. And, I mean, it was okay. She didn’t like sorting clothes too much. She loves lotions and stuff like that. So, she worked for this small family run company where she made soaps, and she packed them and she sealed them, and she went to, you know, these really fancy grocery stores and gave out samples.

She also has worked at Marshalls, and she still likes Marshalls, although she has another job, her dream job. But she does work at Marshalls one day a week because she likes to look at all the new clothes that come in. So, she hangs up the new inventory, right? She really likes that. And she goes to take it out on the floor, and she gets to see other kinds of clothing out on the floor.

So, Mary’s real love and life is theatre. It always has been. It continues to be. So, she took theatre classes as a teenager. She did volunteer ushering. She studied theatre in university. She had an internship in a theatre. And I’m so happy to tell you she landed a theatre job.

And so she is working now as the head usher in this wonderful regional theatre. It’s very well known for its wonderful, its wonderful, wonderful work.

All right, so that’s just looking at those different domains of her life and the vision and the journey toward that vision. So, this is really important – and think about it in terms of safeguarding the future… If there is no clear stated vision, there’s a huge void. Others will fill that void in with a vision that they think should be.

And that may not be the vision that the person or the family wants.

When Mary finished high school, the future was really bright. We had the last, you know, the wrap up Individualised Education Plan meeting. And they said to Mary, what do you want to do? She said, I want to go to university. They looked totally stunned. They said, well, we have a plan for you. I don’t think you can do that.

So, we said, what will what plan? We want to tell Mary the plan. And they said, well, we think that you could do a little more work on math and reading. So, after you go to graduation ceremony, then the following fall you’ll come back to school, you’ll get on the school bus, come back and work on math and reading.

And I was so proud of my daughter because we had no real power at that point. Okay? She said, no, I want to go to university. And she just prevailed. She would not hear of anything else. They finally put it on the exit IEP plan and you saw Mary went to university. And that day I think I really learned the importance of a person having a vision.

Mary could speak it, but even if she couldn’t speak it, if it was written down, she could have shown it, right?

So, otherwise they would have pretty much dismissed us. And the funny thing about this is the school was a school that took kids to all different kinds of learning options for life after high school, so I just didn’t think it was at all unusual that she would want to go to university. That’s where all of her friends were going.

Okay… so, fundamentals of visioning… really encourage dreaming, okay? And sometimes, you know, I’ve been trying to think about always having other people there who will encourage dreaming because I feel like sometimes Mary gets inhibited with us there. I think sometimes, as much as I don’t like to admit this, she thinks, well, I better not say that because I don’t know if Mum and Dad would be okay with that. Right?

So, in whatever way that you can think about, maybe ask your family member what would encourage you?

Mary has a fabulous friend group. She talks a lot more about her dreams with her friend group than she does with us.

Whenever you’re thinking of a vision, you want to base it on the good life. What is available in the culture for people with similar age that is good and sought after?

Okay, I’m not saying Mary wouldn’t ever do any specialised kinds of programs, but we’re not going to start there with a vision, right? We’re going to say, what are other 32 year olds doing? What are all the different opportunities that are available and thinking of all those different life areas which we’re going to come back to. So, you want to in other words, you want to have a really big vision. Okay?

All right. So, here are some key elements of a full meaningful life. These are, you know, written by again, Stephen Covey and Roger and Rebecca Merrill. I love this, I love this. This is what I would like for all of my children to live, to love, to learn and to leave a legacy.

So, if you think about that, I think any parent would agree with that. And a legacy doesn’t have to be a huge thing, right? It could be something that isn’t noticed by society as a whole or, you know, the town as a whole, but a legacy within the family, maybe, within friends and so forth. So, these are different areas to think about for a vision: home, education, relationships, valued social roles, you know, being a homeowner, being a tenant in an apartment, being a roommate, a housemate, being a friend, a good friend, you know, being a student. Some people are like lifelong students, being a neighbour….

Learning how to be a neighbour and a good neighbour. It’s a pretty important role. You know, being a member of your community, being a voter and so forth, right? These are all valued social roles.

