Shout Out AND my ah-ha moment

I just have to give a shout out to

! First of all, I quickly clicked her presentation first (I signed up later in the first day, so I didn't look at any speaker profiles before clicking hers). Something inherently resonated with me. Only after listening to the first part of it did I figure out why. I, too, am a Speech-Language Pathologist (for me, I'm coming up on 30 years in the field; longer if you count my undergrad clinical experience and training). But I'm also a writer and creative personality, to the point where I have a lot of experience and insight, tying art and science together. So without knowing she was an SLP, I instinctively related to the ways that doodling can be a very useful therapeutic tool and does, indeed, have a very firm basis in science of the brain. But it's also for everyone (or can be), whether you'd consider yourself in any way artistic (as she said) or whether you are neurodivergent or typical or if you've had severe trauma or not. Historically, things like doodling were only "allowed" or recommended for those with documented ADHD or PTSD. But even now, simple tools aren't consistently used even for those groups of people, trying to regulate in schools or other groups. So I loved how she presented this as a beneficial and easy, unobtrusive way of self-regulating for EVERYONE. It's refreshing, always, for me to listen to others with imagination, who want to help people learn skills based in science, but only needing a little bit of creativity to implement. Thank you.

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