The Life of Ryan Russell

This guest post is by Ryan Russell, a young man with autism who plans to attend Syndicate Productions and Film School. Ryan 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.

Hi, my name is Ryan Russell and I grew up with autism. I had a lot of struggles and challenges growing up. I used to have struggles with my family members and I used to have a lot of bad days. For example, almost every day I had arguments with my family members and I used to be on a lot more medicine. I also had a lot more therapy. But, we always had great road trips and holidays. We still do, and that helped me so much. I have great birthdays with my twin brother and mother. We go to so many great places for my birthday. We go to places for my birthday like Burger King, trampoline parks, bouncy house places, and even just having them at my house. We also go to a lot of great places over the summers. We go to pools, parks, camp grounds, lakes, water parks, the movies, zoos, road trips, aquariums, the shore, the beach, autism events, and we even went to Sesame Place when I was younger. When autumn hit, my family and I always go to beautiful places like farms, pumpkin picking, and more. And I always loved dressing up and trick or treating on Halloween. It was experiences like these that were so helpful to me. Even if I had a hard time at places, we always tried our best and was not upset if we could not stay long. Now, I can go anywhere without a problem and that makes me so happy.

When I was in elementary school, I had a lot of struggles. I used to hit and scream at my teachers, I used to really misbehave, I used to laugh in class too much, and I used to not listen to my teachers instructions. I was having a very hard time making friends as well. There were kids that I liked and I was never able to talk to them. I ended up feeling very lonely and bad about my life. There were times when I said very bad and sad things I didn’t mean when I was angry. At one point I couldn’t even talk very well, just scream in anger. I for most of the part never understood how the world worked. All this lasted for most of my childhood. It was when I was in 5th grade when things got a lot better for me. I moved to a new good private school for children with more challenges. Within a few months of being there, I already started a lot of friendships and I was able to behave better. I definitely still had struggles, but I was getting better at my new school. When I was in like 7th grade, I found my first passion. My first passion was music. At the time, I wanted to learn every single instrument and be a good musician. When I graduated middle school in 2019, I was able to go to the high school that was the same school but different campus. When I was doing so well there and when I was a junior, I moved to my public school. For a few months being there I was doing good until I ended up suffering there because of missing being at my previous school. I wasn’t appropriate for my district school anymore, but I was able to move to a whole new other private school that I’m doing good in to this day. It was a very bad experience for me but it all worked out I the end and I was better off for being strong through it.