CW: Dentist visit After avoiding dentists by necessity (no extra money or dental insurance) for most of my life, it seems that I'm seeing the dentist with alarming regularity these days. Bad tooth genetics, struggles to find a regular tooth hygiene routine that works for any amount of time, and a lack of previous dental … Continue reading Re-Stating (Writing) Dentist Supports
face-blindness
Flashback Friday – Depression
TW: depression, eating disorder, self-harm, sexual assault (very brief mention), and suicidal thoughts/actions. CW: Higher education, therapy. My first official psychological diagnosis was Major Depression nearly 15 years ago. I was in college and, although I'd been extremely excited about attending college at first, my experience had rapidly gone downhill ever since I'd first arrived … Continue reading Flashback Friday – Depression
The Joy of Autistic Body Language
While sitting at my child's class, I sometimes can see into a different room. I often will pause in my writing or reading and watch what's happening from all the way across the building. I'm there because of my child. They decided this was their "must do" activity and we did everything in our power … Continue reading The Joy of Autistic Body Language
Grocery Store Meltdown
This is a long post. Most of it was written the morning after the incident that precipitated my meltdown. It is now several days since that happened, but I'm keeping the wording mostly the same. My meltdowns seem to be getting rarer and rarer as I get older (a good thing!), so I won't have as … Continue reading Grocery Store Meltdown
Autistic Disclosure
Telling people I'm autistic is something that I've definitely gotten better at doing since last August when I received my official diagnosis. I've been extremely open about being autistic in my local writing community and haven't hesitated to tell people who know me well in real life aside from a few family members whom I … Continue reading Autistic Disclosure
Parenting While Autistic – Kids’ Sports
I was reminded, while catching up with The Silent Wave's blog today, that I will soon be gearing up for a new sports-season with one of my children, whom I will refer to as "sporty-child" for this post, which is primarily about me, not them. I'm going to be extremely vague about said sport in … Continue reading Parenting While Autistic – Kids’ Sports
When the Unexpected Happens at the Dentist
CW: Dental work discussed in passing after the first paragraph. Medical professional belittling a patient mentioned briefly, as well. Sometimes the unexpected is enough to cause a complete melt down or shut down. Other times, it can be okay. It seems to primarily depend on how unknown the unexpected event is to me, how it's handled by … Continue reading When the Unexpected Happens at the Dentist
Preparing for My Evaluation
I've been somewhat putting off writing about my evaluation and the process of getting diagnosed. This is partly because I wanted to give some background about myself to start with and I've now done that. Also, the evaluation process ended up being much more difficult for me than I had anticipated and I needed to recover … Continue reading Preparing for My Evaluation
‘Reading’ People
It was almost exactly a month after my last journal entry when I wrote this: my third and final journal entry from four years ago. To give some context, I wrote this entry after I'd done a great deal of research into the things I hadn't known I didn't know. At this point, I was getting … Continue reading ‘Reading’ People
Disclaimers
Image description: Photo of Spock on the bridge of the Enterprise with the quote, "If I seem insensitive to what you're going through, Captain, understand: it's the way I am." ~Spock, Star Trek "The Enemy Within" As I was reminded by a good friend the other day, disclaimers can be a powerful way to address misconceptions and difficulties … Continue reading Disclaimers
Mamautistic 