When I came across these two words in an article I was reading, the poet in me knew I had to write a post about them. The article was from one of my favorite Medium authors by the name of Jackie Schuld. Since I am now seriously trying to learn the art of sketching/doodling, and she is also very good at that, I have borrowed one of her sketching as shown below. If you want to see more about Jackie, click HERE. She is quite a talented lady.

The article opens with the statement that autistic statistics are pretty grim. I, as a self-identified autistic adult, strongly agree with that. I was in my 60s when I came across the fact that I am very likely autistic, it scared me. I really didn’t know much about Autism, I kinda thought that most people with that label spend their lives huddled in a corner of a room, twitching. When I went further into it, I discovered that according to statistics, autistics had high suicide rates, and died much earlier than those without it. I simply didn’t want to be associated with that label in any way! I am still leery of doing that, but have almost accepted the fact that I am autistic. Now, if we could just convince the uninformed public that the Autism Spectrum is VERY broad.

I studied autism from the Asperger’s end of the spectrum, but avoided the other end. At that time, Asperger’s and Autism were loosely linked together. I identified myself as an Aspie, but I wanted nothing to do with the very tarnished view of the overall Autism label. Then I discovered that the “experts” in the field decided that the Aspergers label should disappear and be merged into Autism! That is one step backwards in my taking on the label of Autism. OK, enough about me and my acceptance of the word, let’s get on to the article at hand. Instead of just parroting her words, I am going to do something unusual for me, and that is to pull out a rather large block of the article mentioned above. If you want to see the whole article, click HERE.

It’s nice to see that at least Jackie fully recognizes that the latest statistics don’t include late-identified Autistics. There was little emphasis on Autism until relatively recently, and most of the work that is currently being done is focused almost exclusively on fixing children. We late-identified autistics (I wish I could find an acronym for this group 😎) are for the most part ignored, and erroneously damaged by the current statistical data.

I have written here at RJsCorner about the special gifts and talents of Aspies, and have identified likely Aspies in the landscape. That list is remarkable, and something every Aspie should be proud of. I am certainly anxiously awaiting an Autistic Awakening as Ms. Schuld presents in another article cited above. But, I kinda doubt that it will never happen in my lifetime.

I just hope that the rapid understanding of autism will finally include us adults, who have a myriad of data to share with the researchers. We have spent most of our long lives masking and accommodating the neurotypical world. Those experiences should be valuable in helping the coming generations if only someone would gather the data.