 Hello, everybody. I'm Mel Hauser. I use she they pronouns. I'm the executive director here at All Brains Belong and welcome to Brain Club. Let me share screen, get us oriented. What you wish people knew about autism were kicking off April. We'll talk about April in a minute. But first, I'll arrange you to Brain Club in general. Brain Club is our education space for the collective ABB community with the purpose of providing education about neurodiversity and related topics of inclusion. Through Brain Club, it's our hope to bring people together based on a shared vision of what's possible and contribute to systems change by shifting social norms and then you go out into your world and spread the good word. This is a place where people can come together to collectively learn and unlearn what no longer serves us. It's a place where we're hoping that you feel safe right from the very first time and for many people experience something that's quite different from the outside world. The idea being that by by being part of a community and by promoting new ways of thinking and being that's that systems change. This is for education purposes only though All Brains Belong has a lot of different types of programs. This one is not for medical or mental health advice. It's also not a support group. This is a collective education space. All forms of participation are okay here at Brain Club. You can have your video on or off. Even if it's on, we don't expect anything of you. We certainly do not need you to sit still or look at the camera or interact or anything. We do what needs doing. Walk, move, fidget, stim, eat, whatever, whatever needs doing and you're welcome to communicate. However, you are most comfortable. You can unmute and use mouth words. You can type in the chat. You can also send private chat messages, questions that way. And in addition to affirming all aspects of identity, we protect the space here by asking that if you are bringing up anything that is distressing to you, we ask that you discuss the impact of those experiences, not the details of the events themselves. This is just part of balancing individual versus collective needs and so more access needs. Close captioning is enabled. You just have to toggle it on if you'd like to use it. So depending on your version of Zoom, you might see the live transcript closed captioning icon, but if not look for the more dot dot dot and choose show subtitles. You can also do the same and choose hide subtitles if you want to turn them off. That's my visual support to make sure I have the chat box open and here it is. It's already open. Look at that. Speaking of the chat, the chat is a great opportunity to practice negotiating and navigating conflicting access needs where many people need different things that conflict. The chat box for many community members is a way of accessing this program. It's a way of being able to communicate without mouth words. It eases working memory because you can just blurt out your ideas as soon as they come to your brain. It also allows for processing time where you know you might hear something think about it and then five minutes later you have a thought about it and you just throw it in the chat. So and of course that there's there can be direct engagement back and forth between community members. There are other folks for whom the chat is really distressing. There's visual clutter. It's distracting when it pops up. Some people even have a startle response when it when the chat window pops up or sometimes it moves really quickly and that's distressing hard to follow. So I would say that the main the main event is up on the screen so you can if you can ignore the chat box if you are in camp to wonderful if not there are some ideas we have. So if if you're someone with a chat bothers you after the first pop up try not closing the window this way when new messages come in it'll replace the message but it won't pop up so maybe sometimes that becomes easier to ignore. You also could disable chat preview. So here's the what the chat box looks like on your toolbar you can try clicking on the up arrow next to there and it'll show you the words show chat previews if you tap on that it'll take away the check mark. And now you won't show chat previews. I hope that helps. Okay, here we go. It is April. Many people so personally just name this like April is quote autism awareness month as though like we're not aware of autism so autism awareness month or autism acceptance month or whatever. There's a lot of autistic people who find April performative and obnoxious and all of it. So if that's your experience. I'm glad you're here. Solidarity. What we have chosen to do with with April is make brain club this month be about autistic culture. Lizzie can you can, can you pop the link to our Instagram video from yesterday. I reposted a video yesterday from last year about with some commentary on April. We're going to do it differently here. So today will be, we're going to be replaying a community panel recording from last year that is hands down one of my favorite brain club panels of all time. We'll have the opportunity to hear from a panel of our community members who learned that they were autistic later in life, anywhere from their 20s through their 60s, and we'll hear about about what that experience has been like. I'll also name that later this month is our third annual shifting the autism narrative the impact of stigma on health. You might see some emails getting fired around around like a separate registration if you've registered for brain club on that day it's the same link you don't need to register twice. But this is, this is an annual presentation that we do to like name the thing about the health care systems role in perpetuating the stigma of