I am a criminal. Well technically I suppose as my most recent justice-related issue happened in 1999 and I have been a very ethical little Yennski for some years. My troubled history is not something I am proud of – in fact it is a cause for great shame – but it is part of made me who I am now.

I don’t talk about my criminal past a lot. My most detailed discussion of it is in my autobiography which I wrote 6 years after my most recent conviction at the time. I decided in 1999, while still a prisoner, that a new millennium should equal a new life for Yennski. And it did, absolutely. I changed my character, my focus in life and my behaviour. I went from someone with no sense of responsibility or consequences to who I am now – although it took a while.

People ask me why I committed crimes. Was I a ‘bad’ person? Did I want to intentionally hurt others? Why would a nerdy university student and socialist want to get involved in such dark and unethical things? There were a few reasons. The first was a partner I had who was a very scary criminal. I was a naïve AuDHD twenty-year-old and didn’t realise how dangerous this person was and so I went along with his plans. By the time I realised how dangerous he was I was in too deep. I was afraid to leave him but I didn’t want to do crimes with him either. We ended up committing two robberies and I went to jail and never heard from him again. I was at once wracked with guilt for the crimes but also relieved that I didn’t have to see this man any more.

I was initially in jail for six months. When I was released, I was traumatised and self-medicated with every illicit substance I could get my sad little hands on. Extreme drug use for some time and homelessness resulted in me becoming psychotic and gaining a schizophrenia diagnoses – which I have to this day after thirty years and which still gives me trouble even now. I ended up in hospital in 1996 and had a delusion that jail was a cure for my significant depression  – I remembered all the older women in prison mothering me because I was so young and vulnerable. Because of this delusion when I was in hospital I committed crimes in order to go back to jail which I thought would fix my depression. I was successful – not at curing my depression sadly, but in going back to jail! I spent the next three years being unwell and institutionalised. I was released in 2000 for the last time.  I became a different person – more similar to the current Yenn.

In order to survive as an AuDHD prisoner I masked constantly. I figured out as soon as I got there that prison was like a malevolent high school where the bullies can kill you. I knew about being bullied and didn’t really want to go through it again, so I worked out how to behave as a criminal – the ‘rules’ of the criminal world, what upset criminals and what sorts of behaviours and attitudes where expected and thus I successfully avoided being victimised. It worked but it came at the expense of my sense of identity – I didn’t know who I was because I masked almost constantly for five years.

I survived. Actually, I thrived. People used to say I was a troubled soul. The messaging changed as I changed. When I enrolled I university in 2001 and got prizes and high distinctions people said I had ‘landed on your feet’. These days people say I am an anomaly, an overachiever. Some people even find my achievements intimidating! I am a lot happier than I was when I was younger and making bad decisions and being in danger. The most frightening thing that happens to me these days is going to the dentist!

My issues these days around my past and more related to shame and remorse and guilt about what I did in the 1990s. The fact that I have a criminal history can add an element of stress to applying for jobs and getting a police check! (And by now my police check comes back with nothing as my convictions are considered spent. I have never been denied a clearance or card due to my history, but I have had to answer a lot of questions about my past!! I don’t begrudge these checks as you wouldn’t want a paedophile working in school or a terrorist working in the police force, but these checks do add a lot of stress to my working life as I always worry that my application will be denied).

Autistic people often get caught up in the justice system for different reasons to their neurotypical peers. I know I did. I remember magistrates despairing as to what to do with me. They would say that I didn’t belong in prison but there was nowhere else to send me. This was between 25-30 years ago and sadly is still in issue for people now or, so I am told.

Criminal behaviour is both an individual and a social problem. There are postcodes and disadvantaged groups which are over-represented in criminal justice statistics. There were nto a lto fo middle class white peopel in jail when I was there! This demonstrates a social element to crime but that is not the only determinant. I had a fellow prisoner who was a twin. Their parents were both criminals and were murdered when the girls were young. One twin became a career criminal and the other was studying at university. This illustrates that there is an individual responsibility for crime as well. Conservative people tend to focus on the individual responsibility and more liberal-minded people tend to focus on the social determinants of crime. I think it is a mix of both causes and each person is an individual.

