NeurobeautifulYou’ll be seeing lots of #AutismAwareness posts in April – but awareness that autism EXISTS is not the same as awareness of what autistic people THINK, FEEL, and NEED.
Some say we should scrap “awareness” campaigns completely, and focus on acceptance instead. But if it’s true that “hate is just a failure of imagination,” then …
Autistic inertia is a real thing. I’ve never met an autistic person who doesn’t experience it.
What is inertia? A natural drive to continue.
What does it look like in practice? That varies from person to person, but here are some examples.
It’s more interesting to continue learning about one topic, and explore its nuances …
“Let me finish!”
I hear this a lot from autistics, whenever an interruption threatens to derail our train of thought.
I hear it a lot from non-autistics too, but the tone is very different.
Autistics say it out of desperation, begging for permission to rescue the ideas quickly slipping from our minds.
Non-autistics, on the …
I wonder how many times people told Greta Thunberg that she’d have more opportunities in life if she improved her social skills, or tamed her flyaway hair, or otherwise put more effort into fitting in and doing what was expected of her.
Anyway, she didn’t – and this week, she was nominated for the Nobel …
In the movie Tangled, a baby princess sees an emblem in her nursery before being kidnapped. Growing up, she recreates that emblem all over her prison tower, unaware that it represents royalty. When she finally learns its meaning, it causes her to realize that she is the long-lost princess.
Autism is my royalty. Its traits, …
Four approaches to stimming…
BAD: “I shouldn’t let myself stim.”
GOOD: “I should let myself stim when I feel like it.”
BETTER: “I should remember, when I’m anxious or overwhelmed, that stimming is a strategy I can intentionally use to calm myself.”
BEST: “I should remember, when I’m about to enter a stressful situation, that …
In my last post, I suggested that 2-3 years after discovering you’re autistic may be a sweet spot for advocacy writing. I’m also beginning to wonder if 2-3 thousand page likes is a sweet spot for having readers who actively engage with that writing.
If so, then let me seize this moment to say something …
I’m noticing a pattern. Among the autistic writers I follow, I’m finding out that more and more of them only discovered their autism in the past two or three years.
Maybe this is just part of a targeted algorithm to feed me relatable content. Or maybe, among those of us actively writing, there truly are …