autism. Okay. So, without without further ado, David will play our panel and just wanted to think think in advance our panelists, Kelly, Amy, Sarah, Matthew and Zeph for sharing their experiences. Okay, go for it David. So, when did you learn that you are autistic. And what has it been like to get to know your brain. I only recently like had somebody else say hey, you're right you're autistic. So, I don't even think it's been like six months that I've like comfortably set it to other people like and feeling confident like no I got someone backing me on this. But I have always questioned my neurology because because of the things because people do the things so easily, and it always befuddled me like how I mean just in school how do you just walk in on the first day of school and and just do the things and not and not be freaking out like how does that happen. When I knew I was autistic. I was late diagnosed in in January after my physical, which is age 23. And that was, you know, when you know the SSI SSDI program was to make sure that you know to continue I had to go to a psychic psychiatric to continue my benefits and that was, you know, so the health care provider and that was by long. And that experience and I found out that I was autistic then, but like I said I've also had multiple disabilities that you know ADHD when I was young. And then, you know, the select six dyslexia within that ADHD form, and then, you know, cognitive speech issues, suddenly, of my own words. And that is when I knew I was different, you know, thinking differently, and my brain was working very differently, and it sees the world in a different, you know, spectrum but I sees it in a different place, you know, of its own, you know, its own reality and his own kind. My brain, you know, I actually love my brain the way it thinks, because I can see the world around me, but also I can see the world in me through other people and see their experiences. And, you know, conversations through a whole different set of lens. I first heard the idea or someone asked me specifically like autism was not on my radar at all for myself. And, but I had gone to see one of my spouses college friends who I didn't had never met before and I wasn't a person who like shared a lot about myself but I found through the weekend of hanging out that I was sharing a lot was in a really challenging time in my life. And it turns out that two years prior they had been diagnosed with autism and so the last day we were hanging out we were in this really, really large restaurant and in New York City and it was really, really loud and tons of people and but we had gotten to know each other enough that was like there was this comfortability and in that conversation. That's when they had said like how do you ever considered autism and that I had never and I don't like it didn't even cross my mind I had a very like stereotypical ideas and what it meant to be autistic. But they did this thing that like really changed my life. They put noise canceling headphones on my ear on my head. And they did it like they put it on. And so there was something in the act of this connection with this person. And when, when they put them on. I think that they could see a shift in me. It was so palpable to have all of the stimulus. And in that connection with them in that moment it was like the whole world, like, went away for a moment. And I think it was like really in that moment I knew, and even though I didn't know know and and, but I got excited and I got really curious. I had come into contact with a blog or something that was written about the alien on the playground and it was about an adult diagnosed assigned female at birth person who felt very alienated throughout their childhood and I read this blog and recognize myself in it. At the time I was partnered with somebody who had been diagnosed with Asperger's which is a part of the spectrum, but that's what they were calling it when he got diagnosed and I found the RADS RITVO scale online which is a clinically validated assessment tool. It's correlated between people who have autism and people who don't. And I took it and he took it. And my results wound up being even farther off the charts than his were and that started me trying to get attention from my medical care professionals that I suspected that I had autism because it says on the RADS RITVO, if you score in this range, take this into your doctor to be assessed. I worked for about a year and then wound up in a space for about four to six weeks where I just couldn't do anything. And around this time I was I was I would consider myself an autistic burnout and I couldn't really leave the house and I was having, you know, up to 10 panic attacks a day like it was just my nervous system was just everything was shutting down. And that was right when the lockdown happened. And so it was like to save my life it felt like in a lot of ways because now all of a sudden there's no social interactions I don't have to hug anyone. I don't have to set any boundaries for myself I don't have to be anything for anyone and it was it's when I came out of I realized I had been an autistic burnout. Fundamentally, it took me. It took me another couple years to actually get diagnosed with the autism, but reading that article that enabled me to self diagnose and really started asking the questions was kind of like this kaleidoscope, twisting into focus where everything that never made sense about my life. It really started making sense. I've been suspecting that I was autistic for a long time. Or, you know, 10 or 10 or at least 10 years maybe, and I'm 60 a little over 60 so. There, it's what it's, I think the thing that's been the most important to me is really sort of finding a community of people. Right about a year after that I found