Okay. Choice is really important in life. So, learning how to make choices, having a rich spiritual life, whatever that means to the person. Sometimes people hear that and they think I’m talking about church or some, you know, structured, formalised religion. Not necessarily. Okay?

So, for some people, I know this one gentleman, hiking is spiritual for him. He goes out and he hikes and he feels so uplifted and nurtured, you know, by being in nature, it’s a spiritual experience for him. And really it is his spirituality. He’s very tied, you know, to the Earth and being fully included in family and society. So, these are some key elements that you can think about.

And the life course that I spoke of, they have different domains of life which are pretty similar. But sometimes these are helpful to people when they’re thinking about vision. So, your daily life and your employment, okay?

So, if you were helping somebody to develop a vision, if they were adults, you’d be thinking about, well, and for children there are young people, their school, their education, their employment. What about volunteering? Okay? Skills. Just basic skills, you know, for living, knowing how to do your laundry. Although lots of times you don’t learn that until you move out of your parent’s house, right? You figure out I better learn how to do that.

You know, being in your community and living in your community. So, what kinds of living options would you like? Would you need any adaptations, you know, and modifications needed in a place to live?

What about transportation? You know, do you want to live someplace where you can get accessible transportation? And what about your social and spiritual life? So, your friends, your relationships, your personal networks, your faith community…

What do you do in emergencies? Do you have support for making decisions? Are you given opportunities to make decisions? So, are you engaging in supported decision making and who’s there to help you with it?

And then your citizenship and advocacy roles. So, these would be valued roles within your community. You could actually find valued roles in all these areas, but valued roles within your community, you know, having some responsibility as a citizen, right? Engaging in that could be around disability issues, but also maybe beyond that, you know? Advocacy for voting is a huge issue here right now.

Maybe it’s something you feel really strongly about. And so you’re going to join an advocacy group for making sure that people are given the opportunities to vote.

So, this really, this is an important one to think about. I usually separate this out. Your citizenship, okay, for the country you live in, the community that you live in, right? Or the town that you live in… and then advocacy that you’re going to do maybe on different levels. You know, so your town, your community beyond that, you know, for your society and so forth.

So, you know, there are positive experiences that you can build on in life. And then there are life experiences you really don’t want to have again. They’re really upsetting, even traumatic. Right?

I know those things. Mary does too. She might have a hard time expressing some of them. Some of them would be deeper than others.

You know, some of them are pretty minor, just annoyances to her, but it’s not a good idea. So, making sure that the vision kind of includes that somewhere, you know, so that should Mary not be able to communicate it for whatever reason, somebody could read it.

Obviously, you know, the skills and abilities and personality, like that’s the other thing. Like really, you know, saying something about having the person, like, talk about their personality and maybe even having the people who are around that person, you know, close to the person commenting on the personality positives. Right? I wouldn’t want people writing negatives about my personality and something that other people are going to read. I’m not sure that’d be much of a good safeguard.

Right?

And then I also really want you to think about this, and I do a whole presentation on this… Your gifts and talents, your birthright gifts and talents, gifts and talents. Everybody has gifts. Some gifts people seem just to be born with, other gifts you develop as you go through life. We all have talents.

Gifts are a little bit different from strengths. Most parents, when they really know their kids, they can talk about some of the gifts or a gift that the child has. You know, I’m thinking about one of my friends who I have known her son… He’s now in his early 30s, from the time he was a baby. And I’m telling you, when he was very little, he was building these exceptional kinds of structures with blocks and different kinds of blocks, you know, and he continued to do that his whole life.

What do you think he has ended up doing?

He’s an architect and a builder, right? He is extraordinarily gifted in this area. So, it’s something to think about. You know, your family member, what gifts do they bring to the world?

And it is talent. Sometimes the gifts are seen in the talents.

And even the idea of a calling in life. So, sometimes people are, when I say calling, they’re like called to it, they couldn’t stay away from it even if they tried. Or they feel called to do something and they, however that comes to them, you know, through mental image or sitting in a class or hearing a friend speak, they feel called to it, but then they kind of forget about it, right?

