AS:027 Express Yourself

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So thank you for joining me again this week on the Accessibility Solutions podcast. I'm very pleased today to have a special guest, Kyle Ann Robertson. And we're gonna have a little bit of a different topic that we're gonna talk about today, which is embracing your new creative writing mindset, and how we're gonna link that to kind of mind-mapping for persons who may have a disability, perhaps, a phase after a stroke and how, Kyle Ann's techniques can work from that perspective in terms of still allowing people with that kind of disability to be able to, still get their creativity out. So, Kyle Ann is the author of White Picket Fences and Not So Little Things. She writes contemporary women's fiction that sinks its teeth into families, miscommunications, misperceptions and the chaos they cause, even in the name of love. She has received her certificate of Creative Writing from Emory University and is the founder of Embrace Your Muse creative writing workshops. So very pleased to have you, Kyle Ann. We had a little discussion before we hit record on this episode in terms of, perhaps people who are experiencing, some kind of disability or some kind of, inability to communicate after, for example, stroke. And how your technique can work to get their creative juices flow. It's to write or just be able to express themselves, in a creative manner. So, you know, let's just, I'm gonna let you kind of take it away from there. And, how you see the work that you're doing, allowing those creative juices to flow from somebody that may not be able to get them out, in a different way.

I find journaling is very important, especially during times of recovery and things so I like to get people into the mindset that they can imagine and move down the path of imagination to write creatively or write what they feel like they would like to write. Whether it be journaling creativity, writing a poem, even just expressing how they're feeling for the day. I'm a retired physical therapy assistant after 27 years. I have taught, at physical therapy courses, on a college level.

And I was also the resource coordinator for physical therapy students and sports athlete students and things. And during that time period, when I learned that, people learned differently, and people fought differently. So in my years of doing visualization with my physical therapy patients, some of the stroke patients I worked with, you know, we went through a whole mental visualization of moving a leg or contracting a muscle before we even practiced the fact itself. Because the mind is so powerful with all of this knowledge over the last 25 years, and then when I started, I retired and went into writing. I started personally getting discouraged and having the joy taken out of writing. and I would be, I had a few family issues happen that my anxiety kind of went out of the roof, and I had to find myself, finding ways to focus and to pull my mind back into writing. And so I eventually developed prompt cards for my writing, and they use all five senses, and this is where we can help, a stroke patient who's ready to get into and getting their word out, and, people that need, that just want to express themselves in right and, and have anxiety over it, or they feel like they're not capable. They're more left-brained or right-brained. That's all a fallacy. What you need is a method to mind map where you're going. At the end of this, you'll have access to my worksheet, which is a very easy worksheet, simple worksheet, I should say. But the idea is to have somebody have a keyword that they wanna write about, and then take it to the next level. For instance, if I gave you an example of a bunny or a rabbit, what comes to mind for me? I had a bunny named Flo, and she was a Florida white, and a bunny named cinnamon. When I was a little kid, and those were my pets, my dad built a thing, so that's where my mind goes for Bunny, Linda. When I say Bunny, where does your mind go?

The mind goes to the rabbit. Mind goes to the Easter Bunny.

Haha, Easter Bunny. Well, I've had people come up with Peter Rabbit. I've had people come up with rabbits too. Oh, I've had people come up from roadkill, I've had. So if you see what I'm seeing, one word can trigger a various range of items. And therefore then we can go with, you know, we use Bunny. So now we're stuck with Bunny, but that's okay, so then you go to the next step. Like I found out the girl that had said rabbits too. She was from Haiti. She was from Haiti, so that was a staple stew in her house. So I went to my bunnies, you know, the Easter Bunny. It's all that we're informed with, alright, and when we're trying to put a memory together, it takes 17 different parts of your brain to include from both sides, but you can rewire your brain. I just recently read an article this week in People magazine about a baby. Have you seen a child who, apparently, had a stroke in Detro? And when she was born, she had, all these, seizures, so they've literally removed half her brain. She's now 16 years old and she's walking. She has some limitations, but she's creating. She's, you know, going to school, she's talking. And we all know that, like, the left side of the brain motor-wise takes care of the right side of the brain and vice versa. But she's getting it done. It's because she's rewired her brain. It's gonna prove to everyone that we can rewire our brains. And, you know, everybody has their level of ability. I don't even know what I'm saying here, but their level of ability and what they can retrieve, based on what resources they have included before. Like, Linda and I can write the same story, but, in essence, your background, your education, people that brought you up. Literally, the food you ate last night, and how much sleep you got last night, or how much hydration you got today, all determine your ability to recall all of that. Nutrition is so important too, in this. So having you know, obviously having not the perfect storm, the opposite of the perfect storm. So that you're healthy, as healthy as you can be nutritionally, sleep-wise, and then having something tactile to give you feedback. Your body needs feedback. Your brain needs feedback. So using a prompt card, you can use a picture in a magazine as your prompt. I've done that for my books. I've been at a doctor's office sitting there, seeing this Zyrtec commercial and that lady putting her kid on the school bus made me think of something for my book. So my point to all this is that everyone, no matter who they are, needs to put their butt in the seat. If they wanna be a creative writer, or they just wanna get their voice out on paper, whether it be for personal reasons or for public reasons, whether it be journaling just for them, the idea is to sit down and give yourself a trigger, give yourself a topic to talk about. That gets your brain going. How many times have you tried to think of someone's name, and you can't think of it two hours later, pops into your head right all the time, all the time. So what happens is you give your brain something to do, and it will keep doing it as long as it can get through the files, and cross the Callosum, Callosum, and get the information back towards gotta go through. I mean, it's just, it's amazing to me. The brain works so, and that the beauty of it is not going to rewire if you're not doing the exercises. Alright, that's the key, so many treatments for anything, just like if you had a wrecked knee. If you don't do your quad exercises in your glute exercises, in your hamstring exercises, you have to fix your knee.

