Chapter 1: What is the significance of communication for nonspeakers?
Hi, welcome back to the Telepathy Tapes Talk Tracks. Today we have Betsy Hicks Russ and her son Joe, who just started to learn spelling at the age of 30.
Chapter 2: How did Joe start spelling at the age of 30?
And around that time is also when truth around telepathy and presuming competence and everything came out. Joe's going to be up and down, in and out as he feels comfortable. And I'm so excited to share your story today. Hi, everyone. I'm Kai Dickens, and I'm thrilled to welcome you to the Talk Trax.
In this series, we'll dive deeper into the revelations, challenges, and unexpected truths from the telepathy tapes. We'll feature conversations with groundbreaking researchers, thinkers, non-speakers, and experiencers who illuminate the extraordinary connections that may defy explanation today, but won't for long.
If the telepathy tapes changed the way you see your non-speaking child, but left you wondering what to do next, we made a show just for you. The Telepathy Tapes Now What is a new companion series hosted by two parents of non-speakers who've been there.
Chapter 3: What is presuming competence and why is it important?
They offer guidance, resources, and real conversations about how to move forward once you know your child is truly in there. You don't have to figure this out alone. Find Now What on the Telepathy Tapes YouTube channel and wherever you listen to your podcasts. Today we have an incredible mother and son, Betsy and Joe. So why don't we start by introducing yourselves?
Hi, I'm Betsy Hicks-Russ, and I'm the mother of Joe, who's 32 years old. We live in the state of Washington, and we have a lot of fun being very, very active, cycling, hiking, and we bring the world around with us as we do it.
And Joe, do you want to start by weighing in on anything at all? Minutes.
H, I, and get there, get there, K. I know. There you go. Hi, Kai. And is that it? Yeah, that's it. There we go. We're excited to have you here. There we go. There's a lot of enthusiasm in that.
Yeah.
Do you want to start by kind of giving your backstory and what led you on this couch today?
I'd love to do the backstory because it's really interesting how it all unfolded. So Joe's 32 and I was in the autism industry through my late husband who was a pediatrician and so we worked with a lot of autism and I did that for 16 years. He passed away 10 years ago and I really thought I knew all there was to know and I had resigned. You know, he's not in there.
I'm never going to communicate with him. He doesn't understand.
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Chapter 4: How has Joe's ability to express himself changed family dynamics?
And how old was Joe when you were feeling that way? We're talking sadly like three years ago. We're not talking a long time ago. We're talking of an entire like almost 30 years of me thinking that my son did not understand anything. or very little, and really resigning to severe autism and all the words that they use. I just thought he had IDD, intellectual developmental disability.
I just didn't think he had any abilities. And one day, I made a post on social media, which still haunts me, that I said, somebody asked me, how much do you think Joe knows? And I'm like, eh. You know, I think it's like a foreign language where you understand some of the words and you don't understand the rest.
And somebody had reached out and said to me, you know, I thought that about my son too, and now we have spelling. And I had heard about it before, but I just didn't know how accessible it would be for us to be able to get somewhere. We lived in not a huge city. So I looked into it, and it was five hours to get to a practitioner, and we started to go.
And just like every parent, you hope that first one is going to be like, hi, mom. You're going to say something really incredible. And he fell asleep during the first one and probably the second one and probably the first five after that. No indication that he understood anything. And I was kind of laughing at my commitment to it. Like, why am I even doing this?
But I did it and I just kept going until one day the practitioner said to me, hey, I'm moving to Bellingham where I live. And I'm like, well, that's a sign. So we started going every week and I could see that he was now starting to understand the lessons and he was still falling asleep and he was still having meltdowns and he still would only attend for like 10 minutes.
And the reason I'm saying all of this is because Joe's biggest message is he wants people to know that it takes time and to not put a timeline on it. So after about a year of going every single week. One day we were in a session and it was a picture of the desert at night. And there was white, like a white powder on the ground. And she said, wow, it's the desert. So do you think it's snow?