Whenever I find myself getting stressed or worried about some not very critical thing I remind myself of where I came from. I have made a completely different life for myself. I have worked in professional roles, written lots of books, met influential people, become an influential person myself, owned property – twice – spent some lovely time with cats, met some wonderful people, made art, exhibited art, given talks all over the world, marched in the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and forged some great relationships with family members. All I can say is I am grateful.  I probably don’t really deserve my now very charmed life, if indeed it is appropriate or meaningful to talk about what people might deserve. So many people in my position have not survived or live a really challenging life with poverty, addiction and violence their companions. That was me too and now it isn’t. I am an unlikely person and very happy for that to be the case.

Yenn is free!!

Content warning – referrences to bullying

I think I might be one of the most noticeably autistic people I know! What you see is always what you get. If people think I am weird then big yay to that! Who would want not to be weird? Weird is good. However, this was not my position for many years. I spent at least thirty-five years of my fifty on this planet trying the fit in, to squash down my weird, to be someone that I actually wasn’t. Why would I do these things? I am a beautiful, exuberant, quirky and wonderfully autistic / AuDHD little Yennski. What would make me want to change that, to hate myself so much that I struggled to accept my autism diagnosis for seven years because I thought it meant a diagnosis of being pathologically weird or of being a nerd? Put simply, other people did this to me. Mostly schoolyard –  and later workplace – bullies but not just them. The world seemed to want me to comply with some norm which utterly baffled me. I couldn’t do it, but I learned to approximate doing what others seemed to want.

I masked and camouflaged and tried to be a different person to my true self for many years. I became adept at this. In fact, I became so adept at it that I lost my sense of what my real identity was. It took me many years to figure this out. Thankfully I did so and if I may say it myself – I did it admirably! I feel that I live and breathe the neurodiversity paradigm. I am so proud of my AuDHD brain and being the remarkable person that I have discovered I am that it is almost impossible to think of myself at the age of twenty getting my diagnosis and being so ashamed of it that I couldn’t tell people!

These days I love my quirkiness, my ‘weird’, my geek, my very individual little Yennski self. I reflected yesterday that I would not want to be anyone else. I rejoice in my autistic self. This week I found a new passion. This is probably the geekiest thing I have ever been passionate about as an adult and it is very specific. My new passion is about interactions between the Borg and Star Fleet in the more recent Star Trek franchises, particularly Voyager and The Next Generation. In the past I have felt ashamed of my passions and worried if I showed too much interest in something esoteric that people would criticise me… segue to now when I am publicly delighted to have a new passion and want to tell everyone! Yes, I know some people have passions for actually useful stuff like saving the planet but hey, I am not perfect, and you can’t really help when you fall for a passion as an autistic person!

I have recently had some revelations and epiphanies. One is about my expression of my autistic identity. I have only had one person in my fifty years on this lovely blue planet – one person – who told me that they thought I wasn’t autistic. Had you told me that thirty years ago I would have been horrified but now it fills me with joy. I am happily me, blissfully myself. My autism is part of me – a very important part of me – and if I am proud of who I am then I am. Definitely proud of my autism and ADHD and all the other bits that make me who I am. I have been through hell in my early life and come to a better place and most of that was due to me being myself and trusting who I am.  

An AuDHD friend once told me that she thought I don’t really get burned out because I am not using a lot of my energy in order to mask. I love this. I don’t know if it is entirely true, but I like it nonetheless. From being someone who could be embarrassed by things I did twenty years ago, I have gone to be an adult who seriously does not give a crap. If people think I am odd then go odd I say! And it actually seems to make it more difficult for people to be horrible to me because I really don’t care what they think about me. Of course, I care what friends and close family think, and it doesn’t mean I will be rude or unpleasant, but it does mean if I was back in school and the bullies were giving me a hard time that I would actually ignore them – or maybe play mind games with them, mostly because 1. They are bullies and 2. It would actually be quite funny!

Anyway, take aways and thoughts form today are:

• Weird is good
• It doesn’t matter if people think you are weird
• I love that everyone – with apparently one exception – recognises I am AuDHD
• As Oscar Wilde wisely said ‘Be yourself. Everyone else is taken!’

