We’re taught to compete and to measure our success against our peers. If we’re not “keeping up“ or falling “low in the ranks,” it is a failure. Continue reading I wasn’t lazy. The system was rigged. – Your ‘honor roll’ wasn’t hard work. It was privilege.
Human minds crave simplicity and easy, quick categorizations; that’s why many stereotypes and false assumptions about those in marginalized groups run wild in our dominant culture (because it’s easier for people to oversimplify by thinking in black and white while ignoring nuance). This creates a failure to appreciate people as individual humans, and pressure on everyone to fit within narrow, unnatural, binary norms and categorizations. Continue reading Human Binaries: NeuroDivergent and Queer – Coloring Outside the Lines Will Be Punished – Intro to my latest book, Neurodivergent Rebel’s, The Weight of Normal
I didn’t know I was Autistic until I was 29. Before that, I just knew I was tired—tired of being told my best wasn’t good enough, tired of feeling like a problem that needed solving, and so exhausted. Hi, my … Continue reading How Being the “Problem Child” Nearly Killed Me (And Why My Autism Diagnosis Saved My Life)
If you’re new to this blog or Autism month, you might be asking yourself, “What’s so bad about having a month to honor Autistic people? Isn’t awareness a good thing?” Which, in itself, brings up one of my biggest frustrations with this ‘special month for autism’: Continue reading Welcome to ‘Autism Month’ and Why, as an Actual Autistic Person, I am NOT a Fan of Having a ‘Month for Autism’
Why, to me, “Autistic person” and “person with Autism” are two VERY different phrases, and why I never want to be called a “person with Autism” – please note this is just my PERSONAL preference. Over the years, I’ve often … Continue reading I AM Autistic – Please Don’t Ever Call Me a ‘Person with Autism’
My life with late-identified autism, healing from masking and forced assimilation, and learning about the neurodiversity paradigm, after being diagnosed Autistic at the age of 29.
Continue reading “You’re Too Smart to Be Acting This Way” & The Lifelong Harm of Neuronormative Expectations: What My ‘Gifted’ Label Actually Cost Me – A Late-Diagnosed Autistic Perspective
Sticky post
The Weight of Normal is a raw and powerful memoir of survival and awakening. It is an unflinching indictment of the systems of forced assimilation—the NeuroDivergent and Queer conversion “therapies”—that teach self-abandonment as a virtue. Continue reading New Book! NeuroDivergent Rebel’s The Weight of Normal – Preorder NOW (Available 12/16/25)
I Was Trained to Abandon Myself: Behavioral Compliance Made Me a Target for Abuse – Compliance is Not Competence & How Forced Assimilation Fails NeuroDivergent People
Continue reading The Mask That Almost Killed Me: On NeuroDivergence, Forced Assimilation, and Self-Abandonment
When Your Rock Bottom Goes Unseen – Why Expressing Pain and Discomfort is a Disruption to the Status Quo and What Happens When You Can’t Fake Being Fine
Continue reading Invisible & Drowning: My Negativity Was a Cry for Help – Toxic Positivity Kills: My Year of Being Told to Smile While Drowning
Sometimes, Autism that is outwardly disruptive can be “beaten into submission” until it is “less disruptive” to the outside viewer (as mine was).
However, this can lead to increased internal disruptions—and, in my case, more meltdowns, other kinds of overload and trauma responses, as well as isolation (due to not projecting my authentic self to the world) and a lost sense of self and identity (due to being forced to separate from and be ashamed of “undesirable” parts of myself by a society that wouldn’t allow me to bring my whole self to most spaces). Continue reading Assimilate or Be Punished: My Multiply NeuroDivergent School Years – They Called it Bad Behavior; It Was Unmet Needs