a bb going into the Fox market a little market and. Eastman pillar and they were donating tips to all brings along for that month and when I saw that. This is the place for me. This is like this is where I get I'll start being able to exist in the outside world, because that still wasn't part of my experience and. ABB to me has been a way to have community have social connections to understand my body to reframe mental illness and to, you know, autism to, to. Take medicines that are simple medicines that have been able to make my mobility and my. Ability to be in the world different and so I would say like this, my therapy gave me a space to be myself in a way to to myself and ABB has given me a way to be myself and in community with others that hadn't had him so long. What does being autistic mean to you. Honestly, the first thing that comes to mind is trauma. You know, I don't want to be a downer or anything but being an undiagnosed autistic for most of my life I've had a really hard time with social trauma I've had death threats as a result of me not understanding either social cues or what people are saying and. I have CPTSD that my psychiatrist has identified is as a side effect of having autism, other than that, it basically means that my brain has differences in the way that it works and processes information there are some things that it does really well. There are some things that it really sucks at. But fundamentally, I don't look at my autism is anything that needs to be cured I look at it as a part of the natural standard deviation in terms of what is normal. If I had to guess I would say, you know, from an evolutionary standpoint that most of us are probably really, really wired to be incredibly sensitive to social context and social cues and what the what's the rest of society. wants and needs and what other people are doing. And in a large way that's great it helps us to all get along. But if a whole society is off base. Then are going in a direction that isn't so good. Evolutionarily, there probably needs to be at least a healthy minority of people that are able to like, not be so wired cute into what the social world thinks. I think that's healthy for society to have that minority. And I think it's really hard to be in that minority because that difference is not at all appreciated in the mainstream. Can you talk a little bit about the strengths and the challenges that you feel like go along with being autistic. My biggest, you know, brain strength is insight and knowledge, you know, a world around me, plus the environment. If it's toxic, or welcoming. And, you know, for me that's my, that's my biggest strength is, you know, my brain is thinking fast on its feet. And how the way it sees the world's perspective view. My brain's weakness is, is trying to comprehend or doing, doing too much overriding comprehending the situation. I'm trying to analyze it in this own way, but there's too much, you know, background brain status noises that it makes it hard for my brain to comprehend on what to focus on. I'm really, really good at things like pattern recognition. I rely upon pattern recognition for survival. I'm also really good at working with things that are really complex. I have an ability to see both the forest and the trees at the same time. And what it means to me to be autistic is like to sort of be the moral, a moral conscience or sort of an outlier to the rest of society saying, an outlier or an outlaw to the society I'm living in being saying I just don't see it the same way you do and it doesn't make sense to me and I think you're going in the wrong direction in this way and that way and this other way and that you could be doing it. And so I'm often on the, on the outs of it. And yet, you know, 20 years later, I'm often not wrong. So it's a long time to wait. And by the time everybody else is caught up, I'm usually on to finding something else that I don't like. And there's people understood things that I just didn't seem to understand and I didn't know where they were getting the information, you know, like, had Google existed as, as if I was a child like I would have been googling that all day long like why is it so easy for people to do this stuff like, all throughout school, I was a solid like, I loved the middle of the school year, like you're in your groove, you got your notebook that's already half filled in you got the rest to go. There's no beginning of your icebreakers there's no end of the year zigzags you're just who on your path. And I've always said that about myself and now I can kind of like look back and be like well, yeah, the course, of course that makes sense like it was comfortable I knew the rules I knew the expectations. That's when I tended to be more engaged in class because I just I understood the expectations but beginning and end of anything is just so challenging for me. I can feel like I'm nervous to talk and that's like part of it is like the excitement it can cue on safety in my system. And, and so I just want to like name that for myself. All of the ways I had felt different or been made to feel different around like picking us being overly sensitive controlling highly anxious. Even though I had those were all kind of separate points or relationships in my life, all of a sudden, it came into this clear view under this one umbrella of, of this, you know, neurobiology or this difference. I think of it differently now but and so in that exploration of that. So I had always was, you know, very sensitive I was always shy. It was really hard for me but mainly what I was discovering was I had an inside world and I had an outside world. So I would go into the world and I would try the best I would study human behavior was very adept of understanding and really sensitive to energetics