July AWN Newsletter

Hi, I’m Jean, the Administrative Registrations Coordinator at AWN.

On July 26th, we’ll celebrate the 34th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This important civil rights law works to ensure all people with disabilities have the same rights and opportunities as everyone else. On this anniversary, I wanted to reflect on how much we’ve seen the world change for autistic people in the last few decades. 

I am a late-diagnosed autistic mother of three, and like many parents, I only found out I was autistic after getting my first child diagnosed, which was almost two decades ago. At the time, I had really never had the opportunity to learn about autism from other autistic people, and I was scared. This was back in 2007/2008, and there was a lot of scary misinformation about autism, with very few stories painting autism in a positive or even neutral light.

I found Autism Hub and started reading works by people speaking from their autistic perspective and learned about the concept of neurodiversity. This inspired me to start writing about my experiences as an autistic parent of autistic children. My writing helped me let go of harmful models of parenting that deny agency to autistic youth; I embraced the truth that our children deserve to make their own decisions and be who they are. When one of my children came out as transgender, I celebrated her newfound sense of confidence, and it taught me how to better support trans people. And as I explored my own autistic identity, I started working in the disability rights and neurodiversity movement, which eventually led me to work with AWN. I think any honest journey to activism becomes intersectional as we are all complex and interrelated. Today, I am proud to help amplify autistic and neurodivergent voices from all backgrounds. 

The world has come a long way since I started learning about autism and neurodiversity, but we still have a long way to go. My wishes for the future are that I would like to see less infantilizing and more acceptance of autistic people of all identities and support needs. I would like to see the media acknowledge that there are challenges to being an autistic person and to raising autistic children without spreading the message that we and our children are tragedies to be fixed. All autistic kids and adults should be celebrated for being exactly who they are.

I’m proud to be in community with you!