"Lina Lyons''s My Life on This Planet offers incredible insights into the ''paradox of autism.'' With raw candor, she describes both the challenge and bliss of being a brilliant young woman with severe autism. She details the heartache and horror of being unable to speak, of overwhelming anxiety, and of OCD. But at the same time, she evokes the lightness of being and love that is with her always. Read this book to transform your understanding of autism and life on this planet." --Mary S. Holland, Esq., chief executive officer, Children''s Health Defense "Lina Lyons and her mother Helena have opened an important discussion, and I find myself wanting only to listen.
My only thought as I read this book is ''Teach me more.''" --Gavin de Becker, author of Forbidden Facts "Lina is a great writer, and this is powerful stuff. Really, really powerful. Wow!" --Dawnmarie Gaivin, author of The Spellers Guidebook " My Life on This Planet is a profound exploration of being unapologetically yourself and showing up fully, no matter what the world sees--or doesn''t see--of your capabilities. This courageous book dissolves the notion that those who cannot speak have nothing to say. The author offers powerful lessons in the beauty of aligning your circumstances with your soul''s mission and loving hard enough to transcend the frequency of fear . and is that not humanity''s greatest purpose?" --Brianna Ladapo, ND, author of Emerging from Darkness "An autistic author? Impossible! But what if someone who hadn''t been able to speak suddenly received the gift of communication? And then everyone outside of her discovered her intelligence, her spirituality, her love for all that is. This miraculous book is Lina Lyons''s story of how--aided by the relentless efforts of her loving mother, Helena Hjalmarsson--she learned letterboard spelling and became able to communicate.
The book is brilliant, insightful, painful, extraordinary--and will transform what you believe about autism." --Tad Crawford, author of A Woman in the Wild "Prepare yourself to be spell bound as twenty-two-year-old nonverbal Lina spells out her desires, fears, and insights for us all. From universal love to seeing ourselves with kind eyes, Lina makes a commitment to live and contribute a healing presence to the world. All she asks is that we see her. A must read." --Leigh Merinoff, farm educator, Meadows Bee Farm "Few of us can comprehend the full weight of Lina''s words when she declares, ''I''m ready. I''m here. I''m real and true.
'' That comprehension requires a difficult, ontological shift. But in reading her words and bearing witness to her voice, we almost impossibly begin to map the very contours of that new ontology. In her own words and in tandem with her unflinchingly honest communication partner and mother, Helena, Lina guides the reader with a sense of grace, humor, wit, and empathy, lovingly encouraging the dissolution of the limitations that hold her and us back from realizing our full potential." --Giorgio Zeolla, chief advancement officer, Children''s Health Defense "Set aside all judgments or disbelief. Like a timeless spiritual classic, My Life on This Planet is that rare book that has the power to disrupt a reader''s belief systems. I will never again be the same and my gratitude to Ms. Lyons, and her relentless warrior mother, is boundless." --Bruce Wagner, author of Roar "In My Life on This Planet , the words of a young woman who is nonverbal autistic arrive through a letterboard, one careful letter at a time.
What emerges is not a document of limitation. It is a transmission. In sixty luminous pages, Lina Lyons describes her autism as ''a constant seeing without having the right words to describe what I see. I see in color and energy, not in concepts and words. I see in sensations not the form.'' Where most of us are fluent in the surface of things, Lyons perceives beneath it--experiencing the density of the material world as a veil over a deeper reality consisting entirely of soul-truth and boundless love. These are not the observations of someone cut off from the world. They are the observations of someone who is not limited to the world''s terms.
She writes, ''I think our fear is a love that has lost its home.''" --Jamie Rose, author of Facing Madame X "In broken silence, Lina''s flower grew with quiet strength. For the first time, the world heard her raw, beautiful voice--full of the years it had been hidden." --Patrick Girondi, author of Faded Genes.