We all know I'm a big reader by now, so it's no surprise that the moment I thought I might be autistic, I turned to books for the answer. And I found plenty of answers. Though I feel like I've barely cracked the surface in reading about autism — especially with more new books coming [...]
As someone who loves colorful hair, I spend a lot of time in hair salons. As a neurodivergent person, I've definitely had my fair share of negative experiences in salons, too. There are both things that salons and stylists can do to make their services more neurodivergent-friendly, as well as things that neurodivergent folks can look [...]
Maybe you've never heard the term "AuDHD," or perhaps you've heard it and have no idea what it means. AuDHD is the shorthand those of us who are both autistic and have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, use to identify ourselves - a simple combination of those two terms. This is a relatively new [...]
The short answer? No, vaccines don't cause autism. But why do some people believe this? Most of the public information linking vaccines to autism stems from a study published in 1998. But to even understand why this study was completed, you also have to know about a group of anti-vaccination parents that were pushing for [...]
Many years ago, I worked on a little unpaid side hustle called The Committed Project. Dedicated to supporting professionals in higher education with mental illness, we sought out stories from all sorts of folks to better tell this story and eradicate stigma. One of the posts that we had come in was from a professor [...]
This past month has been something I hoped to never experience. And though I was freshly hurt in November, since this administration has taken office, the hurt I have felt has dug in deep and started to grow roots. I know I'm not the only one feeling this way. So for those of us with [...]
Earlier this week, we attended college orientation for our son as a family. Many schools also offer a parent/supporter orientation to ready parents for this transition. This is what my partner and I attended while our son went to his part of the program. For anyone who hasn't been to a college orientation, the goal [...]
As someone who wasn’t diagnosed with autism until her mid-40s, I often struggle with what it means for me to unmask. What if people don’t like who I am without masking? How even am I masking? These are just a few of the questions that someone who is a late-diagnosed autistic person must battle with [...]
A little over a year ago, I started to wonder if maybe I was autistic. Not one to let things go (also known as hyperfixation), my exploration led me to reading scientific books about autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and memoirs by autistic people, listening to various podcasts about autism, and looking up resources and information [...]
Alternate title: I'm just a girl, standing in front of her work, asking you to be more neurodivergent-friendly. As I have been learning about my own neurodivergence (with both autism and ADHD), I have been slowly but surely peeling back all the things that I have done to make it in a world that is [...]