And the image today is part of my new passion for all things Star Trek and Borg related. Nerd points if you can say who it is!

I have a lovely neurodivergent friend in Melbourne. I was visiting her a while back and we went for a pub meal. The person who served us we almost certainly neurodivergent. My friend said ‘they are family!’ which I really loved. Yes, we can view ourselves as belonging to the neurodivergent / Autistic / ADHD family, The idea of Neurokin relates here and I particularly like this description of a fellow autistic person as belonging to the family.

For many people- and particularly our LGBTQA+ ‘family’ – being part of their biological family is unhelpful and even dangerous. Many Queer folks are estranged from their biological families or adoptive families due to bigotry and hatred. Of course this is clearly 100% not OK and bigotry is never appropriate but this is an issue for many people.  Those in this position often make their family from their close friends, partner and those who like, love and value them, often also part of the Queer community.

I often observe the assumptions around family seeming to be a hang on from a bygone world. A lot of representations of families in TV dramas and movies for example even now exclusively involve a man, a woman and some children – all of whom identify as a cis gender (male or female) and heterosexual. Even now representation of families in media are often feature only cis gender and heterosexual people and if there is a Queer person that is seen as odd – and representation can be tokenistic. They are often a kind of ‘colour and light’ and their representation is stereotypical in nature.  Representation often demonstrates how we feel about something as a society and can demonstrate problematic thinking, exclusion and prejudice. When it perpetuates stereotypes, it is a problem.

My own family is a complex thing. I have a very iffy personal history and spent around 4 years in prison when I was in my early twenties. My own family growing up was the typical heterosexual / cis gender / nuclear family. I came out as queer when I was 16 and this was met with, well I guess surprise would be the word I would choose! While my family were never overtly discriminatory my identity was seen as unusual. I never had to make a family of choice because of bigotry and hate but I did end up with some difficult family relationships given where I ended up as a twenty something.

I would never suggest that it was entirely up to me, but I think it would be fair to say I have been the driver of change in our family relationships. When I was in my thirties, I had a rather patchy relationship with my parents I didn’t want this to be the case. I imagined my parents going to their graves with a bunch of unsaid things which needed to be said. I wanted genuine love and respect and a mutually positive relationship between my parents and me. I started by focussing on my relationship with my mum and then focussed on my relationship with my dad…. Now I call them every night, or most nights and we have what I could only say is an amazing relationship. This is not all down to my care and attention in the past, but I am glad I sought out change because it is just lovley to be so close. My parents are exemplary and lovely, and I have pretty much only good things to say about them. Relationships are not set in stone and can change – for better and worse. I know that if I need them my parents will be there for me- and vice versa!

I also have friends who I consider family. My friend Lizbet – who featured in my recent TEDx talk – and has supported me through all manner of unpleasant things – particularly mental health things. So, I get to have a relationship with my biological family and my friendship family. I am a very honoured and privileged little Yennski. We all need people in our lives who love and support us, I think. We are social beings and having our family – whatever form that may take – can make a big difference. I love that we have the concept of Neurokin. Not only do I spot autistic and ADHD ‘family’ I often find Queer ‘family’ members on my travels too. Yesterday I was on the tram and there was a couple both of whose expression was quite androgynous. I thought ‘ooh family!!’ and gave one of them a compliment on their Morpheus leather jacket. It was a nice thing and I felt a connection just by seeing people that I view as potentially being my Queer family. I am the same when I meet neurodivergent people and especially an AuDHDer. Belonging and identity are really important things.

I am finishing with this video of my TEDx talk last year which is all about inclusion and allyship and which looks at my relationships with my various family members – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSC1P49jOec&t=14s   

I love this quote. It is from one of my favourite writers, the awesome Oscar Wilde. I was thinking about this quote recently because some people have been responding to my posts in a manner which suggests that they think I have a charmed life, and this got me thinking about perspectives on the experience of others.

I actually DO have a charmed life. I own my property, I am ridiculously accomplished, and I have a biological family who love me unconditionally. These are really wonderful things, and I respect that many people don’t have access to these sorts of things and as such they represent a form of privilege.

