“Stop Looking At Your Phone”?: 5 Ways Internet Technology Helps My Queer, Neurodivergent Family December 16, 2019 by Ginger Stickney Leave a Comment Watching my teens interact on the Internet sometimes feel like coming full circle. My own experience with Internet relationships started in the early nineties on a fetish board, complete with black screen and green print. During that time, I was on the tail-end of an emotionally abusive relationship coupled with a lot of confusion about my sexual identity. Socially awkward … [Read more...]
How One Adult With SPD Wants to Explain This Condition to Your Sensory Child November 15, 2019 by Rachel S. Schneider, Guest Writer Leave a Comment This article first appeared on the author’s blog, Coming to My Senses, and is reprinted with permission. As a delayed-diagnosis sensory adult with Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD), one of my greatest pleasures is helping newly diagnosed children with the same condition, whether this means championing their parents or explaining sensory issues from the inside. We SPD adults … [Read more...]
Why I’m Done Being a “Good” Mentally Ill Person October 10, 2019 by Sam Dylan Finch Leave a Comment This article first appeared on The Establishment and is reprinted by permission. Content note: This article contains discussion of psychiatric hospitalization and briefly mentions suicidal ideation. I’m being buckled into a stretcher. Restraints are being placed around my ankles when a nurse walks by. “You don’t really have to use all the restraints,” she says to the … [Read more...]
3 Ways Autistic Adults Experience Domestic Abuse — And 3 Ways to Stop It September 26, 2019 by Robert Chapman Leave a Comment This article was originally published on The Establishment under the title "We Need To Talk About the Domestic Abuse of Autistic Adults" and is republished with permission. Content Warning: This article references sexual abuse. It didn’t take long for me to identify a sweeping problem that no one is talking about. After much confusion, anguish, flashbacks, self-blame, and … [Read more...]
5 Things I Did After Turning Forty That Changed How I Saw My Aging Self August 16, 2019 by Ginger Stickney Leave a Comment At thirty-eight I experienced a bit of a midlife crisis. Well, hardly midlife, but still a crisis nonetheless. Forty loomed on the horizon, and I felt a kind of aimless terror at that number. Some of it was kind of silly. What did a mature woman wear? Would I be forced by some secret fashion police to give up my band and anime t-shirts? Would I have to turn in my Chucks and … [Read more...]
7 Ways to Make Your Social Justice Space Accessible to Disabled People August 3, 2019 by Gabe Moses Leave a Comment Most social justice movements make a point to be inclusive of as many people as possible, especially marginalized communities. Those movements that don’t do so should. But one group that is often overlooked is disabled people, even though we exist inside every other affinity group. As someone who belongs to multiple “othered” communities (disabled, transgender, working-class, … [Read more...]
4 Dating Tips For Mentally Ill, Disabled, and Neurodivergent People July 18, 2019 by West Anderson Leave a Comment Over the past three years, I’ve learned a lot about the ways in which my brain and body work. I’ve learned that the intense sadness and stress I dealt with in high school did, in fact, qualify as depression and anxiety, and that I could and should seek support for those things. I learned that the extreme physical and mental exhaustion I felt after completing a few days of … [Read more...]
10 Tips to Help Neurotypicals Understand Sensory Processing Disorder November 11, 2018 by Rachel S. Schneider, Guest Writer 16 Comments [Image description: The photograph shows the author, a white woman with shoulder-length black hair and green eyes. She is looking into the camera with a friendly but serious expression. She is wearing a gray blouse and a necklace with gold, red, pink, and white.] Dear Neurotypicals Who Love or Know Someone with SPD, In honor of Sensory Awareness Month, this … [Read more...]
10 Everyday Ways We Shame Neurodivergence October 1, 2018 by Gillian Giles Leave a Comment Shame is a hard emotion to tease out, it synonymous with emotions like embarrassment or humiliation but it's not the same- it targets the core of a person's being. Similarly shaming and even more so the experience of being ashamed in result is even harder to tease out in our everyday actions. I grew up with ADHD that I didn’t really understand that later in life … [Read more...]
‘Kind of Like Being a Witch or Wizard’: How I Learned to Value My Neurodivergence August 27, 2017 by Imogen Prism 1 Comment The Body Is Not an Apology’s goal is to share the myriad ways human bodies unshackle the box of “beauty” and fling it wide open for all of us to access. Our goal is to redefine the unapologetic, radically amazing magnificence of EVERY BODY on this planet. When we do, we change the world! Join the movement and become a subscriber today! bit.ly/NoBodiesInvisible. What is … [Read more...]
