Recently, I asked my son to take his night meds, and his nervous system disability activated his fight-or-flight response. He pushed me, I fell, and then he hit and scratched, leaving red marks on my arms and chest. Later that night, he texted to start the repair process, but I wasn’t ready. The wounds were […]
Content note: This essay discusses suicide. “It’s really dark in here,” my frowning boss told me the moment she came into my office. She knows I’m autistic; I’ve been here for three years. We also work in an industry that claims to know about autism, and to support autistic people. I could only shrug, too […]
A lot of times now when parents of newly identified autistic kids ask me what they should know, the first thing I say is: “We get tired.” This is so important. The way we autistics process is often on hyperdrive. The activities that are like strolling for many allistic people are like sprinting for us. […]
Autistic writer Fergus Murray’s Growing Up With Monotropism and Weird Pride is a crucial part of the brand-new autistic non-fiction anthology Someone Like Me. Murray’s chapter is part technical primer, part auto-ethnography, and wholly moving. Murray takes the concept of monotropism—the autistic tendency to focus intensely that was was initially developed by their mother Dinah […]
Note: This article discusses rape and abuse. I remember the shock when I realized that my ex had raped me. And that it had taken me nearly two years to the day to realize that what had transpired that evening had been rape. I had always been uncomfortable about what had happened. But it’s not […]
If your child has recently been given an autism diagnosis, as my son was in 2003, here’s what I want you to know: Learn from me, don’t be me. I recently came across a happy photo of my family and my parents, taken around the time Leo was first diagnosed. Leo was obviously such a […]
Note: This article discusses abuse. While trauma in adults is often treated by counseling or a range of different therapies, in day-to-day life trauma can continue to be stoked by the responses of our peers. What follows will focus on trauma in neurodivergent adults, though some advice may also help neurotypicals. Trauma Origins Drawing from […]
Siddharth (“Sid”) Ramaswamy is a student at University of California, Santa Cruz, majoring in Music. He is on the autism spectrum, communicates with an AAC device, and attends college with an aide. Siddharth has been a student of South Indian Classical Music (also known as Carnatic Music) on the violin for more than ten years. […]
Diane J. Wright is an autistic and ADHD Canadian-American and Afro-Caribbean author, filmmaker, and disability justice advocate. Diane generously shared her time with us, in recounting her personal autistic journey, her founding of Autastic.com—a resource and community hub for thousands of autistic adults, including spaces specifically for autistic people of color—and her successes in shaping […]
Many autistic people rely on multimodal communication for accessibility. Autistic university student Kaishawna Fleming discusses her visualization project showcasing why different forms of communication are so important for disability representation. How did you select the images and digital platform for your project? By selecting Instagram as a format to film on, I found using this […]
Special interests or passions are a beautiful and confounding part of the autistic experience. They can materialize out of nowhere. One day you have absolutely no opinions on ships, and the next day you are suddenly overcome with the need to learn about every nautical disaster. Passions can disappear just as suddenly; in the middle […]
Content note: Mention of suicide Let’s talk about the benefits and considerations of pet ownership for autistic people. Discussions about autism tend to focus on challenges and deficits, instead of discussing autistic traits neutrally, or highlighting autistic strengths. The idea that “all Autistic people are cats” and that “cats are Autistic” has even emerged as […]
