Interview with Carina Calisto
Series: Meet Our Specialists | IMPACTsci Series: Entrepreneurship, Education and Neurodiversity 1. Carina, introduce yourself in your own words. Who are you, and what is Impacta Educa? Off to a great start, then…! Who am I? Honestly, that’s a hard question to answer. I know I’m a mother, I’m autistic, and I live with complex post-traumatic stress, a dissociative disorder, dyscalculia, and ADHD. I’m extroverted, a communicator, sarcastic, and empathetic (perhaps too empathetic). Maybe because I’m so many things at once, I’m someone in constant change. Right now, I’m not the Carina I was when I was still trying to adapt, not the Carina who lived thinking the mask was her own skin, not the Carina I became when I had my son, not the Carina before Impacta Educa, not even the Carina I was last year. And Impacta Educa is the same. A constant, beautiful metamorphosis that adapts, grows, learns, and evolves. 2. Impacta Educa was born of necessity. What failed in the system that made you say, “I have to build this myself”? My son and I, especially my son, went through some very demanding challenges, and we felt the loneliness. Not just the loneliness of people, but a loneliness with the system, a loneliness in being understood, a loneliness in the happiness of simply being ourselves. I’m aware of our privilege: I’m healthy, I had my family to support me, I managed to place my son in home-schooling, I had the capacity to adapt. But what about those who don’t have these privileges? Is that fair? Is it fair that families, that children and young people, have to suffer for existing? The system failed, above all, in its capacity to listen. For a long time, I felt that the available responses tried to adapt the child to […]
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