This guest post is by Lucy Neerings, a young woman who is diagnosed with autism and plans to attend CSI and majoring in fine arts. Lucy is applying for the Spring 2024 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.
| Being able to learn from a challenge in life and then having future success can be easier said than done. A challenge I went through was learning to understand my brain and why it was different. You see, it took moments for other people, so why was it taking me so long to understand? Being able to think doesn’t mean it’s the same for everyone and in the eyes of the world, if we aren’t the same, then we are outcasts. I found myself stuck where no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t correct how I thought and eventually learned to appreciate my differences.
I have found reading to be very hard for me. I can read, it just takes more time because I have to reread a paragraph at least three times for that information to process in my head. When I was younger, I could read at a pace that wasn’t putting me too far behind, yet I knew something was wrong. I asked my mom for help, so we called the teacher. My mom was trying to learn if I needed a tutor or some support in my reading. After talking for a bit, the teacher finally chimed in and asked,” You do know Lucy is in the advanced reading class, correct?” My mom did not know this. She continued,” She may be the slower of her class, but she is a statable reader.” Is this the end of the story? We figured everything out and there’s no mystery to solve. Well, at least that’s what my mom thought, but I still knew something was wrong. After some more time passed, I was getting good grades and working as well as I could with the few coping skills I grew, without knowledge of what I was doing. I bought noise-canceling headphones so they could help me focus, but I didn’t understand how everyone else was fine with all these loud noises surrounding us. I also noticed that my actions and thoughts never seemed to be in line with other people, and even if I mimicked other actions throughout a conversation, I still felt out of place in most conversations. I started to have terrible migraines and needed a long rest every day after school, which caused me to fall behind and yet I thought I was just being lazy. I would get behind in paperwork and then struggle to catch up. I also began to get more frustrated with noises and actions like touch. As well as beginning to lose my memory and forgetting information, including my schoolwork, new people I met, events coming up, what I did in a day, and more. After two years, I just finished Junior year, I was able to convince my mom to take me to a doctor to do a test on why I was having a hard time. With the doctor, we had a conversation to figure out if there was a problem, then I went through multiple tests and lots of paperwork, and after a very long period, we finally got the answers. We found that I have Anxiety, Depression, ADHD, and Autism. Finding this out helped answer some questions and was a start to trying to find strategies that would help make my life a little more normal. We learned that my anxiety, ADHD, and Autism, are all affecting my focus, which made the task more difficult. This causes difficulty in memory which then causes tiredness, time blindness, and overload. We also realized that Autism causes difficulty with noises and touch. Now that I have learned what I have, I have been able to get a 504 in school. That is a plan that gives me accommodations that will help me throughout my schooling, as well as help me when I go to college and get jobs. Being able to learn in a more beneficial way with these accommodations has assisted me, but life isn’t completely fixed yet. I am still learning about this new chapter in my life. I’ve learned to be more assertive in asking for help, and I help people understand what I need so they can also understand. I’ve learned that a Disability isn’t a disadvantage, it’s just a new opportunity for growth. I’ve taken this as a lesson and am learning that I am ready for the challenge that comes with the way I understand things. I won’t give up, and as long as I keep trying to learn and understand, I know I’ll be ok. 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. |
