Stuck in a single focus — I think not.

Persistently there is a belief that autistic people are stuck in a rut, they have a singular special interest, they are only interested in that interest and often that they are incapable of multi-tasking. This belief is wrong. For some autistics it is partly true, for some, it is quite true and for many, it is patently false.

This is a pervasive stereotype, it’s as pervasive as the use of the dreaded functioning labels, I have written about the shortcomings of that particular issue here. Just as it is wrong to assume a person’s ability to function in one situation is likely to be the same in all situations so it is wrong to assume that autistics can’t and don’t multi-task.

So persistent is this stereotype that we autistic people even fall prey to it and are known to ask each other what our “special interest” is. This is a question that I have never ever found easy to answer, I believe this is partly due to never having a singular focus interest, and baulking somewhat at the idea that my interests are somehow special and non-autistic people’s interests are hobbies.

The truth is that we autistics can and do multi-task. Just as the rest of the world’s population the difficulty we have with it varies as widely as there are people on the planet. Luna Lindsey has provided some insight into how this difficulty has particular outworkings here.

It’s absolutely dumbfounding that people don’t actually understand this.

We humans seem to thrive on routine. But even more potent than routine is predictability. I’ve heard teachers talking about how if the autistic child in the class is going to have a change in a routine then a meltdown is imminent. I think in many cases what is closer to the truth is that predictability has been derailed, that the autistic child suddenly has not a change of things to be done but that an imposition into the predictability of their day, environment etc is suddenly in a state of flux. Sensory issues that were in check are suddenly more potent, anxiety is raised and so forth.

The destruction of predictability is far more of a barrier to successful multitasking for some autistic people than a lack of routine.

But of course, a routine can also be super important to some of us too.

As the saying goes. “If you’ve met an autistic person, then you’ve met one autistic person” We are myriad, just as non-autistic people are myriad.

Personally, I can and do multi-task. At different times in life, this has been more or less successful. In my last long-term employment situation, I did this a lot of the time very successfully. I worked in an office environment where I managed to successfully complete and manage a bunch of tasks and responsibilities. This position was eventually derailed. The reason was most definitely in reflection, not the inability to have a routine but the absolute lack of predictability. My boss would regularly ring in and blast the predictability of things out of the water.

In the end, I had a kind of meltdown response and walked out. In the aftermath of this, I think I have been in a kind of burnout experience for the last few years since. I managed to work with that constant derailment for a bit over two years. It would, in fact, happen every single day, multiple times a day. In the end, it took its toll.

Currently, I manage a range of competing for important things in my life. I manage my faith life, my interest in web development, my interest in writing, my interest in running and of course my interest in online autism advocacy and offline autism advocacy.

There are times where I find this difficult, but I manage it. I have many running friends who are not autistic or neurodivergent and they have just as much difficulty in maintaining interest in the areas of their life that are outside of the running community.

Having difficulty managing multi-tasking is not an issue of autism, it is, though, an issue of being human.

In recent times, I have managed to uphold my autism advocacy interest, involvement in an autism research organisation, membership with my local running group, and completing an online course. I have to juggle all these things, I have to make decisions on a day to day basis about which of these interests will be of most importance and which will have lesser importance than other days. I have managed to do all this in an environment where I have lost my marriage relationship and begun a journey of transitioning to my true gender.

So please tell me again how autistics are too single-minded, too focused on their special interests and unable to multi-task and manage competing demands.

It’s almost here but what’s to be afraid of…

As I write these words on March 30, I have been inundated with messages of autism awareness, of messages to be aware of autism. But what, dare I ask is there to be afraid of. After a decade of light it up blue and world autism awareness day it is certainly time we realised there is just nothing to be scared of.

What is autism to be scared of? It’s not a threat, or a virus or anything like that. It’s a different way of being wired, of seeing the world in a different way. Nothing to be afraid of.

There are absolute challenges to both living as an autistic and parenting autistic children. But it’s not something to be afraid of. Not one little bit.

It’s not autism that we should be afraid of, and it’s pretty much time we realised that everyone is actually aware that this thing called autism exists.

But there a different operating system is nothing to be afraid of now is it. You know you can do it, you’ve probably already done it before, Nokia to iOS, Android to iOs or Windows to Mac. Certainly, there is a learning curve to consider, absolutely some of the things have to be done a little bit differently. It is no question that challenges will come, and overcome.