However – and this is a big however – my life, like many other people’s lives, is quite challenging. Being me is hard. Being anyone is hard. Being a human in this world is full of challenges. For me those challenges include my somewhat dodgy mental health, facing bigotry and ableism as an AuDHD person and hatred and transphobia around my gender. I think the mental health issues are probably the biggest one. Anxiety has been a close companion from when I was a child. For me experiencing an extended period of high anxiety almost always results in psychosis which puts me out of action – sometimes for years and is very scary and unpleasant. When I was a public servant, I had access to sick leave and income protection insurance. Now I don’t so if I get unwell, I will not get any income. This is terrifying – an contributes to problem anxiety which could lead to the outcome I am worried about! Ugh.

One of my NDIS workers said to me on numerous occasions that I have no issues around finding employment because I am white, educated and speak English well. While that is true, I am also in my fifties, have significant disability and mental health things and a criminal history – all of which are things which contribute to making it challenging for me to get a job. So yes, I have some areas of privilege, absolutely – but I also have barriers and challenges.

It is dangerous to make judgements around how someone experiences life and to say that they will or won’t experience something. You can’t assume about someone’s experiences without knowing the full situation. For example I have a mortgage – yay to that but it is also a cause of major stress. I have to come up with a large sum of money every fortnight. if don’t get enough income I will need to sell it. This contributes it my anxiety in a big way and makes life hard. While I accept that I am extremely fortunate to have my own home it does come with challenges. I often feel nostalgia for when I was a student because I had zero responsibilities. I lived in public housing – which had its own challenges – but there were no issues around losing that property. The women upstairs stalking me was admittedly not a lot of fun but there was a lot to be said for not having a big financial commitment that I might not be able to maintain!

I do not regret my life. I mostly really like where things are up to now. I have a wonderful life, but it is definitely not without its challenges! I think we need to ask rather than assume when talking about our assessment of how someone experiences their life. My accomplishments for example have prompted some people to subject me to jealousy and lateral violence but to me they are just my work. I can write a book in four weeks but there are things I can’t do. I can’t drive a car, and I would be a horrible parent, but I don’t go around being jealous of people who can drive cars or those who are parents. We all have our own skills and interests. To me writing books and giving talks and doing consultancy are just part of my work. They really aren’t that exciting!

I was in hospital once and a psychiatric nurse was telling me to do something I didn’t want to do. I said to her ‘What would you know about mental health issues?’ And instantly regretted it. She said that I couldn’t know what she experienced and she was absolutely right. This exchange really affected me. We can’t know what others are going through. If someone looks like they are coping they actually might not be. The front we present to the world may be a mask. We might seem to be doing well when in reality we are not. This is especially true for autistic people. And if we have done a number of exciting and worthwhile things that is great but is does not necessarily reflect on how well we are coping – or not. So please don’t assume I have an easy life. I don’t. I have a life with some good bits and some really difficult bits. I have my own unique set of circumstances like everyone else does. These is never a reason for jealousy or lateral violence.   

I was brought up very religious. We went to the Christadelphians – a sort of offshoot of the Baptists in the nineteenth Century who have some rather specific theological views including that Biblical prophecy is about to be realised, the world will end really soon, and Jesus will return to set up world government in Israel – for some reason. Christadelphians do not vote or join the military. If there is a war which involves conscription then they go to court as conscientious objectors so they don’t need to fight. They also don’t join trade unions and see a lot of things as being ‘wordly’. We were never meant to go to the shops on a Sunday because it was God’s day. We thought evolution wasn’t real. Some of the church members believed that the world was 7000 years old! Religion was a huge part of my life as a child and young teen. It was so nice to be firm in my beliefs and to know we were ‘right’… although even as a child I had my doubts. It seemed rather odd that I was born into the only ‘correct’ church! I asked my mum – the expert in all things theological in my immediate family – how we have managed to luck out and be born into the only correct religion. I actually don’t remember her response but even then, I realised that there were lots of options in the religion and faith space even within the Christians and it was pretty unlikely that the Christadelphians were the only ‘correct’ church!

