Noah McSweeney
Sharing words through touch
Noah McSweeney
“When I do nothing
Something does poetry
Inside me”
Imagine you can't speak your thoughts. Instead you have to spell each word, one letter at a time, in order to communicate. This is the case for Noah.
Noah is an unreliably-speaking autistic. He also has apraxia of speech, which is a neurological disorder that prevents him from verbally saying what he wants to say. With the help of a communication regulation partner, Noah uses a letter board to spell his thoughts one letter at a time.
It's an arduous task, but it has allowed Noah to express himself and share his thoughts with the world. He attends a journalism class at Santa Rosa Junior College. He's published multiple pieces in the school paper and has even won two awards for his writing. Noah loves poetry. Over the years he's written countless poems and has even self-published a poetry book called "Noah Rising."
Noah shares with us: “I have hopes and dreams just like anybody else. Except mine are rooted in a desire to change the way the world sees me. Sign of progress for autistics are simple: I want to finish college and be a writer. I want deeply fulfilling relationships with others. I want storage of good memories to burst at the seams. Really it’s the same things anyone looking to find happiness might want. I know I deserve this. My ultimate dream is to remove all barriers set by those who insist on questioning my intelligence because of how I communicate.”
His mother Mary Ellen shares, “We will support and help him do whatever he wants to do, however he wants his life to unfold. But he is the driver. And that’s the beauty of communication; is once you have communication you have some autonomy, you have some agency as to how your life is going to unfold, rather than people telling you ‘this’ is how your life is going to unfold. So that’s the real gift of having true communication, of having your words, that you intend to say, be the driver of your life.”
The Source of Poetry
There may be blankness
Between here and there
My mind can be floating anywhere
When I do nothing
Something does poetry
Inside me
-Noah McSweeney