Let’s face it that is what at its core autism is. A different operating system.

It’s not something to be afraid of. It’s something to simply accept and embrace as part of our human and social ecosystem. Just as workplaces adapt with different digital devices so humanity can adapt to divergent neurologies.

April 2 is coming, and there will be many who continue to fruitlessly turn on blue lights to make people aware. But that is not what we need to be aware of. What we need to be aware of is a far more insidious thing, sometimes overt and sometimes covert, even at times hiding under the guise of trying to help.

We should be aware of things like The President of the USA giving credence to a lie about vaccines and autism.

We should be aware of discredited, fraudulent, deregistered doctors running around promoting works of fiction as documentaries.

We should be aware of organisations that talk of cure

We should be aware of organisations that promote interventions that aim to convert the autistic into a neurotypical

We should be aware of any organisation that has the word aware or awareness in its name.

We should be aware of movie stars that try to lecture us on the causes of a neurological divergence

We should be aware of anyone who talks of epidemic

We should be aware of anyone who talks of lost generations

We should most certainly be aware of anyone who uses phrases like hating autism.

Yes, there are many things we should be aware of. But not one of them is autism.

What should we be then? We should be accepting, embracing, celebrating and accommodating.

We should be presuming competence. Harnessing the gifts and abilities of neurodivergent people.

Forget autism awareness. Please. Embrace Autism acceptance and celebration.

What’s in a name?

There is so much more to a name than we can ever really comprehend. A name is so fundamental to a thing. It ascribes meaning and value and worth that is sometimes quantifiable but most often is not.

Think of a thing, anything, then name it with its name, it could be a bicycle, it could be apple or table. Anything really. Its name is of immense worth. In fact, without that name, its very meaning ceases to be. Imagine trying to describe the essence of what a bicycle is without using its actual name to do so. It becomes an incredibly complex task. At least far more complex than a simple sentence along the lines of I travelled here today on my bicycle.

This is even more complex when it comes to people. We all have names, they’re our names, they mean something incredibly important to us. Commonly we’ve not chosen those names ourselves, but for the most part, we accept them and use them, navigate life with them. We are in a very real sense made and known by them.

But not all of us comply. Some of us buck this system. There is a host of reasons why. We may just dislike the name, dislike the person who gave it to us, or the person we were named for. There are so many reasons why some of us buck this trend of accepting the name we are given. But what is continuous here is the importance of the name, whether accepted as given or chosen for self.

The idea of what’s in a name really is a big idea.

I’m one who has chosen to cast off that name I was given at birth. There are multiple reasons for this, not least of which is it is a highly gendered name, which, applies to a gender I am not. For me it’s more than just that, there is the visceral loathing I always had for the father who named me, the simple knowledge that it never truly represented me, the pain of how it was used to shame and bully me throughout my childhood and into adulthood.

Yes, I’m one who chose a new name for themselves. A name that I love, a name that does not tie into the pain of association of my past name, or as I refer to it my dead name.

The name that I have chosen for myself I am able to wear happily. I am able to allow it to label me. I happily respond when I hear it proclaimed. It is my name.

My old name is not my name, in truth, it never was. It was always temporary, it was always wrong. It was always painful and horrible.

When you have family, friends, acquaintances, colleagues or whatever who have taken the momentous step of self-naming, I implore you to respect that and to use their chosen name. Don’t ever use that deadname again. Don’t use it to them or about them. You just don’t know what levels of pain or sorrow you may be unleashing inside that person if you do.

What’s in a name? Quite a bit as it turns out.

Is it so much to ask?

Is it?

Really?

It seems so. Just a chance, just an opportunity. Just a level playing field. It seems that that is too much to ask.

I managed to self-sabotage my last real time of employment at around the time I was coming to terms with the reality of being autistic.

That was March 2013. It’s now March 2017, and I haven’t really had a job since. Oh, I have had the odd thing here and there that has provided little bits of income, but never an actual real job. A contract here and a contract there.

It’s almost as though the realisation of being autistic, the accepting it, the believing it all snowballed into some kind of cataclysmic employment event. That certainly rings true to the final moments of that job I had.