I left the Christadelphians when I was 15. I joined the International Specialists. My dad joked that they were more Christadelphian than the Christadelphians! They also had a pretty specific set of beliefs and tried to recruit new followers and viewed other socialist groups as being on the wrong path. Someone once told me that if you put three Trotskyists in a room for an hour, they would form six factions! Socialism for me was just another belief system and yes, maybe for me at least, something of a religion.

Religion interests me. Nobody can really know that their beliefs are right, but people are so determined to believe what they do and so convinced it is the only right way that they will harm people who believe differently to them. Add countries and politics and it can get really unpleasant and result in justification for war and genocide. I always think that arguing about religion is a bit like arguing about your favourite colour. I don’t think religion actually tends to cause wars, but I do think it is used as a very strong justification to start them and to oppress people and justify violence. This has been going on for millennia, from the Crusades and before.

When I think about Christianity, I get quite confused. I have read the Bible many times in my youth and my understanding of Jesus is that he was a very accepting person and respected people of all backgrounds. The whole notion of Christianity seems to be based in love, forgiveness and kindness. There is nothing in the Christian scriptures where Jesus says ‘I accept everyone except for Queer folks. Go forth and be horrible to the gays and the transgender people.’ In fact, in the Bible Jesus was pretty frequently championing and defending people who were considered outcasts at the time, and he was pretty unimpressed by hypocrisy and people being judgemental. Christianity is meant to be all about love and being decent to everyone so why are so many (although definitely not all) Christians so judgemental around gender and sexuality? It baffles me. There is nothing in the Bible that says ‘love your neighbour…. unless they are trans or gay and in which case oppress and discriminate against them!’

Another issue I have is when people use the Bible to justify their bigotry. This often results in people on the receiving end feeling they need to defend themselves, but we shouldn’t need to. The Bible was written between 2000-3000 years ago, about the same time as ancient Rome was going on. Have you ever heard someone use Roman or Greek mythology to justify poor behaviour and bigotry? ‘Well Zeus was against that so if you do it you will go straight to Hades….’ Of course not and it sorts of puts it in perspective!

I am not anti-faith. I understand that everyone has their own beliefs and views about these things. Faith can be a source of strength and support during hard times. It can help draw people together – in a good was as well as a negative one – and it can help people through difficult times. My issue is where it is used to justify poor behaviour, be that of individuals, groups or nations. I have my own faith tempered by the knowledge that it is ‘wrong’ – I firmly believe we cannot understand the divine and our attempts to do so are just that – attempts but that is OK. Oh, and my favourite colour is purple and if you disagree you will go to Hell – where everything is green!! See, how silly.  

Autistic foils – including me – often have very intense interests and passions. My current ones are cats and autism and Queer advocacy which are very lovely passions and drive my career. Most of the autistic people I know have a passion or passions which range across a huge number of topics. Fandoms are one thing which lots of autistic people have for different things and tend to feed into passions. I used to have a big fandom for Harry Potter (before JK Rowling demonstrated that she is a scary transphobic bigot which sadly took the shine off my excitement for all things Harry Potter! I felt the need to give away my Harry Potter things – of which there were many!)

For autistic people a passion can be all encompassing, engrossing, exciting and engaging. Spending time on our passions frequently fills us with the wonderful thing that is Autistic joy. Passions are just lovely and can also change the world. I often say could you imagine if Mozart’s parents said, ‘stop obsessing about that piano Wolfgang!’ Or if Einstein’s boss said, “stop going on about space time would you!” Our world would be very different, and I suspect not anywhere near as good, if autistic people were denied our passions.

The perception of a passion when comparing autistic and neurotypical is interesting. I have an autistic friend who loves to knit. Knitting is one of her passions. She loves it and is extremely good at it – and I am very lucky to have a blue and purple scarf that she made me. However, if people think my friend is neurotypical, they tend to call her knitting a hobby. When they discover she is autistic they are more likely than not to call her knitting an ‘obsession.’ Why do our passions get called ‘obsessions?’ Well I suspect it is partially due to a good whack of ableism. If a neurodivergent person does something enthusiastically it must be a pathology or part of their neurotype and something to be somehow medicalised. However, I think there probably is also an obsessive element to many of our passions. This is not necessarily in a bad way but in the way they can be all-encompassing and how we prefer to spend time on our passions than pretty much anything else. Interesting to think about semantics and neurodiversity though. There is probably a whole post on the different words used to describe the same thing dependent on a person’s neurology!

