This guest post is by Addie Simon, a young woman who attends Campbell University. She is an advocate for the Spring 2025 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 the Next Chapter: Stories You Need to Hear About What Helped Them While Growing Up and Pursuing Their Dreams was released on Amazon on 3/25/25 and looks at the lives over 75 Autistic adults. 100% of the proceeds from this book will go back to supporting our nonprofits many initiatives, like this scholarship program. Check out the book here.
I was diagnosed with autism in the second grade. My life has always been super hard for me but I just keep on pushing and working my butt off to get me where I am now and let me just say where I am now is something amazing that no one would have ever believed. When I was in elementary school and middle school I was absolutely horrible in school and every year we would pray for me to just pass the grade. No one ever believed in me and I let that get to me I was not good and school and everyone told me that I would never be and so I didn’t even try to be better.
It also didn’t help that I didn’t just have autism I also had ADHD and tics and a lot of other disabilities under the neurodivergent umbrella and different learning disorders that I could never get diagnosed for because everyone would always say it’s just a phase or blame it on autism or ADHD when really it was much more and I never got the help I needed.
In when I was a kid in school I was struggling so much I was constantly in tutoring and special classes to help me catch up. Back then I was struggling so much that my teachers completely skipped over grammar and punctuation and only a little bit of spelling which is equivalent to a 3rd grader to just make sure I was actually able to read and do math hints why my essay is like this.
I was always treated like an outsider even by my teachers always separated from the class or treated differently and things got even worse when one person found out that I have autism.
I am just so grateful for my parents they were my advocate when I was not able to. They still don’t completely understand me and my ways and why I am like the way that I am but in all fairness I don’t even fully understand myself even with researching for hours and hours and years trying to fully understand myself and how I can make things better.
Over the years of trying to understand myself and my autism and ADHD I have found many ways to help myself improve in many ways and in the process become a huge advocate for autism and ADHD and it is now my passion.
I bet that there is no one you know that knows more about autism than me that is this big of an advocate about it because of that I am doing so many amazing things to help those with autism.
I did not start out like this though it wasn’t until high school that I really became this big advocate. When I started high school a miracle happened I started making all A’s I also had teachers that believed in me and I started to become something amazing.
From the start of high school to right now here is just some of the things I have been able to achieve that I am super proud about myself about and thank God for helping me achieve these things. I have been in several plays and musical, been nominated for Governors School, was one in 100 high school students in North Carolina chosen to go to the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA), graduate high school with a 4.3 GPA and in college right now a 3.9 GPA hopefully a 4.0 when the grades get posed for this semester, apart of 3 honor society’s in high school one of which I was president of and one of which there was only me and one other person in my high school graduation class that was able to get into, getting into the Greek honor society at Campbell Phi Eta Sigma and an invitation to another honor society Omicron Delta Kappa in which I would have gotten into if I didn’t get the dates confused for submission, graduating high school with the most graduation gear being apart of almost every club in my high school, breaking 2/4 school wide records by being the first one to get an acceptance letter that early on and the first one to get a scholarship from a college that early on and both of these things were achieved on the same day on the first Friday first week of school my senior year and not only that but it was by 2 colleges hints the 2/4, being accepted into 2 different colleges honor program dorm in which I think I was the only one in my high school that I can remember that got accepted into more than one, breaking 2 more school wide records being awarded the highest amount of scholarships by different colleges and the highest scholarship from one college even more than the athletes, next semester begin preaching at Ransom, helping Campbell and so many other places and research and businesses and products be made and created and grown to help improve autism, writing and in the process of publishing my own book about autism.
There is so many more amazing things that have happened I could go on and on but these are just some of the things I’m the proudest of.
Don’t let anyone tell you who you are or what you can and cannot do for you will do amazing things and don’t ever stop pushing and trying to do better and work harder and eventually you will see some amazing things just don’t ever stop believing in yourself.
That is one thing I have learned about autism not just for me but for everyone with autism is that autism can do some amazing and incredible things it’s just you got to take your time and actually spend time with them to see otherwise you may never see the amazing things autism can do.
Kerry Magro, a professional speaker and best-selling author who is also on the autism spectrum started the nonprofit KFM Making a Difference in 2011 to help students with autism receive scholarship aid to pursue a post-secondary education. Help us continue to help students with autism go to college by making a tax-deductible donation to our nonprofit here.
Also, consider having Kerry, one of the only professionally accredited speakers on the spectrum in the country, speak at your next event by sending him an inquiry here. If you have a referral for someone who many want him to speak please reach out as well! Kerry speaks with schools, businesses, government agencies, colleges, nonprofit organizations, parent groups and other special events on topics ranging from employment, how to succeed in college with a learning disability, internal communication, living with autism, bullying prevention, social media best practices, innovation, presentation best practices and much more!
