Autism Out Loud

A coming out story about disability

I came out as autistic in 2021 — in October, right around my birthday. But though my first article on “Coming Out Autistic” (in Scientific American.) explained the process I’d gone through to acknowledge my autism, I did not really live my autism publicly until 2022. In other words, though I broke the news, I had yet to do the living-out-loud part. Believe it or not, it doesn’t come naturally. For most of my life, I’ve been told that success depended upon keeping my autism a secret.