There is another element of autistic passions which isn’t often spoken of but is real for a minority of people – including a younger me. This is the situation where the content of a passion is negative – either about something negative or leading to negative behaviour and acts – or both. When I was 13 for reasons still unknown to me, I became fascinated by nuclear war. I wasn’t frightened by it but instead I was completely fascinated by it. I probably would have been delighted if there was a nuclear attack. (Shortly before being dead, I suppose!).

I knew deep down that this interest was not very positive or helpful, but it was so engaging. It felt a bit like an addiction. I read all the books I could find – fiction and non-fiction, and watched some very dark movies. As with a lot of passions, I managed to take in information on my favourite subject as if by osmosis. We didn’t have the internet then but I somehow managed to get a hold of anything related to my passion and devoured it with great enthusiasm. I actually don’t know how I did that.

Sadly, the focus of my passion was pretty dire, and I suspect related to the fact that I was very unhappy due to significant bullying throughout my school career and being pretty much alone at school. I had no appropriate diagnosis until I was 20 and thought I was different to everyone in the world  – and unlike now where I am proud to be different, back then I would have given anything to be accepted by my peers. I spent several years seeking out negative outcomes, culminating in ending up in prison when I was 20 and having the next five years in and out of institutions and being homeless.

My passions after that have all been much nicer and I have changed my life so radically that you would barely recognise me now. I think passions are such a great thing for many autistic people. I feel for those who don’t have a passion or who are between passions. Having a passion is lovely and the joy a passion brings is indescribable and is just amazing.  

I think if people have a passion for something negative – like I did is a teen and twenty-something – this is obviously a cause for concern. I suspect a more holistic view to address things which may be pushing people toward the negative (for example bullying, abuse and / or clinical depression) might help. With kids and teens, forcibly removing the passion and things related to it is unlikely to do anything helpful and is likely to make things worse. It is far better to encourage a different interest (which admittedly may be tricky) and scaffold the person’s life to be more positive and for them to have self-esteem and self-confidence and build their sense of pride and community. This can take some time I should note. People who like and value themselves tend to not have a negative focus! I imagine it is more about understanding why they have a negative sort of passion and supporting them through any difficulties around mental health and self-acceptance.

In my experience, mostly passions are awesome. Spending time on a passion brings joy and is basically pone of the most enjoyable and engaging things you can do. I absolutely love my current passions and the fact that my current job is basically related to my passion is amazing.

My favourite passion is – and has always been – cats! This is my lovely tortie girl Sunflower who has lots of purrs and cuddles and a fluffy belly!!

I turned fifty a couple of weeks ago. Wow! I have no idea how that happened, but it did.

What does fifty-something Yennski do these days? I live in a wonderful home called Yennski HQ which has a lot of art, books and a resident kitty of the naughty tortie variety known as Sunflower (or ‘you furry menace’ or ‘my feline overlord’ or ‘smoochypants’…. Depending on the context! I am self-employed and do a lot of work around neurodiversity – and especially neurodiversity and employment. I am actually pretty happy at the moment – although I do have a habit of stressing about pretty much everything. I have significant mental health issues and need to take a lot of medication to manage this along with having some other health issues. I have some lovely friends, a great family and these days quite a lot of self-respect and confidence. I am an out loud and proud non-binary and Asexual person and most of the time I love what I do.

Fifty is interesting as it is half a century. Who knows if there will still be a Yennski in another fifty years – and how many books they will write between now and then! Given that I have been taking heavy duty mental health medication for 25 years I suspect I may not be around that long, but it is interesting to reflect on such things.

Had you told my 25-year-old self that I will still be here now and all the amazing things I have done I would have been very surprised. I want to reflect on myself at 25. I was a recently released ex-prisoner with a misdiagnosis of borderline personality disorder. I had aspirations of changing my own personal world and becoming what I termed ‘ordinary’ – to be a person with a professional job, an education, a mortgage and a suit. Within eight years I had all those things, despite significant barriers posed by my various health issues and how these were viewed, my criminal history and my pervasive anxiety around anything remotely employment related. My level of determination and motivation to change things has always been quite impressive. Sadly, I put my focus on negative outcomes for many years and so those were what I got. When I made an about face to focus on achieving positive things and my whole life changed for the better.

