Sensational Futures

12/22/2025

Janae Mercier is a 37 years young woman who has been a Director at Large with AiLA for over three years and a member with AiLA for three and a half years. She has Asperger's Syndrome (currently diagnosed under autism) and was diagnosed when she was in grade four. She loves Disney, movies, travelling, and her family - which includes two excitable dogs and an amazing boyfriend with autism and adhd. She also enjoys serving in her community, her local church and overseas on a few mission trips. Her faith in Jesus is very important in her life. She hopes to continue contributing to AiLA by volunteering as a board member, making a small impact in the lives of adults with autism. She dreams of a world where people with autism are accepted, understood, included and embraced for how God created them to be. He said, “It is very good”.

12/22/2025

Temple Grandin was labeled broken before she was understood. As a child, doctors told her
parents she would never speak, connect, or function in society. Autism was treated as an
ending. Her mother refused that verdict.
Temple learned late and differently. Words came slowly. Faces overwhelmed her. But patterns,
systems, and animals made sense. She thought in images, not sentences, and that difference
became her strength. Where others saw noise, she saw structure.
As a teenager, she noticed something overlooked in livestock yards. Animals were not difficult.
They were frightened by harsh lights, sharp angles, and loud sounds. Fear was treated as
normal. Temple saw it as a design failure. She sketched solutions that worked with animal
instincts instead of against them.
She was dismissed for years. Too blunt. Too different. Too unconventional. The results spoke
anyway. Injuries dropped. Stress fell. Her designs spread worldwide.
Temple Grandin became a professor and a global voice for neurodiversity. She did not
overcome autism. She translated it into vision. The world did not need her to be normal. It
needed her to be exact.

12/22/2025

12/20/2025

❣️ ❣️ ❣️

12/20/2025

Please look after yourself this holiday season. Holidays can be very isolating and depressing for so many. I’ve experienced this myself as a younger woman with a mom who died suddenly right before Christmas.

Please - take care of yourself in whatever way you need to this season. Reach out to people and stay connected.

Here is a guided meditation in visualizing a circle of support - created during the isolating days of the pandemic.

https://youtu.be/Yi-ygkY-nOQ

Hugs and light to us all. ❤️

12/18/2025

12/18/2025

12/18/2025

Sensory Processing Disorder can manifest in different ways! Here is information you need to know about some of the possible different responses to sensory input.

12/18/2025

12/18/2025

📢New Accessibility Plan!

Today, we share the second edition of our Accessibility Plan. It outlines how we’ll continue to identify, remove, and prevent barriers in our:
• workplace,
• programs,
• services.

This plan is built on the success of our previous edition and your valuable input. It strengthens our commitment to a barrier-free Canada by 2040.

Read the plan: https://ow.ly/UoHR50XL3ox

Alt-text: Title “Accessibility Plan, Second edition” on a white background with a mosaic of pastel squares at the top and right. The Accessibility Standards Canada signature and the Canada wordmark appear at the bottom of the image.