within how people were leading, which is often very confusing because I could tell if someone was related even though they were acting like everything was fine but in my social environment with my peers it was really difficult because I could sense when someone was was challenged but if I pointed that out or I was direct around it it would often get turned around like something wrong with me or but I've had to work really, really, really hard to actually care about other people and to actually and and and to and and to and to connect with other human beings and to so I the challenges are I often get in the way. There are many times of good things and maybe many times of good things that other people are trying to make happen, just because it doesn't mean. And just because I don't understand why it works for other people. Yeah, it's sometimes hard to know when it's really important to take a stand. And when it's just like I'm being stubborn and I don't like being left out. And I want to do it my way. I've lost it all the time of all of the thought and all of the effort that I have to do in advance to be successful in the future. And I didn't see other people doing that like my husband can get up out of bed 10 minutes before he's going to leave the house and he's just and I'm like, are you kidding me I get up at like 5am even if I'm not leaving the house just to like take care of myself. Right for the day I need to ease into my day I can't just get up and go painful it's like oh I'm always good you know and it's the reality of being autistic is like I can always get I that's just how my brain works it does it works differently than the culture that most of the people in the culture I am in and I believe evolution designed it that way. But I think that I think I would love to see our culture change is the way that we deal with outliers, because I don't think outliers are mistakes I think outliers are necessary for a society that needs to be self reflective, and the best of humanity is kind of self reflective. I think outliers are a good thing not not not not a mistake of nature, even though you know they slow down corporate production. How is your life different since learning that you're autistic. All of a sudden, like, by saying, by sort of saying I'm autistic and learning about the autism community, all of a sudden there's this whole group of people. Oh my god instant sort of social connection that otherwise I would sort of find piecemeal case by case. And, you know, you mean you still have to make friends but at least it feels like it's, it's like the community itself is has the feel of human community, the kind of human community I've been looking for for an awful long time. I'm glad to know, because it gave me more grace with myself. And it also just connected my son and I a little bit more, you know and I told him, he was like, well of course mom that makes so much sense you know me so much more than anybody else. And I'm like, I guess it does make sense again. I'm the tree you're my little apple yeah. I'm not being diagnosed as a child like I had to go back through my life and in the grief of that and realizing like, oh I always cut paper like I would just cut paper all the time I realize oh this where's my stems. You know I watched a ton of TV, it's where I got all my social understanding. I would often like really like physically my face would change like if I was hanging out with somebody I would start speaking like them I would start. I would take up their interest. And, but then I would go home and just be very able to be in my own world listening to songs over and over again. And so what I was taking the quizzes it felt like someone was entering into my world. Like, how do they know that about me how do they know that I have a fascination with running water how do they know that like, it was like someone was peering into my soul and I felt known for the first time in my life, just from just from reading the questions. At the time I was in tremendous amount of internal struggle and so I think what happened for me was I entered into that world. And so I became very quiet and very curious about myself for the first time because I realized there was this quality of dissociation. When I was going out into the world, and I was really doing a lot of work to try and undo that and to, but I didn't have any awareness of my body. I didn't have any like ability to like self reflect in the sense of like, I could self reflected like how did my behavior affect the other person, but I had no ability to reflect. How am I actually being affected by what's happening. And there's a really big difference in that for me. And so I think that was the first time all of a sudden sounds were coming in. And so I wasn't just getting unconscious pain from it I was actually getting very conscious pain. My husband one time said, Are you getting is this getting worse or is this getting better and I realized for me internally it was getting better but how I was living or how was acting that out was getting worse for the world. So much of what they're saying is wrong with my kid are ways that I am our ways of my being. And so I bring that up I'm like you know I think he actually does that because I do that. You know, like, that would make sense to me. I'm a state home mom he's with me all the time. Yeah, of course he's going to do that. And they're like, Well, that isn't a thing that, you know, neurotypical people do. I'm like, Oh, that's fascinating isn't it. And, you know, then I met Mel and things just went from there and, you know, me receiving my diagnosis was such a difference from when my child received his we were and I mean it when I say we were literally handed a box of tissues. When they said he's autistic well he's on the autism