Like, you know, or is it sand? What do you think? And he spelled it salt. And he knew that that was a salt plain. And I think it's somewhere in Utah. Yeah. And that's when I just collapsed and just couldn't believe it that he was aware of that. What's progressed from that in the last two years of him being now an open speller is this understanding that is so hard for people to shift from.
of being told that they're not in there, that they don't understand, to understanding now that he's way more intelligent and grasps things much faster than I ever could. And so it's a strange journey to take.
So Joe has only been spelling for about three years. Openly about two. Wow, Joe. Joe, maybe if you want to spell a little, I'm curious to know, other non-speakers all over are still locked inside without having access to spelling. And is there anything you want to tell parents? I mean, some parents think my kid is too old. Early intervention is the only way to go.
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Chapter 5: How does nature influence Joe's well-being and communication?
And we all got together and it was like we were all family. The need for community in our situation is so intense right now because the Speller's methods don't want to talk about telepathy. And there's only so many people we can talk to telepathy about. And we are getting all this information and we just don't know what to do with it all. So it's been...
It's been having the support system, having Libby and all these other friends of mine that I've now met to be able to make sense of it all.
Well, I guess two questions around the telepathy kind of reveal. I mean, when you first asked him to think of the number or actually spell the number that was in your head, had you ever experienced anything previous to that that made you think that this was possible?
Or was this just like a complete... This was totally out of my... with Joe was one of those things with me where I believed it. I just didn't believe it was for Joe. Joe was too severe. Joe was too, you know, he wasn't going to comply. That, that was always my, I argued constantly for my limitations.
And I mean, to the point where it shook me so much, I did this huge post on social media just saying I was wrong. And I just, it was just a general apology to everything that I, where I may have misled people and, But also I want people to be humbled in this experience to know that it's okay if we're wrong. They're not holding resentment. They just want us to move forward.
They want us to be able to, you know, when I asked, I said, please forgive me for all that I've said in front of you and done in front of you. He's like, forgiven. It's over. It's the past. Let's move on. This is exciting. Let's not waste energy on being upset about it all. So no, I was clueless.
So I was dealing literally with Joe becoming an open speller and telepathy within about a three-month period of time. Like it was all happening all at once. And I was just – it was so much to go through. And the problem is like nobody believed me. Like that was another part of it is that – You know, it was always that my daughters had the head nod. That's nice, mom.
You know, and it was all of that. So then I said, then you really don't even know who to talk to about it.
And now do your daughters and your husband, like, are they all on board with spelling? And have they seen and witnessed the telepathy? Yeah. Where do they all stand now? And how did that progress happen?
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Chapter 6: What is Joe's message to families regarding late communication?
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Chapter 7: What insights does Joe have about spirituality and connection?
I went through bankruptcy. I had a son who didn't speak and hit his head all the time. I went through the lowest of that trampoline sinking as far as those springs would take it. And it catapulted me up so freaking high that now... I just I just I'm so in love with life. And that's what happens with contrast.
So when we have these negative things that happen, instead of being so angry that things happen to us, bless them because they're giving us direction as to where we want to go. Well, I definitely don't want to go there again. So I'm I'm going to do it.
And then what my big message to so many parents is, is that the resiliency that us parents build, like there is no demographic you want to mess with less than us moms who have been through the ringer with our kids and the school district. And the social systems and all the things that we have to go through. We've been through it all.
And we have this kind of like, you know, mama bear attitude now that is infallible because. We know we've been in worse situations and we've gotten out of them. So we know we're going to get through whatever comes next. And that's a glorious attribute to hold on to, to be able to believe that no matter what happens, you'll find a way out. And then I think, hey, come back in.
Come on in.
You want to close the door? Close. Okay.
Oh. I'm curious about Joe's thoughts around that. You know, you said that you feel like you have a front seat to a very exciting time in history for what's happening next. And does Joe think that we're going through a shift in consciousness or some sort of awakening and what might be coming for all of us?
Yeah.
Why that's happening?
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