Along with getting a professional job and a mortgage (and more recently a small business), I also gained some wisdom and insight between ages 25 and 50. I am sought after in relation to a number of things, most of which involve neurodiversity on some way or another. I even have fans – including some children as I have published six kids’ books. When I discovered I had fans who were kids I thought all my authorial Christmases had come at once as when I was a kid, I loved books and their authors and wanted to be a writer when I got older. The idea that my own books might encourage and inspire other autistic kids to write books fills me with immense joy.

I know myself very well. Self-reflection and insight are some of my strongest skills. I had a psychiatrist tell me that around three percent of people with my illness have insight into their mental health. I am fortunate to be one of them and even when I am extremely unwell I can tell that something is wrong and that it is an illness and not reality. Insight is a big plus and enables me to manage some pretty significant symptoms without being destroyed, it also helps me understand others. The stereotype of the autistic person lacking empathy doesn’t work – and I can say that from my own expertise. I have a LOT of empathy in a variety of different ways and some of the insights I have around my own experience transfer into my understanding of others’ situations and my ability to relate and hopefully support them.

I actually like me. I didn’t used to me might add but I do now. I am nice and thoughtful and always try to be respectful. Of course, I fall short on occasion and screw up and do the wrong thing – everyone does. But overall, I think I turned pout OK despite difficult circumstances. Reflecting down my history I think I have made something very good out of something very challenging. I am grateful to everyone who has supported and encouraged me in my journey from there to here and those in my life at the moment.  

So go Yenn, enjoy fifty and here’s to fifty more!!

I have had inviable disabilities for a very long time – 50 years in fact! I am an AuDHDer, and I have a mental health diagnosis or three. Looking at me people can’t tell this. (Although I am pretty obviously autistic to anyone who knows anything about autism! Nobody has ever said ‘oh but you can’t be autistic….’ Despite one unhelpful psychiatrist in the 1990s who misdiagnosed me because he had no idea about autism and figured that because I wasn’t a boy, and I didn’t like trains that I must be neurotypical! Thankfully that doctor in no longer in my world – or in the world for that matter as he died a while back!! Let’s just say I didn’t attend the funeral and my misdiagnosis of borderline personality disorder died with him).

Amway, strangers encountering me on the street do not generally think ‘ooh, disabled’.   When I get a new job, I have to decide whether or not to disclose my disabilities (which I always do but there is still an element of choice involved). Lately this has all changed. I now have a physical / mobility disability condition – quite severe osteoarthritis in my knee. This is very unpleasant and is improved if I use a cane. So overnight I went from being someone who you couldn’t really pick as disabled by looking alone to being a person using a stick.

The stick – which is very lovely and has a brass cat for a handle – is an unassuming piece of wood which helps me walk more quickly and with less pain. But it also carries a bunch of additional meaning. Yesterday I went to my Asexual meetup in civic. I had my stick and as I was paying for my lunch at the venue I dropped a piece of paper. The person next to me instantly bent down and got it for me. Wow! I got on the tram and a teenager was sitting on the accessible seat. They saw me an instantly got up! Wow again. This is going to take a bit of getting used to! Someone even volunteered the information that they accessed the NDIS themselves! I didn’t really need to know that, but it was nice of them to share, I guess.

I am really not used to being identifiably disabled but I must admit I quite like it on one level. Some people carry a sunflower lanyard (with pictures of sunflowers, not a picture of my cat who is called Sunflower!). This denotes that they have a hidden / invisible disability. I have not used this, but it is a really good idea, especially in places like airports or on public transport.

The attitudes of some people around disability are really unhelpful. I told a friend who works in disability leadership about my cane and how one benefit of it is that I don’t get judged if I use the accessible seats on the tram and she said that I shouldn’t have to do that. She is absolutely right – I shouldn’t have to and nobody else should have to but the world we live in is filled with people who judge and make assumptions around disability. Another friend who uses a cane themselves jokingly said the good thing about using a cane is that you can thwack people on the shins if they give you a hard time! I may have to keep that in mind.