spectrum. Here's your box of tissues. I'm like my husband you're both like, Great thanks for the answer like next step you know what do we do. Right. And when Mel told me she was just like congratulations autistic. What do you wish parents of autistic children or the broader community knew. Oh, what do I wish parents and an order autistic community broader knew about me. One, I wish they knew that we're all in this together as individuals that you know that sees things differently here things differently. And moves things differently. To me, the broader public that are you know parents and autistic individuals that knew about me that I'm very very compassionate supportive. And I do take the leadership role when necessary to support those individuals that may not have a voice. You know how to speak, you know, with their voices, or they may not understand what we're talking about because that's not that's not the way our brains in reality work you know everybody's brain is things differently and acts differently. And for the autistic community. And it's about you know understanding other people's brains works and to connect with that brain. And they meet and having a meaningful conversation and discussion within that brain pattern of an autistic individual, whether it's parents or children. And just having that conversation with them makes them feel like they're welcome and, and a bigger part of the, not only a bigger part of the picture but bigger part of the family together. And that I would like to see more of is that value and welcoming sense of while one is together. We all help each other. Let's move forward together. So we can, you know, be the best we can be to educate others about, you know, our special strength. What do you wish parents of autistic children, or the broader community would know about what it's like to be autistic. I think I touched on that also I just think it's like change the perspective on outliers were necessary where let's embrace the let's let's as a humankind let's embrace the outlier perspective for what we can learn from it. And for what we can learn from seeing life through the eyes of the outlier through the eyes of outliers that we would never see the cut that we that we would never see because of the natural bias of the majority. And, and, and the natural and the perspective of the majority and how the majority is going to is wired, literally wired to see things differently. And so, as a culture, if we sort of embrace the idea of the of the value the social value that people bring is broader than economics and we need to bear the burden. So, or the bed we need to gain the benefit and bear the burden of diverse culture, then we define a way to support everybody emotionally socially economically and make space for all of us. And, and, and, and, and truly, and be truly committed to the guests that each person is trying to each person's spirit is trying to have them offer the world they live in. And one, I wish people just understood that our brains were different period. It's not something that we can control, but to don't pathologize the differences, and don't pathologize and or ostracize us, because we are non conforming. The rest of a tragedy. You know, because it isn't like, yeah, I made it to 46 years old, all the while questioning, but you know, I experienced very classic you know when I told certain family members, are you sure you know you have you have like college degrees I'm like yeah. The thing that I would love like people to understand is that. What I'm speaking about today is like my own experience, and that I think it's really important to understand that everybody gets to have their own experience and their own access needs and even though there may be like traits or characteristics that overlap. That is not actually the experience of being autistic being autistic for me means being unto myself being individual and allowing myself and whatever my needs are whatever my sensitivities or whatever my extraordinary abilities. Be, and it gets to be a collection of my human experience and. I think the other thing in terms of like what I would want, like the broader community to understand or what I would want my family to understand or parents of, of. Of autistic people, family members of autistic people is to that. That it's so important to allow difference to be a wonder and allow yourself to be different within even your relationship to someone who knows themselves to be different. And to be curious and to ask questions and instead of presume, because I could be having a really sensitive. Sensibility right now to a noise that's happening. And if there's an assumption of what that noise is. That was not going to help me, but if there's a curiosity around. What does that feel like in your body or could we identify what the sound is. It's such a radically different experience for me. And so I think. For me, like. Even like my, you know, my face is all red. I'm really flush. I'm super nervous. I want to be here. Part of that is my excitement. But part of it is having the attention on me. Of like, how will I be perceived, you know, am I safe, but also just like, that's not an easy way for me to exist if the tension is directly on me. Like I've got to find another way or I get to observe the experience. And so I think it's just really important that folks know and understand that there's no one way but more curiosity you can have less presumption around what people is actually experiencing. It could be an opportunity for openness. Sierra said in the chat. What a great sentiment to end on. Yeah, for all of the people myself included who have felt so alone and so other. It's amazing to have heard from these panelists and to see so much resonating with so many people in the chat as we listened like