Moments where I essentially told my then-boss to stick her job where the sun don’t shine.

But it seems like ever since I have been destined to failure. Destined to miss out on the interview, or to fail the interview or for somehow the employer to see through me and realise I was just not up to scratch.

And so I yell and scream about it not being fair. Because it damn well isn’t fair. I am just as capable as the next person of holding down a job. Sure I will find aspects more challenging, but conversely, I will also find aspects easier than others.

It’s not so much to ask for someone to help me out, is it?

I mean this whole executive function thing just seems to debilitate me. It just seems I am unable to manage the processes of going through the looking for the job and the applying for the job. It has taken me several months recently just to manage to re-do my resume or CV or whatever it is you like to call it.

I’m not even fussy. It’s like I am at the point where I couldn’t give a flying fuck if the job had anything to do with my qualifications and experience. That seems totally irrelevant. I want to be able to be a useful member of this society. Instead of feeling so useless, poverty-stricken and isolated.

One of the things that really rubs salt into the wound is where you see that there are people in jobs who clearly have lower skills than you, lower intelligence you and somehow they can have a job but you can’t.

It really feels at times like the world is against me. Even when there are times that opportunities rise I manage to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. For example, there was an employment project to work at piggeries, I never put myself forward. I chose not to do so because of family commitments. But then a short time later my partner asked me to leave and the whole reasoning for never applying seemed to have flown out the window, but of course, for me, it was too late.

I just don’t understand. I’m willing to work, I’m able to work. I am an intelligent, capable woman, I am ready and able to start work whenever a chance comes my way. But they don’t. They seem to come by everyone else’s way but not mine. It just seems so incredibly and totally unfair.

I know this is something of a sob post, but it is also reality.

And the reality is that as yet another April month of so-called feel good stories about Autism and opportunities, and changing attitudes, still I sit, unable to gainfully participate in the world.

Is it so much to ask? Really?

Just a job, nothing special, just a job that pays some money to pay the bills and feed and clothe me and so on and so forth. It’s not like I am asking to be a CEO or anything.

What is really the problem here, though, is, not me pouring out my heart about it, but that I am not alone, I am not a minority of autistic people. I am in fact the majority. We autistics are passed over again and again and again. More so than every other disability group. And yet, the government, well at least the Australian Government, doesn’t consider us disabled enough to qualify for the Disability Pension.

It’s just so fucking unfair.

The Lucky Country says…


Australia, the lucky country, as it is known. The place of the fair go. Maybe that’s what it used to be like but it sure as hell isn’t anymore. It’s become a place of pain, a place of discrimination, a place of kicking people in the guts when they’re already down for the count.

Growing up I was always proudly Australian, I would go and watch my beloved Aussies in varied sporting pursuits. I would cheer loudly as we punched above our weight in international competition. I was proud that we were an accepting and accommodating place for people down on their luck, for people escaping from traumatic experiences. But I can’t be like that anymore. This place has changed. Hopefully not for good, but currently it has.

In a sense I shouldn’t complain too much, you know, I live in one of the best social democracies there are in the world. We have pretty much universal health care, we have safety nets for those who can’t find work and so forth. On the surface, this is all very good. It places this nation in the desirable market, I suppose.

But. Heaven help you if you actually need that safety net and need to survive. Because you’re basically fucked if you do.

Our nation has shifted further and further right on a lot of issues in the past few decades. It is devastating to witness. People fleeing torture are demonised. The unemployed and the disabled used as tools of a right wing media. Our previous national Treasurer labelled us leaners not lifters, along with this, he argued that a petrol tax was irrelevant to us, because, you know, the poor don’t have cars.

It shouldn’t be this way. But it is this way. I find myself stuck in a whole that is only partly of my making. It’s a hole I can’t seem to emerge from. I can’t find a ladder, I can’t find a friendly helping hand, I can’t find even some makeshift foot and hand holds to scramble up and out.

You see I don’t qualify for a disability pension. Because my recognised disability Autism is not considered disabling enough to qualify. The alternative is to be on a benefit called Newstart. The name in itself is an insult. On this benefit Newstart one is expected to house, feed, clothe and care for oneself on about $350 a week. It is essentially impossible. It is by design a system that doesn’t pay enough to survive on because the government don’t want you to survive on it, they want you to get a job.