Yeah, exactly, and I like linking it to almost like a rehabilitation exercise.

It can very well be, so it is exercising a muscle that we all have that we use as children all the time. If a child goes to have an idea and she's pretending that ice cream is the ice cream and she can't find the ice cream in her fake little refrigerator, guess what? She's gonna put a chicken leg in the cone and it's gonna look like an ice cream cone. It's gonna work for her. Yeah, adults don't give themselves the time or the credit for doing something like that. When an idea doesn't work, we stop. Alright. Or we're like, how do we make this work? This is a good idea. Let's make it work, let's make it work. No, give yourself something else to think about. You have to redirect your brain so you can start using the wires. I do ideation exercises, a lot of association-type exercises. There's a difference between perception exercises versus perspective exercises. And that those two different things alone use different parts of your brain whether you're recalling or whether you're completely imagining. And there are eight kinds of imagination. So knowing your learning style, knowing how the brain works, knowing the signs of imagination, having tools to, let's face it to make it fun, and you don't need them. But even if you're a stroke patient, and you're trying to practice recall or you're trying, you know, and have a seizure and you don't know, then having a physical card, physical picture I mean, I had one patient said that, one client say that she just would trace the pictures on the card with her finger because it just fed her. It was feedback into her body, which was feedback to her brain, so she can come up with her stories. So it's an exercise. Think of it as an exercise. It's even if you don't know the story You wanna write, even if you are still working on recall after a stroke or brain injury. And you're working on recall, having cards that use the 5, basically the five senses except they don't really smell great. But haha, I mean, they smell like farts. But having things like that is only going to help you rewire your brain for efficiency and for confidence. And those are the two big goals with my method. Embrace your Muse, efficiency and confidence in tapping into your imagination, so you can get the words out.

Yeah, and I like that. And I've heard, and diotically, and certainly, through, you know, statistics that I've read that journaling for persons suffering from PTSD, for people that have had a catastrophic accident or whatever. That journaling is very therapeutic, for them. And so as she said it, whether it's getting something out of your mind onto paper for a personal reason. I was sharing with Kyle and just before we started recording that, you know, in my journey that I've, had along the way for the last 25 years, has been a lot about adopting and adapting, the fact that, you know, I can't do something this way. So how do I change it? and adapt and do, you know, so that I can still do it? And for me, I mean, where I'm thinking along the lines of, I mean, I've done some writing, as an author, but, you know, I'm actually thinking to the point of a series of books around adopting, as a person with a disability and all of you know, the adopting that we do. And so Kyle and I were having a discussion about, you know, kind of starting with the topic and using that mind mapping process to, you know, take you off into different spokes, which you can think of as a topic and then different chapters, for example, of that. So, you know, I think very much, the work that you do, Kyle Ann, is important. I do know that, I had a neighbor of mine that had a stroke about two years ago. And I know that for her, the biggest, or the most frustrating thing was not being able to get her thoughts out, because Facial picks up affect her speech, but still, wanting to, kind of get those thoughts, you know, from her mind. Whether it be down in written form or I know others, people with disabilities will use some kind of communication board for the very reason that they want to be able to communicate those thoughts that they've got out, in some form. And again, that's all just about adopting, just because you can't do something one way. What's another way to look at how you're gonna be able to accomplish the same thing? So Kylie and I thank you for joining us on this episode of Accessibility Solutions making the world accessible. And just thinking in terms of something as simple as, getting the thoughts that are in your mind out and, onto paper or however it is that you're gonna get those out, certainly works well for everybody in kind of how people do different thought processes and your method. So for those of you who are listening, if anything resonates with you that Kylie and I have discussed today, please leave a review on this episode or share this episode with someone that you feel might benefit from the information that we've shared. Kyle Ann's contact information and the resource that she discussed in the podcast will be in the show notes. You will be able to connect with her there. And, until next time, thank you so much for joining us. Cheers. Thank you, bye-bye. Thank you.

Thank you for joining us on the Accessibility Solutions Podcast hosted by Linda Hunt. We hope these discussions have inspired you and provided valuable insights into the world of accessibility and inclusion. If you are ready to take the next steps in creating an accessible and inclusive environment, we invite you to book a personalized Accessibility Solutions Consultation with Linda. As an experienced accessibility consultant, Linda will work closely with you to develop innovative solutions tailored to your unique needs and challenges. Together, you will navigate the complexities of accessibility regulations, explore inclusive design principles, and implement practical strategies to ensure equal access for all. Don't miss this opportunity to make a real difference. Visit our website at Solutions4accessibility.com. That is the number 4. So solutions4accessibility.com. Schedule your consultation today. Let's transform your space into an inclusive and welcoming environment for everyone. Thanks again for listening to the Accessibility Solutions Podcast. Stay tuned for more empowering episodes as we continue our journey towards a more accessible world.