The reality of identifying as autistic means that often I forget about my personhood and my other identities. It is so easy to focus solely on autism as a label, term, and identity. But as a human, I am inherently complicated. That is not a bad thing. Being complicated means being multi-faceted and holding multiple intersecting identities.
The question then becomes: how do I embrace the whole of who I am, not just the autistic part of me?
The following strategies help me when I forget about my other identities, which are just as sacred, special, endearing, and worthy of celebration as my autism identity.
• Acknowledge your other identities. I am not just autistic. I am also neurodiverse, Australian, female, a person in her twenties, and from a bicultural ancestry. I also acknowledge my chronic pain identity as part of my neurodiversity. I celebrate this part of myself because it means I don’t hide my pain to make others comfortable. Instead, I honour the richness of lived experience—vulnerability, pain, depression, darkness, and the effort of trying to hold it together.
• Embrace the scary and hidden parts of yourself. When I am strong and forgiving toward myself, I move forward with a strange but powerful sense of strength. When I embrace these human parts of my soul, I am able to create something meaningful and purposeful. This shows up in my blogging, poetry, photography, and storytelling. I take vulnerability, pain, and darkness and turn them into something alive—something that says to others, “I’m not okay, and sometimes it’s okay to not be okay.”
• Ask yourself the question: “Who was I before my autism diagnosis?” Reflecting on this helps me remember how I related to myself when I was younger. Even if I don’t remember everything, I remember moments of pure joy and safety.
I remember playing ball with my grandparent as a two-year-old—just the two of us. In that memory, I felt loved and safe. Thinking about who I was before I consciously understood my autism helps me recognise how to celebrate my other identities, rather than seeing autism as a heavy label or something that defines me entirely.
So, how do you celebrate and love your intersecting identities? How do you celebrate all of who you are, holistically?
Quote courtesy of The Hunger Games (2008) by Suzanne Collins
— Suzanna
A List Socialite