I know this project may be a little different from anything you may have seen before, so let me give you a little insight into myself and how I stumbled upon such a unique, yet important, topic. 

 

My name is Nicole Alexander and I am an undergraduate at the University of Michigan studying Biology, Health and Society. Although I may be small, averaging 5’2 on a good day, my little heart has always had a big space for caring for others through medicine. And that’s how this journey began. 

 

Before I knew that the field of healthcare was my pursuit, I volunteered at a summer camp for children and adults with disabilities called Camp Sunshine. It was a small bunk with an open room that led to a ramp where a small pool glistened in the sun. Each day we would get an individual camper and be responsible for keeping them company, feeding them, dressing them, helping them participate in activities and maneuvering their wheelchairs, depending on the extent of their needs. While we participated in a wide range of activities, the art and music portions of the day always stuck with me. I realized that when engaging in artistic activities, children with ASD, as well as other disabilities, were immediately able to calm overwhelming emotions. Sensory sensitivities, which are common in ASD, were eased through the use of artistic mediums. It seemed as though they were all able to express themselves in ways conventional communication did not allow. Some of them were quite artistically gifted I might add. 

 

During my second summer of volunteering, I met a camper we will call Gracie (name changed for privacy reasons). She was a 21 year girl with cerebral palsy and an immaculate sense of style who effortlessly drove her decorated automated wheelchair. Due to our similarity in age, we hit it off immediately and keep in touch even all of these years later. The reason I mention Gracie is because she is the one who truly opened my eyes to the power of music. Any time we spoke about music and different artists, her face would light up; talking about music helped her escape the real world for even just a few minutes, just as it did for me.  Although her condition did not affect brain function, she explained that her size, fragmented speech and wheelchair made people assume she was neurodivergent, causing them to treat her like a child. However, music was always the way she could connect to individuals of her age; it was a universal language. Although our experiences were slightly different, I had always been a bit of a theater and music nerd growing up, so we both understood the power of music as both a language and outlet.  

 

These small, yet monumental, moments bridged the gap between abled and disabled worlds and made it clear that the two are not so different. Music was a way all people could communicate and that is beautiful. 

 

From there, I began researching music therapy and found a large body of research relating to ASD. Unfortunately, my excitement quickly faded when I began reading the negative and ablest writing present in much of the ASD and music literature. Working with Autisic children, I had seen so many of their wonderful abilities, including inconceivable intelligence and creativity, but none of that was portrayed in the research. That is what inspired my interest in writing. I realized scientific communication and studies were useless without the skill of empathetic and impactful writing. And from there, I wrote my first literature review regarding these concerns in Autism literature. 

 

Once I began the writing minor, I chose the literature review for my origin piece for class because it felt like such a meaningful piece, yet its academic style made it difficult to connect to. For my second experiment in the class, I decided to do an infographic, but that still lacked creativity and heartfelt purpose. I desperately wanted to intrigue a broader audience using a new writing style and I thought: what better way to do that than through art and creative poetry? And that was when erasure poetry was born. This new medium allowed me to foster my creative instincts and move past the medical jargon that made such impactful literature inaccessible. I was able to use the research papers directly and show the problematic language without complicated explanations; it allowed the words to speak for themselves. Using erasure, I was able to comment on problematic literature in a way that appealed to a more general audience and, in itself, proved the power of artistic mediums. 

 

I know that was a long-winded explanation, but at the end of the day, writing became a way for me to combine all of my interests and foster my creative roots. I hope this is not the end as I continue my passion for breaking the bounds between scientific and artistic worlds to create an uplifting and equal space accessible to all types of individuals.