When I was 2 or 3, I wouldn’t go on stage at my first dance recital unless I was holding my mom’s lipstick. My mom couldn’t come perform on stage with me, but that lipstick? It made me feel like she was still close. Like I could just maybe do the scary thing.

I didn’t know it then, but I was autistic.

I was officially diagnosed in the late 2000s. Not with “autism,” exactly, but with what they used to call Asperger’s. If you’re not familiar, that label was basically a way to say, “You’re autistic, but not too autistic, pretty close to ‘normal’.”

It was an attempt to separate people like me from the rest of the spectrum, to soften the word “autism” so people wouldn’t feel so uncomfortable. But let me be clear: Asperger’s was autism. They just gave it a different name because they wanted a version of autism that didn’t make them uncomfortable, one they could tolerate that fit inside their narrow understanding of what was acceptable. A label that still made sense in their minds and didn’t scare them.

By the time I was diagnosed, I already knew I was different. In 6th grade math class, I remember sitting quietly before the bell rang, trying so hard to fit in. I wanted the girls around me to like me and laugh with me. So I wracked my brain for a story—something funny and relatable. I shared something that had happened with my mom at the mall that weekend. I thought it would be met with laughs, but instead, they stared at me like I had three heads, turned back to each other, and acted like I didn’t exist. And those girls went on to bully me for the rest of middle school.

My diagnosis came the following year because my math teacher noticed something and brought it to my parents’ attention. That moment, that rejection, that effort to connect that backfired has stuck with me my entire life.

I spent years hiding it because I didn’t want to be seen as different and I didn’t want anyone thinking I wasn’t smart or capable or worthy of belonging. I already got bullied enough, I didn’t need a new label to make me more of a target.

Even in college, I struggled deeply to ask for accommodations—accommodations I was legally entitled to—because I didn’t want to be seen as “less than.” I didn’t want people to look at me and think, “She’s not capable.” I didn’t want to be written off or for my success to have an asterisk next to it.

I didn’t want anyone to say, “Wow, she did such a good job… for an autistic person.”

So I kept it quiet. For a long time, the only people who knew were my parents, my sister, my husband, and a couple of my closest friends. I didn’t even tell my grandfather—my favorite person in the world—until Christmas this past year. We were at our special ice cream place after our annual shopping trip, and I just let it spill. It felt like I was letting him into something sacred, something I’d been holding alone for too long. I cried that night, overwhelmed with relief.

I didn’t share it publicly until last summer, in the most vague way I could think of. I was still terrified that someone would pity me, use it against me (big time scared that someone still won’t hire me if they see this post), or even diminish what I’ve built.

But here’s the thing: I have nothing to be ashamed of.

I’m autistic and I’ve built a beautiful life. My DREAM life.

And the more I talk about it, the freer I feel. Every baby step in speaking up has made me lighter. I still hesitate and feel that twinge of fear sometimes when I say the word out loud. But I can push through it now because I know that there is nothing inherently wrong with me, I am just who I am, label or no label.

Still, I catch myself shifting into high-functioning mode the second I sense judgment. I feel it before it’s said, and let me tell ya, my intuition is never wrong. Suddenly I’m over thinking: Am I making enough eye contact? Too much? Not enough? Should I look away now? Am I being rude? Am I being weird? I can’t even follow the conversation anymore because I’m so focused on performing normal.

And for most of my life, I thought I was having panic attacks. Full body shaking, shortness of breath, nausea and a spiral. But now I know: it’s overstimulation. It’s my body saying “this is too much” and when I started treating it that way (earplugs, quiet room, dim light) it stopped. Or at least, I could keep it from going too far, and that completely changed my life.

So when I watched RFK Jr.’s recent press conference where he claimed that autistic kids “will never write a poem, never go on a date, never pay taxes, never use a toilet,” I was stunned, hurt, outraged, belittled, freaking dehumanized. I cried a lot of angry tears that day.

I wanted to burn the world down.

He wasn’t just talking about some abstract group. He was talking about me. He was talking about the kid who just wanted to make a friend in math class. He was talking about the adult who has had to fight every day to exist comfortably in a world that isn’t built for me. He was talking about every autistic person who has ever been told they were too much or too little, too loud or too quiet, too sensitive, too smart, too broken.

