Welcome!

I have to warn you that while I have taken both College Algebra and Statistics and aced both of them, math is not my strong suit. It makes my brain shut down. I’m a words, gal!

Forgiveness is difficult. Sometimes very difficult. While forgiveness is an important step, both in living the Christian faith and in your own personal healing process, it’s also important not to internalize these damaging words and actions. In a way, that’s even more difficult.

It makes me think of that children’s rhyme: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me!” Oh, but they do. They really, really do. Often, they hurt long after broken bones have mended.

SBWG and Stephanie, I’ve been spatted upon. I’ve been pushed and shoved. I’ve been called retard etc etc etc. All that has been done to you has been done to me as well. I’m going to have to learn how to forgive and bless those who curse me. I think that will take a long time.

My reasons for not pursuing a diagnosis are mostly with regards to the effort/benefit ratio I expect from the experience. As it is, accommodations would not be appropriate. I’ve set my whole life up around my own, personally designed accommodations over the last few years. If I’d known and accommodations had been available earlier in my life, it might have been different. Maybe then I wouldn’t have chosen career goals that fit what I could do without outside accommodations. But, I had to self-accommodate because there were no accommodations for me. I’m not discontent with the result, though I regret the ignorance.

As far as stigma, that doesn’t really concern me. I’ve dealt with stigma my entire life. I’ve been publicly humiliated by peers and teachers, by parents and friends, by family and strangers, because of my autistic traits. The difference is that I did not know about autism at the time. Whether I have a diagnosis or not, the stigma I face for being me will still be there. Whether I have a diagnosis or not, I still face the stigma of having three children who do have the diagnosis. And, whether I get a diagnosis or not, I would face stigma from within the autism community for either being not diagnosed, self-diagnosed or a border-line case that “isn’t really autism.”

It’s been my experience that stigma is unavoidable. I rarely let fear of stigma influence my choices.

I do agree some of the questions are problematic and stereotyped. I found that on all three quizzes. I considered the latter two “better” in that regard, because some of their questions were not overly obvious or totally predictable from my own perspective. But, each quiz reflects a particular person or set of persons perspective on autism and what it really means. Since that is still such an ambiguous issue, stereotypes are pretty much unavoidable. Not an excuse, but something that has to be met with some degree of acceptance until that which we call autism is better understood–which will only happen when more autistics are given a voice in order to explain/describe their own experiences.

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