Welcome to The Reframe from Autastic

This Is for Us

Too many of us—Black and brown autistic adults—have been living whole lives without ever discovering the truth about who we are.

👉🏽 We’ve been left out of research,

👉🏽 We’ve been left out of the media,

👉🏽 We are absent from policy, and

👉🏽 We are persistently erased from the language around our condition.

Autism, as you very likely know by now, continues to overwhelmingly be painted as white, male, and young, despite years of advocacy. Only recently have white women and girls entered that picture…but just barely.

Transgender, gender diverse, and historically racialized autistic communities have always existed yet we’re pushed to the margins, expected to excel and survive without complaint or structural support.

Living this way is killing us (but of course on this not a scrap of data exists ).

I decided to do something about it.

Who am I?

I’m Diane, the founder of Autastic®. I figured out I was autistic at 42 and finally understood the perpetual exhaustion, the isolation, the constant sense of being “too much” or “not enough”. Learning who I am saved my life.

But as a biracial, Afro-Caribbean, full-grown adult, I couldn’t see myself at that time in books, films, research, services, or meetup spaces centered on autism.

It felt as if I was, once again, The Only.

That’s why I built Autastic. And that’s why this Substack exists.

Why this space exists

In the years since, I’ve built communities of thousands of adult-identified autistic people. They share their lives with each other, build friendships based in recognition and reciprocity, find work that sustains and fulfills them. They raise autistic families rooted in neuro-affirming, accepting parenting.

All because they no longer exist as The Only.

There’s more to it, of course, but that’s the power of representation and connection. This Substack is my way of providing access to that power.

Who’s this for?

Y’all need to know and need to believe that you—Black, Indigenous, AAPI, SWANA, Latine, and mixed autistic POC—are not broken, badly behaved, disruptive, rude, obstinate, difficult, criminal, nor lazy. What you are, very likely, is living alone in your experience, chasing the standards you’re measured by but that have little to do with you.

The Reframe from Autastic is for you, built from the ground up #ByUsForUs, to shift our view so we may thrive.

What’s here

Expect to hear from voices reflecting Black, Indigenous, and broader POC experiences alongside, occasionally, our allies who are out there doing their work towards equity and equality.

I’ll be sharing:

• My lived experience as an adult-identified autistic POC,

• Insights drawn from thousands of conversations in our Autastic Communities,

• Resources developed exclusively for us,

• Tools to make every day just a bit easier, and always,

• The pursuit of #AutisticJoy.

Why it matters

When we are seen as we are and truly mirrored back—often for the first time in our lives—the impact can be profound. No one should live feeling as if they’re The Only, especially when there are millions of us out here (an estimated 16 million unidentified autistic African American adults alone as extrapolated from CDC prevalence rates and NIH data on autism/ADHD overlap1).

This matters because wherever we are on our autistic journey—newly questioning or decades in—we deserve so much more than is available. In the steps of our ancestors who raised themselves up in the face of marginalization, I bring you The Reframe from Autastic.

What’s next

You can subscribe for free, or if you’re able, consider supporting The Reframe from Autastic with a paid subscription👇🏽

What I promise is this: this space will center BIPOC autistic life. It will be ours, seen through our eyes, built with our hands, and loved with our abundant hearts.

If you’ve spent years thinking you were the problem, welcome.
If you’ve been gaslit about the ways you experience your body and your world, welcome.
If you’ve been excluded, bullied, and made to feel as if you’re a burden or
If you’ve been carrying too much without a place to lay it down,
You’ve found your fam. We’re right here with you.

This is The Reframe.
This is for us.

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