Have you seen the movie, Temple Grandin? Maybe I should back up. Have you heard of Temple Grandin? I'm sure you've heard of the actress, Claire Danes...she played Temple in the 2010 Emmy Award-winning movie documenting her life. Diagnosed with autism at a time (1950's) when most doctors recommended institutionalizing children with autism, Temple Grandin, with the help of parents who refused to institutionalize her and a few special teachers and mentors along the way, went from being a stigmatized, misunderstood young woman to a B.A.-, M.S.- … [Read more...]

I hate labels. I always have. Oh, not the kind you use to label your kids' clothes for camp or the ones that tell you that that candy bar has only eight grams of fat in it, so you feel like you can eat it without feeling guilty. (It's a Three Musketeers, if you're interested...) No, I'm talking about the labels we use for people. To categorize and classify - and often judge - them. Smart. Dumb. Pretty. Ugly. Fat. Skinny. Dog person. Cat person. It's like our minds have this filing system in which we need to organize people so that we know how … [Read more...]

"To be or not to be, that is the question." No offense to Shakespeare, but I think he got it all wrong. The real question is, are you going to just go through life or are you going to grow through life? After all, you only get one go-around. And while walking along the surface of life is nice, going deeper is where the real magic happens. Kind of like it does here at Be yourself and the rest will follow®, the everything-you-need-to-be-you-and-then-some blog. Don't worry. I won't ask you to say that 20 times fast in a row. :) But I will … [Read more...]