Why I’m Passionate About Sharing Autistic Lived Experience
As an Autistic person, it can sometimes feel as though our lived experience doesn’t count for much. Existing in a world where baseline awareness about autism is still abysmally low means we have to work hard to be understood.
We’re constantly trying to explain ourselves while correcting misconceptions and opening minds.
We’re trying to communicate the nuances of internal experience to counter assumptions based on external behaviour.
We’re ever striving to strike a balance between celebrating our strengths and acknowledging our challenges and need for support.
We’re working to improve representation in popular culture and media because it’s still so far from reflecting the diversity of Autistic experience.
We’re advocating for ourselves so that law and policy makers recognise that autism is whole of life condition, not a childhood affliction.
We’re battling a dominant narrative that prioritises the voices of non-autistic people and leaves us feeling silenced.
We’re defending ourselves against non-autistic people who profess to be experts on our lives.
