So…I was recently appointed to the IACC, which is the federal advisory board that handles important autism-related matters at the national level. There were ~40-ish? people appointed in total, including 23 public members…and a full EIGHT of us public members are autistic! I am beyond grateful to have an opportunity to serve my community in …
Let’s hope they don’t kick me off: these IACC public comments though… Read More »
I was recently part of a coalition that issued an Open Letter (penned by Cal Montgomery and I) and a follow up Memo (which had several co-authors, including many who opted to remain anonymous). The purpose of the Open Letter and the Memo was to make positive changes within the autistic community (and in this …
To: Meg Evans, Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) Board of Trustees Secretary Cc: Current ASAN Board of Trustees; Julia Bascom, ASAN Executive Director From: A collective of former ASAN Board and staff, which includes: Morénike Giwa Onaiwu, former ASAN Board of Trustees Vice Chair Cal Montgomery, former ASAN Board of Trustees Chair Oswin Latimer, former …
I have been blogging since 2013. From 2013-2019 my personal blog, Just Being Me…Who Needs “Normalcy” Anyway? (of ~100 posts) was housed on Blogger/Blogspot. After 2019, I moved my blog here to my website and all new blog posts can be found HERE. Although my purpose for republishing all of my posts on this site …
What did MLK say exactly? Something like, “…in the end, what hurts the most is not the harmful words spoken by our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” I’m sure I completely botched the quote and truthfully right now Idgaf; this isn’t speech and rhetoric class. This is “real” “life” in 2020 America for …
Happy New Year! I’ve been blogging since ~2013 on my personal blog, Just Being Me…Who Needs ‘Normalcy” Anyway? It was originally a free Blogspot site (which later became a Blogger site, and then part of Google, but that’s probably tangential). I started blogging to have a place of my own where I could to express …
I don’t know what I’m going to write right now; it’s all jumbled up in my head. But I just know I need to write. I haven’t written for what feels like eons…I need to write. Forgive me if this ends up being an incoherent rambling mess. It probably will be. But maybe that’s okay, …
(Image is an autism acceptance word cloud of multiple colors. Source: unknown) Today I wrote a letter to the editor and the president of “Mad in America” about an ableist and disturbing article that they published on their site. Here is what I wrote: “Dear editor, I am writing to express major concerns over your …
“Neurodiversity Is Dead?” Ion think so. Letter to the Mad In America Editor. Read More »
Today I had the displeasure of reading an article in Mad in America entitled, “Neurodiversity Is Dead. Now What?” Written by a Black woman whose diagnoses range from autism to PMDD, the article makes an attempt to point out what its author views as inconsistencies in the neurodiversity movement. There are six primary points made …
When I was a little kid my brothers and I were really fascinated by science. We devoured old copies of National Geographic magazine and various documentaries on the Discovery Channel. We pestered our mother to identify the organs and bones that were visible in the food (i.e. chicken, beef, fish) she was preparing. We examined …
