Tag: neurodiversity

‘Autism Awareness’ has been created without autistic people, and even though the door is being nudged open to let us in, we’re still stuck at the back of the room whilst the rich powerful neurotypical people hog the stage

Because we live in a culture that doesn’t talk about death, I am innately curious. It’s the ultimate unspoken thing -final, unchangeable, ridiculous – that my brain wants to unpack and understand.

As women, we are taught that we must shoulder the emotional burden of being okay. As autistic women, the burden of okayness becomes even heavier. We are always okay. Except when we aren’t.

He goes through so much and is still the happiest creature. It’s like we were meant to find each other. We both struggle. And we know how to look after each other. 

Seeing Norbert Neurotypical – with his banking job and his wife and his baby and his mortgage and his vegetable couscous lunch – just makes me feel like a fraud playing at being an adult .

Let 2018 be the year that Autistic anger burns bright . Let it be the year in which they can’t pretend they can’t hear us any more. 

I have a strange and wonderful and terrible and contentious relationship with this time of year. 

Quiet carriages are absolutely a lifeline for disabled people like myself. Some days they are the only reason I have the emotional energy to succeed at work.

The definition of success seems to depend very much on the frame that you’re looking at it through. And the frame of my ‘success’ is the neurotypical gaze. 

My brain is juggling so many things, and if you throw something else at me without warning, the likelihood is that I’m going to miss it altogether or drop it before its first rotation is complete.