Great idea that, get a job, right, when already there is something like 7 unemployed people for every vacancy. So it’s not just that simple. Of course throw in to the mix that as an Austistic person you are asking for some accomodations to be made in order for you to perform the best you can for the employer.

Generally you won’t even get a look in.

It just appears that this so-called lucky country has turned a corner, a corner that says basically fuck you, you can go on the trash heap.

But this is a serious issue. Autistic people are not rare, there are lots of us. The very small rate of 35% of us have employment, that’s any employment, not full time employment just any employment.

If I try to take a hard look at myself and work it out, I am utterly flumoxed. I should be quite employable.

I’m:

  • Articulate
  • Literate
  • Educated (2 Bachelor Degrees and an IT Diploma)
  • Numerate

These things should add up to employable. But alas no, it’s not for want of trying.

Oh I’ve had jobs over the years, I’ve had a wide range of them, I’ve even been damn good at them to. I’ve operated switchboards, I’ve linemarked roads, I’ve been a surveyors assistant, I’ve been a labourer, a Primary School teacher, an office manager, a warehouse worker and a production supervisor. And most of them I’ve done pretty well.

But, here’s the thing, they always turn to shit. And they don’t turn to shit because I can’t do the job either. They turn to shit for some social reason, for some sensory reason, for something to do with executive function.

The longest single position I ever held was just over 2 years. I was very successful in my position. I worked bloody hard, bloody long hours and poured my heart and my soul into doing a good job.

What happened, autism happened. And that is not to say it’s Autism’s fault or even bad, it’s to say that the lack of understanding of what was going on by employer, and even myself at the time was what happened. If I had been able to recognise that I was in some kind of shutdown/meltdown situation, if I have been able to disclose to my employer my diagnosis, and if they had been accomodating, then perhaps it wouldn’t have ended as it did.

That particular job was my last real position, it was the last fulltime job I held. I was terminated from that position in late February 2013. As I write this it’s mid-March 2017, and currently I have zero prospects of anything turning up.

It’s not like I will only take a high paying position, or want to start at the top either. I have applied for supermarket checkout positions, customer service, pretty much anything really. And I’m capable, but no nothing doing.

As well I’ve tried to improve myself with courses, I completed a website development course. I can confidently build you a website or webapplication using a range of web technologies, but no dice there either.

I’ve got to the point, where, as I have become true to myself and come out as the transgender woman who I am, that the culmination of all this employment stuff, now intersects with the reality that I have also lost my marriage and have ended up living alone, in a two room bungalow/granny flat. I don’t even have a kitchenette.

All of this culminates in me negotiating my gender transition fighting like tooth and nail against discrimination that goes with that coupled with a declining mental health. I have been put under the care of a psychiatrist for the first time in 2o years, not that that is a bad thing in itself, but is a sign that I am simply not coping very well. My depression and anxiety are at levels worse than I ever recall them being.

Each morning along with my gender therapy meds I add-on pills to help me function through the day without spiralling into a severe anxiety or depressive state of non-functioning, and then in the evening a regime of pills to combat the severe insomnia.

But in the eyes of my goverment, I’m a leaner not a lifter. I’m a blight on the welfare state bleeding the government coffers dry. And in this state I am I am required to have applied for at 10 jobs a fortnight and attend various meetings with job service providers. Those providers are paid by the goverment to supposedly support me to find employment.

An meeting at a provider goes pretty much like: arrive and get ticked off, be asked if you’ve looked for work, told to keep looking, a piece of paper printed off and a handshake and a good bye and good luck. For this service these providers are paid by government.

At times I’ve asked if there is more they can do to assist. Oh if you were considered less employable, but you have degrees, you’re considered highly employable.

And so it goes.

Just this last couple of weeks my depression and anxiety levels have prompted my doctor to provide a doctors certificate to exempt me from these requirements. After submission of such I recieve a letter saying I need to have an interview about my job search plan.

It seems in the world of The Lucky Country, it doesn’t matter anymore if you need a helping hand. The only thing you’ll get from this lucky country now is great big Fuck You!

Humanity, Personhood, Manhood, Womanhood….