imagine if we all knew each other, right. Millions of people around the world. So much again to Amy and Sarah and Kelly and Matthew and Seth. Some of the other things that that stood out to me in that video were like the themes that themes of things that that were commonalities but also, you know, autistic people are not a homogenous group by any means. But hearing, you know what it's like to have a lens to understand your own experience and the transfer the transformative power of that. And I'd love to love to hear from from others who of what what what that's what it's been like to either be exploring how your, how your brain works or discover how your brain works and and what impact if any that has had on on your self narrative. I was actually diagnosed with both autism and ADHD this past fall, and I'm still kind of trying to move past the idea of like, there's, I don't know how to put this but because I was diagnosed late and because I, you know, generally got the thing with AFAB kids getting passed over, because they just fit this traditional quiet and feminine studious mold. I think it's like I was sold this message of neurotypical success like oh you're going to move out at this age and you're going to have some kind of high paying job in an office somewhere and you're going to be able to drive a car freely. And I'm still kind of unpacking these ways where like, hey, this isn't achievable for everyone it's not going to be achievable in some ways for me. And so I still have these negative internalized messages that are really largely the fault of an holistic targeted system, like if you can achieve these milestones and you're less actualized as a human being. I think reaching autistic communities like these have finding disability justice organizers and writers all over the place. It's really helped with that. One thing I also noticed is that I was kind I was pleasantly surprised by how much of the autistic experience is sort of mix and match, so to speak. Like I have pretty good social skills by autistic standards but with sensory stuff I need more help. And it's really refreshing compared to like either you're a low support white guy who works in tech, or you're a literal child, and who needs a lot more day to help. And I think it's so cool to see just so much human breadth. And I think in general this idea of human breadth and variations has been a great help to me. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. You know what what stands out to me about your comments is that you know systemic ableism runs deep. And when you get the message that there's one right way to be a person that's going to take its toll on someone's nervous system and on their self concept and of of everything that comes from there. And that these are the kinds of themes that that that we work on unpacking here at Brink Club. Absolutely. I just I just want to say, you know, I think I just wanted to bring it back to one of the points that I think Amy made in the video about how how amazing it is to kind of go from that kind of internal reflection and knowing yourself and showing up as your true self to yourself. And then, you know, to like present that to other people. And I think, you know, one of my favorite parts of being in this community and working with this community is like, how excited it is to see autistic joy when people, you know, when when you're masking you're masking the, you know, dysregulation behaviors, but you're also masking some of that like excitement and joy and being able to see people show up with kind of the whole representation of what autistic joy looks like is like the best thing and something I think we just don't, we don't necessarily get always if we're not, if we haven't, if we haven't learned that. Yeah, because it's been it, it's been criticized actively shamed like all of it, all of that. And for those of you who were here. I think it was just last week, right, if you did book chat last week on, on, on Devin Price's new book on learning shame and we're going to do part two of that book chat in May. But this is, it's all part of this. It's like to share about what your, your process of learning about your brain has meant for you in your life, either in the chat or with mouth words. I'll speak up. Lower my hand speak up. Yeah, I discovered in the last couple of years my ADHD I always suspected autism was once I got into sort of this worlds and started listening a lot and I had a friend who went through burnout. And so I'm middle aged and I still don't have a diagnosis and I have like today I'm feeling a lot of reach. I'm just sharing that but like, because I can't go to like I have these issues that are all the things and I don't have a doctor. I brought they think I brought up a couple weeks ago but I mean I think that there is this content like to even. I don't think most people understand even talking like internally, there's been a huge shift. I feel so much better. Everything makes sense. While going out into the neurotypical world at this point in the medical system and others. I find it's still very frustrating. I, you know, I don't want to educate everyone I go into psycho education mode in every single. And I find constantly like you're not that's a misdiagnosis you're not this you're not that, but I can't say that all the time. And so I find myself in rage by our medical system on a near daily basis so just protecting my nervous system from not flipping out is kind of a daily effort. And like the suicidality for example is something that I've been looking at recently and the numbers are just out of sight. And when you look at people who actually have autistic traits as opposed to diagnoses I think it would be way way higher. So again we're just not addressing those issues as a society. And for a day