Show Notes
When you're diagnosed autistic, the past doesn't change. But the story you tell yourself does. In this episode, I sit down with Kari Burroughs Kraakevik, an autistic writer, composer, educator, and performing arts business owner. Together, we unpack what it means to re-examine childhood memories through a neurodivergent lens. From being labelled "defiant" over a carton of school milk in third grade to navigating intense sensory environments in college, Kari shares a candid, deeply relatable r...
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The healthcare system consistently fails neurodivergent people. What happens when they decide to build something better? I explore that question with Dr. Mel Houser, a board-certified family physician, founder and executive director of All Brains Belong VT, and author of A Failure of Imagination: How the Healthcare System Fails Neurodivergent People, and What We're Doing Instead. At 37, Mel learned they are autistic, and also ADHD, dyslexic, dyscalculic, and dyspraxic. That experience, alongs...
I sat down with clinical psychologist and energy healing coach Nicole Parkes to talk about how her own autism and ADHD diagnoses changed the way she works with clients. We get into what it feels like when pathological demand avoidance (PDA) takes over, why talk therapy alone wasn't enough to help her heal from trauma, and the particular exhaustion of chronic illness layered on top of neurodivergence. Nicole also opens up about a more recent chapter of self-discovery that surprised her, ...
Most autism research still isn't about autistic adults. It's about children, and causes, and where autism comes from. But every so often, research surfaces that's actually about us — our health as we age, our burnout, our bodies in midlife, and even the question of why autism has been part of the human story all along. This is the first of my roundup episodes, where I bring you several of the most interesting recent findings in autism research, all in one place. In this episode, I cover five ...
Julie M. Green's son was diagnosed autistic at three. She wasn't diagnosed until 44 — almost a decade of advocating fiercely for her child's needs while missing her own. In this episode, we talk about why that gap is so common, and what finally closed it for her. For Julie, recognition didn't arrive in a single lightning-bolt moment. It came slowly, over years of small things adding up — until meeting another late-diagnosed autistic woman gave her a model she'd never had for what autism could...
And the evidence is catching up! For most of autism's diagnostic history, clinicians have repeated some version of the same number: autism is about four times more common in boys than in girls. That number has shaped which children get screened, which symptoms get recognized, and which ones get explained away as anxiety or shyness or a hormonal thing. Generations of autistic women and girls have been missed because the people doing the looking were taught to look for boys. In this episode, I ...