About Us

Inclusion Now  is a safe space espousing a philosophy of inclusion that advocates for the dignity, value, and humanity all people.

Inclusion Now, as a foundationally parent and professional endeavor, recognizes that a truly just and inclusive world for our children will listen closely to them and allow them to guide interactions, programming, and policy that impacts them directly.  Self-determination is a critical piece to any human’s development toward full potential and well-being.  Our children deserve this, just as you and I do.

Inclusion Now believes it is essential to address OUR challenges as parents, advocates, educators, supporters, and influencers in positions of power.

Specifically, we must understand how our inherited values, biases, and fears dictate, more than any diagnostic contribution, our inability to include people with physical, emotional, cognitive, sensory, and/or mental health contributions across and within our neighborhoods, education systems, businesses, public spaces, spiritual communities, and larger society.

Inclusion means inclusion without exceptions or conditions, and moving forward means shining a light on OUR inability to include and accept diversity rather than any individual’s ability or desire to comply and assimilate.

We endeavor to advocate, educate and ultimately impact social change in the direction of inclusion without limits, neither on behalf of neurodivergent and/or unconventionally appearing or bodied people, which is paternalizing and patronizing, nor as the voices or masters of ableist impacted communities, which is oppressing and marginalizing.  Rather, our goal, starting with the person in the mirror and emanating out like ripples from a stone dropped in a pond, is a revolutionary shift in mainstream society and power culture that sheds the mantle of ableism and seeks personal change for the sake of a more inclusive world.

That is, we strive to change ourselves.  Not others.

But along the way, particularly when we actively listen with a spirit of inclusion, everybody advances toward self-determined enlightenment and happiness.

  • In Plain Language: We Are Framing “Punishment” All Wrong

    This is the second in as series of plain-language posts exploring behavior modification and offering an alternate framing and practice of human service, inclusion, and harm-reduction. In a recent post, “In Plain Language: We Should Stop Using Applied Behavior Analysis,” or ABA, I offered the following definition of ABA, “In the simplest terms, ABA therapies […]

    In Plain Language: We Are Framing “Punishment” All Wrong
  • In Plain Language: We Should Stop Using Applied Behavior Analysis.

    (Please note: This piece, on 7/18/22, while vetted, peer-reviewed, and edited, remains a draft. I felt it important to get it to point where I am comfortable with you having it even though it hasn’t been externally verified/validated by a governing body or recognized publication.) First, a few words about plain language, in plain language. […]

    In Plain Language: We Should Stop Using Applied Behavior Analysis.
  • Ritalin…Three Months Later

    Since the Ritalin revelation, life has intervened in several critical ways, providing painful but important insight.  The first several weeks with Ritalin in my system provided an experience very similar to the first several hours when I finally got corrective vision lenses as a pre-teen. I had been, for a decade, experiencing the world through […]

  • What Ritalin Means to Me.

    I’d like to illuminate, here, a series of seemingly mundane events that communicate what the addition of Ritalin; after having lived 46 years not knowing I had ADHD, suspecting giftedness but frustratingly unsure because nobody would ever appropriately assess me, and living with toxic stress and traumas that span all the way back to year […]

    What Ritalin Means to Me.
  • TISE Resources for Children

    I’m unclear how to begin doing a thing I want to do, so I’m taking this tiny little first step out into the social media void. The short?  I’d like to consolidate a directory of trauma-informed, social and emotional (TISE, as I’ve started acronymming it) learning oriented, inclusive, antiracist, queer-affirming, and representationally-diverse professionals and resources […]

  • My Stable Bow In Heaven

    Hi. You may be wondering how I’m doing, and the answer is complex, but the overall valence is extremely positive…buoyant, warm, joy-filled, and at peace. It’s Christmas Day, December 25th, 2020.  I suppose if I were to start this as I started the last communication with you, I would begin… Day 10. The tenth day […]

  • My Covid Experience

    Day 1. 9:40 a.m. All is calm. All is bright. Have coffee. Brian Eno’s, “Ambient 1/Music for Airports” in my head. Lots of love and support from folks. It’s all been and is being received. Please know that. Just, a lot of numbness. I should explain myself. … Day 0. 6:18 p.m. All was tenuous.  […]

  • Black English Vernacular is a Robust, Legitimate English Dialect.

    Recently, I re-listened to an interview with writer/director Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station, Creed, Black Panther) and writer Aaron Covington (Creed) on the Podcast, “Denzel Washington is the Greatest Actor of All Time Period,” which is hosted by W. Kamau Bell and Kevin Avery. Across these four professional, creative, confident, compelling Black men, I heard a […]