like for a month like this. I don't hear that conversation. I don't hear the two e conversation at all. Yeah, thank you Heather right um you know the healthcare system is broken it doesn't work for a lot of people and for some people it can make the difference between life and death. And it's terrifying but that's not part of what gets talked about in April. One of the ways that I got into figuring this out was when the pandemic hit I hit Twitter really hard and I have a really great Twitter feed or I used to like back when it was a decent social media site if you curated your feed really well. And there was this autistic woman on there who just kept tweeting about wouldn't it be she's like she said something like if all the INFJs and all the HSPs got together in a room wouldn't they be stunned to figure out they're all autistic and I was like. And that's how my journey started and one of the things that this woman tweets about I think it's L and Kona or something more and and Kona is her absolute rage at people like Simon Baron Cohen who did all this research based on the extremely, you know, stereotypical young boy kind of model of autism and like literally women like her and women like me or non binary people like me and folks like Heather just get totally completely overlooked for their whole lives because of these guys research decisions. So you're not alone for what it's worth her rage is incandescent and very validating. And I think like naming naming that like naming that rage and knowing you're not alone in it. Because society also tells you that you're not supposed you're not supposed to feel certain ways, which is of course ridiculous. Thanks Jenny weaver. This is, this is always so managed to miss everything last month so I'm like sucking it up this month to make up for it. Yeah, I'm, I'm one of those you know, there are generation, it didn't exist, especially if you look like a little girl and you were just a weird tomboy out on the playground. You know, like I've, I've, the weirdness of my brain is something that everyone made very apparent to me at a very young age. But like, with all the things like I was just talking about this with my partners, currently going through a craniosacral training. I know, and I am actually not diagnosed yet technically, nothing I care, but I did go to a doctor for the first time in 35 years. Last month, because I also have hypermobile EDS like so many of us. And I had to step away from Western medicine by the time I was 14 because I knew they would kill me. I knew that they would kill me with my EDS like it showed up so young and so systemically and they didn't know what to do with me and they kept throwing things at it. And I'm allergic to all the medicines. So it was just like 35 years of me trying to manage this on my own with herbs and whatever else literally whatever else I can figure out and getting getting the EDS diagnosis now on top of the autism thing. It's like, okay, so it's all the connective tissue is different. We're fundamentally different humans. I wonder it has been so challenging. So like the rage is valid like it really the system is not designed for us and will, it would have killed me. I think a lot of us barely survive it. And, and that you know that like right individualism part of that is, you know, trauma. I just have to take care of it myself because. Yeah, yeah, I appreciate that that now it's. There's a community there these discussions these conversations, but it has been a long life. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing all of that and you are so not alone like that's the, that's the story that's what people like in our medical practice like that's the story that people tell it's like I have all the things. Things for decades, and the system has hurt me. And, and I've had to like try to figure out on my own because the system is either dismissing and validating actively harming that's. The way that you at the end there weaver when you said that, you know, with different connective tissue like it is not known by the majority of healthcare providers that autistic people have different physiology that is not part of medical education right and we have this healthcare system that makes this like this bogus distinction between physical health and mental health, despite the nervous system going to the whole body. It would be funny if it weren't so horrible. I'm glad you're here. I'm for one more sharing if anybody would like to. Yeah, so Alex has asked for their resources to learn about how the biology or physiology is different for autistic folks. Yeah, I'm going to re put in the chat a link that I posted a little bit ago. We try to make our links like rememberable. And then I spelled them wrong. Okay. All the things. So that is a project that all brains belong in collaboration with 100 of our autistic and ADHD community members. We've got this very topic about the constellation of intertwined medical conditions that are so common for autistic and ADHD people. And so there's resources there's videos there's text there's graphics there's all kinds of stuff there there's also like a 16 page management guide. So I hope that's helpful. And we'll have a little bit a little bit of that will come up at our webinar on the 16th. So with that, I really, really appreciate all of you being here, and thank you all for sharing thank you again to our panelists. And thank you all for being part of our community, and we'll look forward. This is like a good a good segue to next week's brain club will be revisiting the health care challenges that autistic people face. We'll be hearing from our community panelists. And I'm sure the themes of all the things will will build right on this very conversation. So thank you all so much we'll see you next Tuesday. Bye.