As an autistic person, the question of whether or not I am a truly human person has never really been a question. Most, I would think the majority, would consider it an almost ludicrous proposition that anything other truly human was the case. But this has seriously been a question up for consideration. Both in real terms and by stealth.

The founder of ABA therapy Ivaar Lovaas, held the opinion that autistic people were not really people, not fully human, something of a human shell. He held that his therapy would be able to fill them with humanity and make them human. A preposterous notion of course, but a very real one nevertheless. And one that has been accepted or dusted under the rug and not to be looked at when one considers the widespread use of this horrible ugly therapy.

In short Lovaas felt that an autistic person had the raw materials to make a human but human they were not yet.

Of course he wasn’t the only one, perhaps he was vocal and public about it. He was unashamed of acknowledging the aversive and abusive tactics his therapy used. Tactics which perpetrated on many animals would have the inflicter answering serious questions to the relevant authorities.,

In a less overt but just as insidious practice has been the prevalence of a cure culture and the pursuit of research towards a cure for autism, in particular a search for the elusive autism gene. No such gene exists as it turns out, but the pursuit has been relentless, spearheaded by organisations such as the giant Autism Speaks. You see if a gene could be found, then a screening test could be created and then the existence of autistic people could be consigned to history.

Of course such a stark admission would unlikely be acknowledged by the likes of such organisations but the evidence in their public rhetoric is rather damning. Talk of a generation of lost children, destroyers of marriage, stealing of families. Public support for parent murderers of autistic children, attempting to reframe such despicable acts as mercy killings.

Yes all of this, all of it, is a sign of an attitude that autistic people are not fully human, don’t have true personhood.

It’s all complete bullshit of course, but it is what is out there. And it is what the reality of existing as an autistic person is. Always having that thought, that wondering of whether the people we interact with us consider us truly human or not. More middle perhaps is the thought that as you interact they are feeling sorry for you and wishing they could cure you.

But all of it. Yes, all of it is bullshit and offensive and disgusting and horrible.

We are human damn it. We are people damn it. Start treating us as such instead of opportunities for testing or political playthings to promote a pseudo scientific campaign against the very important and very much-needed vaccination regime.

For a large number of autistic people, current thought is that approximately 7 times more than the general population, their gender identity is fluid, trans, or non-binary. They express a gender different to the sex they were assigned at birth. Readers of this blog will know that I myself am transgender.

This is where the whole question becomes even murkier, because not only are we faced with those thoughts of humanity and personhood but the question of womanhood and manhood enter the equation. There is a particular group of feminists, known by the acronym TERF, Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist, who are adamant that trans women are not real women, they are nothing but men pretending, or men in drag, or men in dresses. In their view a trans woman is not a real woman.

I expect the same is extended to transmen not being real men.

This too is bullshit. Diversity in gender identity and expression has been amongst us since the beginning of time. In some indigenous cultures there are even names for trans or gender fluid people. But even in western culture this has always been the case, just not acknowledged freely. The freedom to fully express gender identities has not been there, and so, I suspect that many confined themselves to just being what were termed tomboys or effeminate males and so forth.

We live in a time where there is more acceptance and appreciation of the positive wellbeing of not just tolerating but accepting, celebrating and encouraging trans people to transition and non-binary people to be so publicly and gender fluid people to express that fluidity. This is a good thing. However it still comes with its very own dose of risk, fear and bigotry and of course judgment by the uniformed and uneducated.

For the gender divergent autistic the reality is that each day is lived negotiating a sense of wondering how they will be accepted or non accepted as both a human and as a man or a woman. Are those people they are interacting with embracing of their humanity or wishing to cure or eradicate it, and are they accepting of their gender expression or do they want to consider them not real men or women, label them some kind of freak and consign them to a false gender binary.

As World Autism Awareness day creeps closer again, I want to say this to my autistic tribe. Yes, you are fully human, fully a person. You don’t need to be cured or eradicated or even, constructed. And to my gender divergent tribe I say you are of course real women, or men or whichever gender identity you embrace as you.

Yes people we are all human, we are all real people and no TERF, or no Autism Speaks or other Autism Organisation, and no ABA therapist can change that.

Please I implore you never let anyone tell you any different.

