This guest post is by Jessica Vainner, a woman who was diagnosed with autism at age 29 and attends Michigan State University. Jessica is applying for the Spring 2023 Making a Difference Autism Scholarship via the nonprofit KFM Making a Difference started by me, Kerry Magro. I was nonverbal till 2.5 and diagnosed with autism at 4, and you can read more about my organization here. Autistics on Autism: Stories You Need to Hear About What Helped Them While Growing Up and Pursuing Their Dreams, our nonprofit’s new book, was released on March 29, 2022, on Amazon here for our community to enjoy featuring the stories of 100 autistic adults.
This fall I will enter the third and final year of my Masters of Social Work Program through Michigan State University. My end goal is to become a licensed clinical therapist working with children (neurodivergent children in particular) helping them gain the tools to empower themselves. This degree comes with a sharp career shift however I have found success in my studies thus far and have only become more eager to complete this endeavor and use the knowledge I’ve gained to help as many individuals as I can.
I received my Autism diagnosis earlier this year at the age 29. I was not even considered for a diagnosis until I began working with children on the autism spectrum through my degree and noticed so many similarities between them and myself as a child, which prompted me to ask for further help. As a woman who was born in the 1990s it isn’t hard to imagine how this was missed by various doctors and adults in my life. I have always been fairly good at projecting an outward appearance of competence and sociability even when I felt completely lost inside. I would say the biggest obstacle holding back people with autism today is the narrow view society holds of us.
Most people gain their view of autism from the media and organizations that portray autism as a strictly male and mainly childhood condition which prevented me from making the connection sooner. When you combine this limited worldview and the stigma around autism as a diagnosis I instead received other labels for my behavior including being called “eccentric”, “sensitive”, and “dramatic”. I was also diagnosed with anxiety and depression in my teen years, looking back at those years I can see that I was trying to fit into a world that was not built for me and that came with many setbacks and trials. Growing up with this idea that I was the problem and that I struggled to live in a way that came easy to my peers has left a mark that I will be working through for the foreseeable future. I hope that I can use this new knowledge about myself and the autism community to begin a discussion on the inequalities in the way we view autism. Already I have been discouraged from telling people that I am autistic because it will place a stigma upon me that could affect my future, which is a sad reality of the world we live in.
Much of the information and research we currently have on autism is based on one specific demographic of people and does not take into account the fact that autism affects all gender expressions, races, and cultures. Autism also comes in many different forms and with different support needs which can be difficult to meet when it comes to education, employment and socialization. I am quite fortunate in that I have been able to find a therapist who understands my needs and is helping me work through my many questions, and I hope to become that person for many others in the future. Thank you for this opportunity to apply for this scholarship!
Follow my journey on Facebook, my Facebook Fan Page, Tiktok, Youtube & Instagram.
My name is Kerry Magro, a professional speaker and best-selling author who is also on the autism spectrum. I started the nonprofit KFM Making a Difference in 2011 to help students with autism receive scholarship aid to pursue post-secondary education. Help support me so I can continue to help students with autism go to college by making a tax-deductible donation to our nonprofit here.
Autistics on Autism: Stories You Need to Hear About What Helped Them While Growing Up and Pursuing Their Dreams was released on March 29, 2022 on Amazon here for our community to enjoy featuring the stories of 100 autistic adults. 100% of the proceeds from this book will go back to our nonprofit to support initiatives like our autism scholarship program. In addition, this autistic adult’s essay you just read will be featured in a future volume of this book as we plan on making this into a series of books on autistic adults.
