Extract from my nostalgic monologue at the start of the 5 Years of Ausome Charlie online event with David Gray-Hammond, Katie Munday and Quinn Dexter on 8 June 2023 (see YouTube link at the bottom).
“I have been flicked through the old tweets on my Ausome Charlie Twitter. I had been on Twitter longer, but I formed this Ausome Charlie account exactly five years ago, because I realised that I was autistic, and I wanted to learn more about it.
My frame of reference for autism before that point was:
– My high needs autistic brother with learning disabilities,
– My stepchild, identified autistic younger, aged about six.
But their communication differences were a lot more pronounced than mine.
It never occurred to me that I might be autistic, even though I’d struggled growing up, and particularly at University.
Then I had a real chequered work career, never fitting in, but I didn’t really know why.
I knew I was different, like from another planet at times, and away with the fairies and in my own world, but I didn’t know why.
When my son Iggy was identified as autistic, the pennies dropped, and I thought, “oh maybe I am too”.
I went looking on Twitter, and I found the #ActuallyAutistic hashtag, and that is how I met a lot of my friends that I have stayed with over the years.
I met militant people on polar sides of the spectrum, real extremes of opinions there.
People who were very ‘happy clappy’, evangelistic, “autism is a superpower” and “we love being neurodivergent” and even “don’t call us disabled”.
And on the other side, there was a movement at that time, that seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth now, called the neuro-realists, jokingly referred to as the ‘Autistic Dark Web’ and I used to listen to what they said as well, so that I was getting a more balanced argument.
I have always been quite ‘moderate’, in the middle. Autism to me is very much ‘dark clouds and silver linings’; there are difficulties and there are advantages and joys, and things I love about it as well.
I met so many different people, and saw so many different perspectives and really began to understand myself over the years.
Then I got involved with organisations like Autistic Inclusive Meets. I met Emma Dalmayne early on, and she was an inspiration to me. She was the first I saw of autism activism – she was out there fighting against quack cures and ABA etc and was a real inspiration to me.
Then I found out about neurodiversity in the workplace, and in universities, about inclusion, so that is where I started to link in. Because I work in HR, and I have done for 25 years now, this is how I could differentiate. I could learn about how to help make workplaces inclusive for autistic and otherwise neurodivergent people and then put pressure on organisations, both my own organisation and their members, so quite a big scope. I could influence them to design inclusive policies.
That was really my ‘in’, so although I like the helping autistic kids and communities, because of my career in HR I have really focused on corporate neurodiversity, so I’ve ended up meeting all kinds of people in all kinds of different spectrums of life.
It has been a hell of a ride!”
Ausome Charlie 