And they go off and then it comes again to them. It comes to their mind or their attention. And one way or another, it just keeps appearing, you know. And I just, I love the example of this is from the States, though, but I think you’ll relate to it. Rosa Parks, who was the woman who wrote on the bus right in the segregated South. Black woman, and it’s so beautiful.

People asked her why didn’t you stand up that day? Because she was supposed to go to the back of the bus, right? And she sat down right in the front of the bus, where at that point in time, people of colour were not allowed to sit. And she said, “because I just knew I should sit there”.

She had ridden that bus hundreds of times before, but something inside her just told her, now is the time, you’re called to do it. I don’t know if she heard those words or anything, but she just knew it inside.

So, I don’t think this is an unusual human experience, but we don’t often stop and reflect about it. And I would imagine that if you reflect on it, you could think of this for yourself. And you could also think of this in terms of your family members.

So, all this has to do with vision, right? And this particular piece was making sure the vision is really customised.

Right? Really, really customised to that person. And only people who know you well can help you to customise your vision. Something to think about for safeguarding the future, isn’t it? Who in your family members life knows your family member well enough to be able to assist them to customise their vision as they go along in life.

Okay, so, another fundamental of visioning is you brainstorm, right? You never think about the obstacles when you’re visioning. I bet you all of us have been in meetings where we were offering thoughts and people would say, oh, I could never do, you know, we couldn’t do that because…

I’m not saying they were wrong, but gee! You start out with that, you’re not going to get anywhere with visioning.

So, you put the obstacles and the barriers away, right? And be open to those new ideas.

And then I’ve also met families… and I sort of had this experience myself… like, Mary now has young people in her life, or people her age, and they started sharing ideas with Mary about what she could do in her future. And I found myself like I thought, I’m so open, and, you know, being a little bit resistant to this.

Wait, wait, I need to change my vision. Of course, they have better ideas, you know, and her brother and sister as well. Like, they have really interesting ideas. So, we have to be willing to change, right? Those of us who are, you know, family members, parents in particular, and to really seek out… I found it’s really important to seek out people who will challenge, who will offer different ideas for Mary.

Okay. And then this, I think, is a really important idea, and I don’t know how I’m going to pass this along to the people who will be assisting Mary in the future. That is, once there is a vision, be patient. I think I could ask a number of people who are here who could give stories of this.

You heard other parents speak. You developed a vision, and it was sort of like taking birth in you. Right? And the vision had to mature in you. Like, you heard someone speak and you said, wow, like, that’s amazing! And you’re really excited about it. And then you develop a vision. And I found that the vision needs time to mature in us. Like, sit with it, think about it, talk with other people about it, grow with it. Sometimes just be quiet with it and let it grow in you.

Because you mature in preparation for the vision. So, I always thought, like, inclusive school, that like that was definitely the way to go. You know, that was the vision. Well, that vision had to mature in me once I came up against all those roadblocks… And then you feel like, you know, it’s never going to happen, and it doesn’t happen for some years and it becomes really discouraging to hold on to the vision and let it mature in me.

Right then, I was ready to start moving forward, if not in the area of school in another area, right?

So, the vision has to mature in you. So, you’re prepared for the vision.

It’s just like for anybody here who’s had a baby, right? The baby grows within you for nine months. And that vision of having a child is maturing in you. Right?

And so okay. Write the vision down and share it with allies. This will be something I will be teaching. You know, to the people who are helping Mary now and I hope will continue to help her when we’re no longer here to safeguard her future.

Write it down and share it with other people.

So, I’m not going to read all of these quotes, but I will read one:

“Vision always stands in contrast to the world as it is. Vision demands change. It implies change and visionaries, people who have allowed their minds and hearts to go outside of the artificial boundaries imposed by the world as it is. Vision requires courage.”

And this is written by a gentleman who came to one of these workshops and struggled a lot with vision for his own life. And he actually is a poet, and he wrote three books of poems. I met him before he wrote those books, and he wrote:

“A vision is a beautiful dream that we have. It tells us to keep going and keep believing that nothing is impossible.”