Why fix what’s not broken? If you can’t see anything broken, then you’re benefiting from the current systems in place. Of course you don’t see the need for advocacy.
That is a privilege.
Because plenty of us experience discrimination in areas you may not see or understand. To us, it’s clear that systems are broken.
And we need to fix what is broken so everyone can live the life they deserve.
All lives can’t matter until we have a world that values all lives equally. To do so means we need equitable solutions.
Silence won’t change the world.
I need to tell you about the moment. Not the diagnosis. Not the paperwork, not the waiting room, not the clinician using words I already knew because I’d done all the research before the appointment because of course I had. I’m talking about the moment before all of that. TheRead More »The Day I Recognized Myself in My Kid as an Autistic Parent
I write a lot about the hard stuff. The masking, the loneliness, the bureaucratic nightmare of trying to get diagnosed, the Medicaid cuts, the DOJ memos, the particular exhaustion of existing in a world that was not assembled with you in mind. It’s important. It’s real. I’m not stopping. ButRead More »Things I Love About My Autistic Brain (A List Nobody Asked For But Here We Are)
I have a formal autism diagnosis. I went through the assessment process, paid what it cost, sat through the questions that felt like being poked at by someone who had read about you but never actually talked to you, and got the paperwork at the end of it. It livesRead More »Self-Diagnosis Is Valid. I Said What I Said.
Someone called me brave last week. I was at a small gathering with a few people I knew. Nothing dramatic. Nothing particularly difficult. I was sitting at the table, listening to everyone talk, occasionally joining in, and mostly doing what I always do in situations like that: keeping track ofRead More »Inspiration Porn and Disability: Stop Calling Autistic People Brave for Existing
I need to tell you something and I need you to stay with me even if your first instinct is to get defensive. Because I’m not coming at you. I’m not coming at anyone. I’m coming from the middle of something that I think is breaking the autism community apartRead More »Dear Autism Parents: The Autistic Adults You’re Arguing With Online Are Your Child’s Future. Maybe Listen to Them.
I want to tell you about a specific feeling. Not the Friday-night-with-nowhere-to-be kind of lonely. Not the moved-to-a-new-city-and-don’t-know-anyone kind. Those kinds of loneliness are real and they’re hard, but they at least make sense to other people when you describe them. Someone can look at your situation and understand whyRead More »You Can Be Surrounded By People Who Love You and Still Feel Completely Alone
Someone asked me recently what my favorite movie was. Simple question. The kind people ask at parties, on first dates, in the awkward silences between more important conversations. The kind that has an easy answer if you’re a person who knows yourself. I didn’t have one. And it wasn’t thatRead More »Who Were You Before You Learned to Disappear? Autism, Masking, and the Long Work of Finding Yourself
I had a very specific idea of what an advocate looked like. Confident. Articulate in the moment — not just in their head on the drive home. Organized. Not visibly afraid. The kind of person who could walk into a room full of people who disagreed with them, say theRead More »I Used to Think Advocacy Was for People Who Had It Together
America is turning 250 years old. Two hundred and fifty years of being a country. Two hundred and fifty years of the founding story — the one where a group of people looked at a king, looked at each other, and collectively decided: no. Not here. Not us. Not anymore.Read More »No Kings Then, No Kings Now: What America’s 250th Birthday Means When You’re the Person They’re Legislating Against.
I thought getting the diagnosis would feel like relief. And it did. For about a week. And then something else happened that nobody had prepared me for — something that felt closer to a kind of grief I couldn’t name yet. Not grief for the diagnosis. Grief for every yearRead More »Nobody Warned Me That Getting the Diagnosis Would Break Something Open
People keep asking me when the political climate is going to settle down. As if my existence is a weather pattern. As if what they’re describing as a political debate is not, for me and people like me, just… Tuesday. As if being at the intersection of multiple identities thatRead More »When Your Identity Is “Controversial”: Living at the Intersection of Being Queer, Neurodivergent, and Done With Explaining Yourself
When your loan servicer tells you to contact Borrower Defense and when Borrower Defense never answers the phone, people have been emailing me with their student loan questions, so here’s an FAQ!