[Permission received to post this wonderful letter and review of Give Me the Red Cup: Knowing Joy in Autism. It is thrilling to know my book’s simple message succeeds in telling the complex story of thinking, communicating, reframing and understanding…each other and ourselves! While English is not Petra’s first language, and we communicate across the globe, I maintain the authenticity of her message making limited edits. And now I know Joy in…giving thanks to you, Petra!]

Dear Susan,

Thank you for “giving me the red cup”!

“Give Me the Red Cup” – First I ordered the Amazon immediate read – a cloud feature, which I did not make use of before.
2-3 days later, I received the original print version, which I took with me to Hamburg yesterday. Delayed flights, time for reading. By the way: I like the tasteful, “simple” layout of its cover. I even more like the grip of its cover. Smooth, cool, good quality, does not stain easily.

On the one hand, I have to correct my last feedback to you after reading the first few stories: In your book it’s less about the rhythm of your language, which still counts for your piece of gold. It’s about the reframing of borders, conditions, mental frames, concepts, understandings, that fixed me. In my business field as a business coach and consultant, we continuously work with reframing.  But on the other hand, I more over have to confirm my rhythm-feedback – as I could see, you “just” make use of the same pattern, but in broader strokes. It became a meta-pattern, a repeated structure on a higher level.

The rhythm or better the pattern that I got hold of, is, how you break down an offered “problem” to its individual features, specifics, transfer potentials and interpretations. In “No Music Man” you embrace several elements at the same time: The parents, who believe and support that their little son does not like music, and in parallel the idea of music as being an accoustic stand-alone-provocation itself.  In “Feast” again you very strikingly visualize, how recontextualization helps to break down an irritation into feature sections that allow new accesses.

Reading your book helped me to get back to this recontextualization angle.

Right now, my colleagues and I are preparing a big presentation. Some days I fight with my personal resistances and feelings of being blind-folded. On Tuesday, I understood to try old but new avenues:

  1. Writing by hand with a pen step-by-step: what touches me most, when thinking about the customer, the contract, the task, and finally the coming presentation…
    2. Yesterday, on my way to Hamburg, I recognized the above-described clue in your book as a meta-rhythm.
    3. Until this morning the key to our tomorrow’s presentation materialized: Our job had to do with data analysis. But no analysis of any data does make any sense, when you do not know how to contextualize and for this purpose before doing so, recontextualize the developed data and the gained knowledge.

    I want to say, “and now I know joy in recontextualization again”.

    Thank you!

    Warm embrace,
    Petra                                                                                                                                             …Petra, thank you for your thoughts…