The Holidays For me As A Black Autistic Woman
We all love the holidays don’t we? Family, food, festive gatherings, gifts etc… well me personally I hate them! Here’s why. We come together and bond over food with our family we bond over gift exchanging we bond over catching up with what those we haven seen in awhile are doing, its all love languages its all love, so how could you Hate, Love? Love can be triggering too, as a late diagnosed autistic I was and still am looked at as rude and stand offish meanwhile I’m just trying not to faint from sensory overload , yes it’s great to see family you haven’t seen in a while its beautiful they all came together, cooking for each other is a act of love but for me… seeing too many people at once especially those I’m not really used to, gives me anxiety, being forced to eat different foods made by different people ( because turning down food at a black gathering is a crime) with different taste, textures, smells, the mixture of all the different smells and seasonings because you know seasoning is important, the overload of the different range of and tones of voices all running together etc is adding to the sensory overload you are already having from the overstimulation from everyone wanting to and proceeding to hug you because there haven’t seen you in awhile, its A LOT and while it may seem harmless those that don’t understand autism and doing harm by not even attempting to learn about it I don’t fault my family or black community because a black face has never been the face of autism and a black women has definitely never been the face of autism, luckily at black family gatherings there’s a coat room you know the designated room where all the coats are in a room on someones bed ( which by the way bothers me because that’s outside clothes on a bed) but that’s besides the point, there’s a always a room with coats and occasionally a sleeping baby, but my point is its quite there and I can escape and hide there until I’m physically and mentally able to somewhat function around everyone again, to avoid being called rude or being in a bad mood or being disrespectful , black grandmothers and elders do not tolerate disrespect and what black grandmothers do you that are familiar with autism and autistic traits? Not many if their not doctors, teachers, or some other type of expert etc. so while the holidays are great for some and I love my family and relatives The Holidays for me as a Black Autistic Woman are something that I celebrate being over #Autism #Autistic #AutismAcceptance #actuallyautistic #autizzy #SensoryProcessingDisorder #SensoryOverload #Neurodiversity #neurospicy #neurodivergent
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