Barbara Moran - Hello, Stranger: My Life on the Autism Spectrum

Praise for

Hello, Stranger

insights from a time when a young person with autism grew up in a world where nobody understood them!

Temple Grandin, author of Thinking in Pictures

An extraordinary look at autism from the insideby turns heartbreaking, uplifting, illuminating, witty, and wise.

Steve Silberman, author of NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity

Remarkably detailed, stunningly honest, and, in the end, deeply moving. A unique look into the heart and mind of someone who never fit in.

Rachel Simon, author of Riding the Bus with My Sister

A testament to neurodiversity and a call to acceptance.

Martha Leary, author of Autism: Sensory-Movement Differences and Diversity

This book is a winner for all to read. It clearly reveals the contrast between the world view and experiences of one remarkable person with autism and those around her

Nancy Minshew, MD, founder, Center for Excellence in Autism Research at the University of Pittsburgh

An uncommon soul navigating the pain and triumph of self-discovery.

William Stillman, award-winning author of The Soul of Autism and Empowered Autism Parenting

As sweet and honest and painful and true and illuminating as any personal story you will ever read.

Paula Kluth, Ph.D., author of Youre Going to Love This Kid: Teaching Students with Autism in the Inclusive Classroom

Copyright 2018 by Barbara Moran and Karl Williams

Photos property of Ruth Moran and used with permission.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Moran, Barbara, 1951 May 29- author.

Title: Hello, stranger / by Barbara Moran ; as told to Karl Williams.

Description: Georgetown, Ohio : KiCam Projects, [2018].

Identifiers: LCCN 2018057782 (print) | LCCN 2018059924 (ebook) | ISBN

9780999742266 (ebook) | ISBN 9780999742259 (paperback) | ISBN 9780999742266

(ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Moran, Barbara, 1951 May 29---Health. | Autistic

people--United States--Biography. | Autism spectrum disorders.

Classification: LCC RC553.A88 (ebook) | LCC RC553.A88 M668 2018 (print) | DDC

616.85/882--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018057782

Cover and book design by Mark Sullivan

ISBN 978-0-9997422-5-9 (paperback)

ISBN 978-0-9997422-6-6 (e-book)

Printed in the United States of America

Published by KiCam Projects

www.KiCamProjects.com

Table of Contents

Introduction vii

Prologue xiii

Part One: The Years with My Family

One: When I Was Little

Two: Gas Pumps, Geysers, and Traffic Lights

Three: A Horrible Driven Feeling

Four: Dr. Horowitz, Alias Frank Sinatra

Part Two: Menningers: The Hospital

Five: At First It Seemed Like a Great Place

Six: Drifting Off to La-La Land

Seven: You Push People Away

Eight: Barbara, You Have to Tell Me

Nine: On Drugs

Ten: Does God Really Exist?

Eleven: Metaphors and Subconscious Anger

Twelve: Whitney Hall

Thirteen: The Older Girls

Fourteen: Cathedrals

Fifteen: My First Visits Home

Sixteen: Fancy Clothes and Safe Men

Seventeen: To Get Out of Menningers

Eighteen: Traffic Lights and Tornados

Nineteen: Jealousy

Twenty: Hayden High School

Twenty-one: Some Kind of Incentive

Twenty-two: Youve Chosen to Be Mentally Ill

Twenty-three: Riccardo

Photos

Part Three: Menningers: The Foster Home

Twenty-four: Life with the Harrisons

Twenty-five: Troy

Twenty-six: Fantasy Will Set You Free

Twenty-seven: Ramada Inn

Twenty-eight: It Chose Me

Twenty-nine: After the Social Club

Thirty: Bertram

Thirty-one: The Nursing Home

Thirty-two: The Evangelical Church

Thirty-three: Cornelius

Thirty-four: Airplanes

Thirty-five: Hobie

Thirty-six: Linda

Thirty-seven: Thats a Crutch

Thirty-eight: Moving Out

Part Four: On My Own

Thirty-nine: Rooney

Forty: The Naturopath

Forty-one: Autism

Forty-two: Tables

Forty-three: Kathy Grant

Forty-four: Drawing

Forty-five: Conferences, Jobs, Noise, Apartments, and Understanding

Forty-six: Forgiveness

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Introduction

By Karl Williams

You wont find much in this book on theories about or treatment for autism. In a sense, this work is the byproduct of a friendship. I met Barbara Moran when my wife invited Barb and her sister, Ruth, to tell Barbs story at a conference in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Born in 1951, Barb had clearly been very bright, but once she started school, her teachers might have used the word undisciplined to describe her. The term autism had only recently begun to appear in medical journals in the early Fifties, and beyond blaming the parents (the phrase refrigerator mother dates from this period), there were few theories and no help. And so Barb ended up trapped in the mental health system for decades, misdiagnosed, until Ruth became a doctor.

I was fascinated. And there was no separating Barbs story from Barb herself quite a character with her outlandish clothing choices, her outspoken ways, and her colorful drawings of traffic signals and cathedrals with spindly arms and legs and open-book faces.

Over lunch, following the conference in Hershey, we talked about working on a book together.

Ive written two as-told-to autobiographies with leaders in the self-advocacy movement (people with intellectual disabilities working for respect and civil rights). Using transcriptions of recorded conversations, I removed all my questions and comments and worked exclusively with the words of those two remarkable men in order to render their stories in print.

Barb and Ruth agreed we would work in the same way: from conversations with Barb, as well as with Ruth and their mother, Mrs. Moran. We also used the detailed notes Mrs. Moran wrote for a psychiatrist on Barbs development from birth through her early years. (To protect the privacy of certain individuals in the story, names and identifying details have been changed.)

Barbara Moran is a very intelligent witness to the misdeeds that have been done in the name of helping. She is a survivor; shes been to the brink and has come back to tell us about it. Barb has an artistic spirit. From the start, she was going to do things her own way, because, as she says, other people mostly seemed boring to her. Human beings feel an urgent need to give names to things. Were hoping to gain some understanding and control in this baffling world in which we find ourselves. And so, at this point in time, the most reasonable approach seems to be to group people such as Barb in the category autistic. Barbs story attests to the value of such an approach. But it is just as true that Barb, rather than acquiescing in varying degrees, as many of the rest of us do, to the deeply grooved path of the culture weve been born into, is one who, as an artist, set out on her own path.

Barb still spends a good deal of time trying to express what has happened to her and how it made her feel. She imagines how things might have gone better for her even to the point of mapping what is currently understood onto situations she was forced to live through in the past. Shes still reeling from the major experience of her life: the worlds colossal misunderstanding of who she is.