Guest Blogger
Nancy Alspaugh-Jackson
Nancy Alspaugh-Jackson is an Emmy award-winning, former national television producer and executive who pioneered the magazine program format with Westinghouse’s PM Magazine. After serving as Vice-President of Group W Productions, she served as executive producer for a number of network and nationally syndicated programs, including the long-running NBC talk show, LEEZA. former high-powered television producer turned author and activist on the subject of fearless aging and autism awareness. She co-authored Not Your Mother’s Midlife: A Ten Step guide to Fearless Aging (Andrews McMeel) and Fearless Women: Midlife Portraits (Stewart, Tabori & Chang). She wrote and performed in the stage show “Boomer Babes” and has done motivational speaking to sold out audiences around the country.
She has been honored with the United Press International Award, the Associated Press Award, the Gabriel Award, the Genesis Award, as well as having been named one of the Hollywood Reporters “Women to Watch”. Having grown up with a younger brother with Down Syndrome, Alspaugh-Jackson was aware of the challenges families face raising special needs children. She feels it was no accident that she was given a special needs child to raise herself. Alspaugh-Jackson feels her most important assignment came after her adopted son Wyatt was diagnosed with autism at the age of three (Wyatt is now 8 and making tremendous progress). Although Wyatt started displaying signs of autism at the age of 2, he was not diagnosed with the disorder until three and a half and did not receive effective treatment until the age of four and a half.
With that in mind she began working to help other families find the resources for autism care and treatment. She became the executive director of ACT Today! (Autism Care and Treatmernt Today!), a national non-profit organization whose mission is to provide resources and fund grants for children whose families cannot afford the necessary tools their child needs to reach their full potential.
In the last five years, she has raised 3.5 million dollars for autism care and treatment, and launched the first national campaign for military children with autism, ACT Today! for Military Families.
You can read more from Nancy on her blog Act Today. She can be found on Twitter as @actexecdirgirl.
www.acttodayblog.blogspot.com/
The Steps to Empowerment
Accept and Embrace The Challenge. By acceptance, I do NOT mean loving it. I hate autism for stealing my son’s childhood. But I am not in denial, because denial kept me from walking a path I ultimately needed to walk. Without the challenges that life gives us, how do we find out what we are [...]
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Prayers Are Answered
Our home life is in shatters. My husband and I desperately search for answers to help our 3-year-old autistic son. One day I open the newspaper and see a conference advertised in the area called DAN – Defeat Autism Now. One of the first presenters is a beautiful woman named Dr. Doreen Granpeesheh, lecturing on [...]
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Blood, Water and Tears
Wyatt’s pre-school suggests private speech lessons, which he begins 2 times a week, and I am grateful they don’t mention autism. When my next-door neighbor tells me she sees signs of autism in him a few weeks before he turns 3, I am furious. My call to the pediatrician allays my fears again, as he [...]
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Denial is a Powerful Thing
But denial does not ultimately serve us well. It may keep the pain of truth away for a period of time, but it only serves to make the truth harder to bear once we face it. The most dangerous aspect of denial is that it keeps us from moving forward on a journey that we [...]
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Autism is My World
Autism is my world. I am the mother of a 10-year-old son with autism, and the Executive Director of a national non-profit, ACT Today! (Autism Care and Treatment Today!). Autism probably affects your world too, because chances are you know someone with autism, or you may be worried that your child may develop autism. The [...]
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