04/26/2022
This April, celebrate Autism Acceptance Month! (not to be confused with Autism Awareness Month)!
The purpose of is to educate people about autism to create a more accepting and accessible world for autistic and neurodiverse individuals and communities (Autism Moms, you can sit this one out, this is for the folk)
With better understanding, resources, and access to firsthand information, those within this community can be more comfortable celebrating their year round! For now, April is a time of self-love, self-acceptance, and self-confidence for the autistic community!
Here are some things our autistic board wants you to know:
1. Don’t “Light it up blue”, it’s
2. Don’t support AutismSpeaks
3. It’s just as okay to identify as “an autistic person” as it is to identify as “a person with autism”
4. Autistic people don’t inherently lack empathy or emotions
5. A medical-diagnosis isn’t a viable option for everyone (e.g. diagnosis costs are high, it can limit opportunities for some, many professionals don’t diagnose after someone turns 18), so we respect a person’s decision to self-diagnose.
6. Just because your cousin’s girlfriend’s fish’s aunt’s son has autism, doesn’t mean you know what we are like or our struggles.
7. All of our experiences are different, especially if we have overlapping ( ) minority identities. Please don’t compare us to eachother and try to 'educate' us on our own brains.
8. Autism is a spectrum, so think of it more like the color spectrum, where each color can be a different trait or ability
9. Most autistic people don’t want a cure. We are not broken. We don’t need to be “fixed”. An inaccessible world is what makes being autistic so hard, so fix that.
10. They are autism TRAITS, not symptoms. Again, we aren’t sick or broken. We have a different neurotype, and it’s actually auesome (awesome, but like autism get it..?)
If you are in need of resources, have questions, or would like to discuss autism in more detail, please reach out to us! We would be happy to talk with anyone!
