First Post

 Hi!

I'm Sara. I'm an autistic ADHD'er and I've decided to start a new blog on my experiences as a late-diagnosed autistic woman in Montreal.

Copied from my message to my coach Ilana just now: “My zoom meeting with Dylan and Rosemary from Autism House went great! Got great vibes from them, they're very partnership-oriented towards the autistic community and repeatedly said how helpful it would be for them to have me on board as an autistic adult sharing my voice and mentioned possibly bringing me on in a paid position if everything works out for everyone after a gradual introduction to and period of volunteering, and they're very understanding of my limited capacities due to burnout and respectful of pacing, etc. ” I’m really excited about this! This is putting motivation or impetus behind an idea I’ve considered a few times of having a personal public blog again, and this framework for it seems like it would be enjoyable and beneficial to other autistic people :) Rosemary and I were discussing neurology and how the binary ways of describing people as either neurotypical or neurodivergent are not expansive enough because of natural human biodiversity, and I’ve been hearing a lot about how reductionist, unhelpful and even harmful the bioessentialist medical and psyciatric models are to people and that we could use a more nuanced discussion on the matter. Then what do you know, Ayesha Khan’s amazing newsletter titled Cosmic Anarchy lands in my inbox during our meeting and I took a look at it when the meeting was over and THE TITLE IS “WE’RE ALL CAPABLE OF DIVERGENCE”! Yes I know there’s a lot of (valid!) contention surrounding the phrase “we’re all a little autistic/neurodivergent” in the autistic and ADHD communities, hell I’ve ranted angrily at my own family for saying those things, AND I’m learning through this newsletter that it’s a reductionist model, that we can search for more nuance and have a perspective, a paradigm that’s larger than that that would be more useful and helpful if we can articulate, explain and disseminate it adequately. Personally I’m only just starting to learn about bioessentialism and all this stuff that Ayesha is talking about so I’m not able to articulate it or put it into a nutshell to explain it to others to the extent I would like just yet, but I’m super excited to share these new ways of thinking with others who are open-minded and like to search for nuance and learn and expand their understanding of things! A bit of background on me (which I’ll have to expand on in an actual background post (or several) maybe at some point): I have a bunch of experience blogging in a personal manner from 10 years ago before I stopped and started posting so much to Facebook and Instagram, so blogging is not new to me, I’ve had a number of blogs on topics ranging from my daily life, to various food blogs, to bras lol (they’re surprisingly hard to find for people of my stature/shape if you want a truly well-fitted one). In a nutshell I’m a 38yo autistic woman from Montreal, Quebec who’s into food, neurodiversity,health, trauma healing, nature, art, education and advocacy. I have experience working in the food and customer service industries and am taking time off after 2 burnouts to be supported financially by social security (welfare) and work with an amazing coach Ilana Grostern to figure out a new trajectory for my life, which seems to be including blogging and partnering with Autism House Montreal now! I live with my husband, two cats and too many plants and I’m a very progressive Orthodox Christian :) I was diagnosed with ADHD-PI in 2013 after getting several unpaid suspensions from work for making too many costly mistakes, and ASD in 2019 after a friend of mine started sharing info about autism following their own diagnosis in 2017 or so, and the more I read the more it interested me and the rest I’ll write about in a more detailed post dedicated specifically to that :) EEEEEEEE I’m excited! 😃 How this got started (copied from what I sent Ilana just now): Iris Erd from Autism House posted about a survey they were doing in one of the autistic groups I'm in, and also that they had a number of services we could partake of, and their future plans which include a cafe for autistic people so I emailed them saying I was interested in working in the cafe since I have a background in the food industry and Dylan set up a meeting with Rosemary and him to discuss volunteering prior to that!

I also have a neurodiversity link library with lots of info :D

Ok I'm gonna go nap now I'm exhausted. #burnoutlife

P.S. sorry about the difference in fonts, I wrote this post in Google Drive and copied and pasted it from there before adding the first line. I cant find a paint format button. I'll write directly here next time.