I have not had a mobility issue before except when I had serious burns in 1998 and lost muscle from my left leg and it took a while to be able to walk again. Apart from that I have always been able to get around unaided and without pain. It puzzles me that people treat me differently because I use a cane. I am the same person as I was without the cane. Thus far people have been lovely and respectful, but I know all too well as someone who has had various disability conditions for many decades that there are a lot of people who aren’t respectful and inclusive. The whole thing with perceptions is very strange.

I do like my cane – it helps me get around for one thing. I am not so keen on the arthritis which apparently doesn’t get better. If that’s the case by the time I am 60 I won’t be able to leave the house! However, I do try to be positive and as I often say, ‘You are Yennski – you will be OK.’ I now have the following health ‘things’:

• Autism
• ADHD
• Atypical schizophrenia
• Anxiety
• Depression
• Hashimoto’s disease
• Hypertension
• Osteoarthritis
• GORD

Nine things!! I think when they were handing these sorts of things out, I missed the instructions and kept going to the back of the queue!! Anyway, we all have things which influence our welfare and how the world treats us and understands us. I actually quite like some of my health issues, my autism makes me ‘me’, and my ADHD comes with ridiculous amounts of energy and the ability to make quick and good decisions.

I will be interested to see some more responses to visibly Disabled Yennski over the coming months. Hopefully they will be from a place of respect and support.

This statement is something which often gets called a microaggression. Something most likely unintentionally offensive but offensive, nonetheless. It is one many of us who belong to different ‘inclusion’-type groups come up against. There are a number of other variants – ‘you don’t LOOK autistic’ or my personal favourite ‘You shouldn’t say you are autistic – you could pass for normal’ (and someone did actually say this to me once! And worse still they said it at the launch event for one of my neuro-affirming and inclusive books written by a proud autistic person who doesn’t even know what normal is, let alone wanting to look like it!)

I have recently been diagnosed with osteoarthritis in my left knee. It is really painful most of the time and standing for long periods – such as on public transport – can cause a lot of misery in the Yenniverse. As such, sitting in the accessible seat it’s the best option but I don’t ‘look’ disabled, and I don’t ‘look’ old meaning I can cop a lot of judgement from well-meaning people. I have tried to address this by using a cane, but it is an ongoing issue.

Often the people doing this ableism have no idea they are being ableist and unhelpful. They think they are doing the right thing – making it almost impossible to take up the issue with them and get through to them!

The most glaring example of this – and sadly a very common issue – is accessible parking spots. People get shamed for using accessible parking spots by people who think they ‘don’t look disabled enough’ to use the space. Basically, if there is a sticker on the windscreen saying the person needs accessible parking then go by this, not some assumption that Disabled people who drive should have to have a wheelchair in order to qualify for the accessible parking spot! If the person has a sticker, then they are eligible for the access. Simple as that. Mobility issues do not just mean those that result in person needing to use a wheelchair or cane. Some people have fatigue issues meaning they can walk a bit but walking across the entire IKEA parking lot (or whichever business) would cause serious distress. Being the accessible parking spot ‘are you disabled enough?’ police does not help anyone and actually does more harm than good to Disabled folks.

A lot of the issues in this area relate to unhelpful assumptions. I will categorically say that you can’t tell someone’s disability by looking at them. Disabilities come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes. It is not helpful judging people based on assumptions in any area. These issues are to my mind in the top 5 of ableism issues. They are absolutely infuriating. And I shouldn’t have to use a cane in an attempt to convey my need for accessibility requirements. Nobody should have to justify their health conditions to a stranger on the bus! We really would be better off in a world where people didn’t assume and didn’t take it on themselves to be the accessibility spot police.

Basically:

• There is no disabled ‘look’
• There is no autistic ‘look’
• You can’t determine whether a person needs an accessible spot or other accommodation just by looking at them
• ‘Normal’ is not something people should aspire to – and probably doesn’t exist anyway.

And don’t get me started on disability and ‘inspiration’… although I think the is a whole other blog post!