What’s in a name/The Masquerade of acceptance

A woman sits minding their own business, well just going about their business. Just doing what they do. One word suddenly brings everything undone. Takes a day that looks bright and full of possibility into a steaming pile of pointlessness.

That woman, a transwoman, in the midst of transition. That word, well that word was their deadname. For the uninitiated the deadname is the name a person used to go by before they transitioned to their real gender. For this woman a name they always heard with disgust and pain as it was. No matter who actually spoke that word.

But yes that one word has brought this woman undone today. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is that way. It is the reality of what it is like to live as a transgender person on a day to day basis.

I think the deadnaming thing, along with deliberate misgendering, ties into a range of fears and issues of self-confidence and resilience. Most potently it ties into fear, a fear of being safe, a fear of being able to walk down the street in safety, a fear of attending your local cafe in safety. A very real and present fear that every single time you go out you do in fact lay it on the line.

So obviously that trans woman is me. And this situation just happened and it instantly reduced me to a state of blubberring mess. It’s about an hour later and I have managed to pull myself back to some level of reasonable functioning. In that process I found that I was bombarded by the time my ex-father-in-law deadnamed me with such ferocity that I ended up unable to move from my chair and unable to speak. Even though this man was an 80 year old man I was reduced to effectively existing in that moment in time as full grown adult tucked into the fetal position.

One thing in that situation that was particularly pertinent was how much over the years the family have educated this man about autism and especially the issues of speach and communication. And yet he stood their yelling my deadname and demanding I answer him.

It was a somewhat traumatic experience. As I write that line I wonder if there is something of a bit of melodrama in it. Possibly, but that’s how it felt, that’s how it was experienced for me.

In the aftermarthof today I think of acceptance, and tolerance and so forth. I don’t imagine I am alone in wanting real acceptance. Real acceptance would have stepped in on my behalf and advocated.

But largely it seems to me is what we have is a base level tolerance that likes to masquerade as actual acceptance. When asked those in the masquerade will dutifully declare gender, sexuality etc or of no importance and that they just accept everyone, or a more benign, well whatever makes them happy.

But this, masquerade, it doesn’t mitigate the risk, the danger, the actual murders, the anti-LGBTIQ+ legislation enacted. It is as though it almost perpetuates it, it certainly seems to give it permission.

I think this because if there really was the wide spread acceptance we keep hearing about, if there really was there, it would be more than a tick in the box on a survey or opinion poll.

I think if it was really there the innoccent bystander situation would be broken away in these situations.

No longer would a transperson be openly mocked, humiliated, verbally abused and even physically abused because the response of real acceptance, that response would jump in and put a stop to it. It would stop those bigots in their tracks and honour the person being victimised.

The person being victimised would be so honoured and so protected that they wouldn’t be giving in to fear yet again, they wouldn’t be scared to go down the street to the shop, or even answer their phone.

What they would be is empowered, strengthened and raised up to be exactly who they are, to stand tall in the freedom they have fought so hard for and finally found.

Fake allies, fake acceptance, psuedo tolerance that is masquerading as acceptance is never going to cut it. We need real acceptance, real acceptance of allowing every human person to live their true self.

All the life long…

In so many places the idea that autism is all the life long, or in better words a lifelong condition is prevalent. It’s pervasive almost. Pretty much anywhere outside of those associated with a cure culture idea about autism, then it is fairly widely excepted to be a life long reality for the autistic person.

Yes, autistic person, not person with autism, because autism really isn’t an added extra, a something I manage to carry around me in a glad bad of issues that I bring out for party tricks and whatnot.

No not with autism because quite simply every thought, feeling, action, compulsion, acheivement, failure and attempt I do from an autistic perspective, through a lens or a grid of autism. It is a part of everything I do.

Sure that amount that part holds sway or impacts varies at times, but it is always a part. Always present is that lens of autism.

I want to talk rather about a different aspect of lifelong in terms of being autistic. It’s the comorbid conditions as they call them. For some it’s an Intellectual disability, for some significant speech articulation issues, for some others mobility issues. But by far the most common, as far as I can understand it is that of mood disorders. This category includes what we simply call depression and anxiety, but it also includes others, such as dysthymia, bipololar, OCD, clyclothymia and so on and so forth.