He said autistic people will never write poetry.

Well, sir—I am the poem.

This kind of language isn’t just factually wrong, it’s dangerous because it fuels stigma. It encourages parents to grieve their living children that have the potential to still have a wonderful life, just like I do. It isolates people like me who spent years believing we had to hide to be loved. And it makes life harder for everyone on the spectrum, especially those who don’t have the same support or privilege I do.

Here’s what autism actually looks like for me:

• Losing complete track of time while hyperfocused on a task, and then feeling panicked or disoriented when I finally look up and realize how much time has passed. Time blindness is disruptive as hell, and it can make even simple tasks feel impossible to plan or complete on schedule.
• Feeling the highest highs and the lowest lows. I get excited about ice cream after dinner and sunshine on the patio and FaceTiming my best friend, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything.
• Black and white thinking. Sometimes that helps me be decisive and bold, and sometimes it makes conflict really hard.
• Meltdowns when I get overstimulated. I shake and can’t breathe and need earplugs and something over my eyes to block out the world so I can exist in it again.
• Creativity and execution on overdrive. I can see a room and instantly know what paint, wallpaper, furniture, and layout will serve its purpose—and I can make it happen quickly. But the cleanup is where I fall apart. Thank God for my husband, who is a literal saint (ask him about the guest bathroom I’ve been in-the-middle-of painting for probably 2 years).
• Executive dysfunction. Laundry is the villain in my life story (also ask my husband about this one).
• Clutter blindness. I don’t even see the mess until I do, and then I need it gone immediately or I spiral, and most of the time still can’t make myself clean it up.

It also looks like clarity, joy, depth, empathy, hyper-focus, pattern recognition, design intuition, big ideas, big emotions, big love.

It looks like running a business that changes lives. It looks like freedom and leadership and systems that support my brain instead of shaming it.

It looks like success—not in spite of my autism, but because I built something that works with it. I can unashamedly say that I know what accommodations I need to make my dream life possible.

And I’ll say this clearly: I don’t need to be fixed. I don’t need to be cured. I don’t need to be spoken about like a problem.

Autism is not an epidemic. It is not a tragedy or a death sentence, and it damn sure is not a reason to treat people like they’re disposable.

Autism is a spectrum, period. And on that spectrum are people who speak, people who don’t. People who need full-time support, and people who live independently. People who struggle in certain ways, and people who thrive in others. People who are all of those things at different times.

Some of us will need more support than others. But every one of us deserves to be respected, supported, and celebrated.

If I had heard someone like RFK Jr. speak when I was younger, I might never have become the person I am today. I might have believed him and let that shame eat me alive. I might have stopped trying, and that terrifies me for the younger people who hear messages like this.

I am so grateful I didn’t hear that message when I was younger.

But I did hear it now. And so did the younger generation, parents who are scared, kids who are newly diagnosed and people who are just beginning to wonder if maybe, just maybe, they are wired differently.

And they deserve to hear this too.

Autism isn’t new or some modern crisis. It didn’t suddenly appear in the last decade because it’s genetic. I can trace it through my family tree like a thread. I got diagnosed while the rest of my family didn’t, but they certainly learned to cope and mask to survive.

Now, I get to thrive.

Because I’ve done the work and the research. I’ve built a life that fits my brain instead of trying to force myself to fit into someone else’s.

So no, I’m not going to sit quietly while a man with a microphone tries to erase everything I’ve built and keep the next generation of spicy brains from doing the same.

Because if a former presidential candidate, now leading our nation’s health policies, can stand on a stage and say something that harmful and still get applauded, we have a loooooong way to go.

But I’ll keep showing up loudly, boldly, proudly.

Because I’m autistic. And I’m not a fucking tragedy.

Resources & Support

• Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN)
• Autism Level UP!
• Autism Speaks
• Autism Society

If you’re autistic or think you might be, if you’re a parent feeling overwhelmed, or if you just want to learn, my DMs are open. I am not a clinician, but I am living it, and I will always make space for these conversations.

xo, jordan