“The world is cruel, but we don’t have to be. We owe it to all animals to give them our respect.” ~ Temple Grandin
After having read several of Temple Grandin’s books about animal psychology and animal behavior, I knew what a remarkable person she was. When I saw the movie Temple Grandin recently, I was not prepared for the emotional tug that my heart would feel in learning more about her own personal story. Portrayed brilliantly by actress Claire Danes, Temple Grandin’s determination, passion, and conviction made her one of my heroes.
Autism is a very personal issue for me. My father, a clinical psychologist, studied it which led me to explore the possibility of building my career in development pediatrics while I was a student at Penn and a work-study student at CHOP. My nephew also lives with a specific type of autism that has prevented him from speaking to us since he was about 3 years old; he’ll be 13 in June. I have close friends whose lives have been touched in one form or another by the condition. I’ve known autism to be fascinating and heartbreaking. Temple Grandin’s story made me realize that it can also be triumphant and hopeful.
In this post, I could expound upon the spectrum of autism and how it commonly manifests in both young children and adults. However, Autism Speaks, an organization that has worked tirelessly to fund research and provide education and support services to individuals and families affected by autism, is far more equipped to do that.
What I want you to do is go over to Netflix and put the movie Temple Grandin at the very top of your queue. I want you to take yourself to Amazon or your local bookseller or the public library and check out Temple Grandin’s books. Poke around on her website and be prepared to be inspired.
Her personal passion is the well-being of animals, particularly ones that we raise for our own purposes. What she teaches us through that passion is how to be better human beings. And given all that’s going on in the world, it’s a skill that is desperately needed in huge heaping amounts. For too long we have looked at autism as this hideous disease rather than seeing that the many challenges it presents have so much to teach all of us about compassion, determination, and the universal acceptance of all people as different but not less.
Christa Avampato 