For many autistic people these are a curse, with which we live. Every day we live with it, we manage to somehow exist despite them but they are very real struggles and I believe often overlooked and not considered by the autism professional class.

Personally I was diagnosed with depression in my late 20’s though I am convinced it was an issue from quite early in childhood. Fairly soon after this anxiety was added to the diagnosis. As the years passed of adulthood I aquired a number of different diagnoses to go with these, some of which make sense and some of which I consider incorrect.

To one psychiatrist I was narcissistic, ( apparently — though I never recall that terminology being used), to another Borderline Personality Disorder, to another PTSD.

In the midst of live as an undiagnosed autistic person I did my best I guess to make life fit together, to keep all the plates spinning at once, to juggle all the balls in the air and not drop any.

It was an impossible task. It was never possible at that stage as I had no clue I was autistic. I thought autism was, like so many of my generation, Rainman.

I went from relationship to relationship, job to job, course to course. Failing wherever I turned.

To date I have two failed marriages and 3 children, 2 of whom are also autistic. It was in raising them that I learned about autism and learned that it made sense to me.

Receiving that autism diagnosis was a moment of catharsis. Yes it had its very own issues too. It did, I confess take me some months to move beyond the doom and gloom of that and into a place of accepting myself as an autistic person who is different not less.

That realisation was one that included the realisation that it is indeed life long. How does one deal with such information? I guess everyone is different and there is just no simple answer to that question.

However, lets just add to the enigma that is acceptance of a diagnosis of neurodivergence. If one is a child, it is often accompanied by massive doses of parents searching for a cure, putting the child through training that is akin to dog training.

As a newly diagnosed autistic person you hear regularly that it’s the vaccines fault, or some other such ludicrous and ridiculous notion.

The point here, really, is that what you hear, ad infinitim, is that you are not ok. That you are defective, that you are less than, you are abnormal, you are other.

It is surely this, massive dosages of othering that we recieve that adds so deeply to the lifelong comorbid conditions we endure.

This massive othering leads us to have much difficulty negotiating and navigating the daily things of life, like, getting a job, like keeping a job, like not inadvertently offending someone by answering the actual question that is asked of us.

it seems to me that overall we walk a tightrope through life where not even a misstep but the mere hint of a wobble on the line ends up casting us out. Having the autism blamed, or used as an excuse or reason for not managing it like everyone else.

The real thing though, is we are capable, we are willing, we are talented, we are passionate.

Perhaps if some of those things were acknowledged and remembered in the wider world, by parents, teachers, employers and so forth, then perhaps those other life long comorbids like life-long depression and anxiety could be mitigated.

Imagine if you will, I dare you, go try it, when you meet autistic people, presume competence. Assume we can do it.

Let’s try that and see what difference it might make to the real and actual outcomes of those autistic peoples lives.

I reckon you might just see some improved outcomes.

Go on, try it, I dare you!

It’s Coming…

Yes it’s coming. Every year it comes, like an avalanche it comes.

Awareness day, awareness month.

It comes it erases the voices of the actual autistic.

It parades blue light bulbs and people spending days in bubbles.

It comes, it claims to be for us, but it isn’t.

It never was.

It was always about the organisations.

It was always about the parents.

It was always about the siblings.

It was always about the teachers.

Yes it’s coming. April 2 is only a few short weeks away. And here it comes.

Time to become aware again, once again.

That those you thought really were allies are actually anti-vaxers after all

That those you really thought got it start buying blue light bulbs.

That those you thought were down with it start talking up cures and the latest and greatest recovery fad.

Yes it’s coming.

Fellow autistics, this too will pass.

All we can do is:

Never Surrender.

Talk our talk.

Promote the neurodiversity paradigm.

Refuse to be silenced.

Speak our truth.

Be different and not less.

To loudly proclaim nothing about us without us.

Yes it is coming.

It is coming and there isn’t anything we can do about it.

It will come, we can’t stop it.

But.

We can change our response and not take it lying down.

We can change our response and tell all the good stories, of valuable wonderful autistic life.

Yes it is coming.

And we can stand and face it and fight it like it never saw us coming.

We can’t stop it, but maybe, just maybe we can change it.

Autism Awareness, is so last century, Autism Acceptance and Celebration is where it is at now.

Lets stand together and make it happen.