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Hot news! We finished editing “Who Am I To Stop It.”

[Image description: “Who Am I To Stop It” in black text.]

Next steps: it’s off to Jason Wells at AUDIOWELLS to balance out the voices and music. Then, we head over to color correction land. In the meantime, I am about to start making Closed Captions, and Celia Hughes at VSA Texas is just about to get to work on Audio Description. That means the whole package should be ready in a couple months.

When can you see the film? Well, lots of people ask me, but it’s hard to answer since it’s not out yet. Best I can say is to stay subscribed to this blog, sign up for our newsletter, follow us on Facebook, look for our tweets, or stay tuned to our podcast. These are all great places to get the news on the documentary. In 2016, you’ll start to see us popping up at film festivals, brain injury conferences, and community screenings in partnership with brain injury recovery and peer-led brain injury non-profits. I’ll post lots of info about how and when you can see the film or host your own screening when we get that all sorted out very soon.

We still have the wonderful Hollywood Theatre as our fiscal sponsor. That means donations of $250 or larger to support funding the Closed Captions, Audio Description, and other post-production costs are tax deductible. Donations under $250 are most certainly accepted, but we regret that we can’t offer the tax deduction. So yeah, it’s not too late to hop on board the backers wagon! As always, lovely neurodiversity and brain injury pride swag are on offer at our CafePress shop, with proceeds from those sales going toward the film. You can get stuff with this on it: [Image description: A brain in the shape of a heart.]

Keep in touch! We’re always looking for artists, bloggers, and activists from disability communities to share your work here. You can guest blog or pass along info for me to blog about you, your organization, or your work. This way, we can build and strengthen our networks and support each other’s art and activism.

As a last note, while this documentary is beautiful, artistic, and carefully put together, it’s not designed as a piece of entertainment. We hope that by engaging with the film, the blog, or any other piece we create, audiences are motivated to learn more, ask questions, and take action. This is not about getting inspired that people survived and thrived, thanking us for sharing, and going back to your life as it was. This is about troubling through the fact that so many peers with brain injury are isolated from communities and work, are institutionalized or jailed rather than getting community supports, are houseless, can find no one from their cultural community to relate to them, feel they can’t disclose their struggles, and are seen as perpetual patients so that anything we do or make is labeled as rehab or therapy whether it is or not. Heavy stuff, yes. But life with a brain injury can be heavy. And we hope that by soaking up the art we create, you can feel us more deeply as not just peers to each other but to everyone and then continue to build a more equitable society.