Thread by @NortherlyRose

#Thread
Being part of an autistic #community in my own neighbourhood.
A personal #ActuallyAutistic aspiration.
1/

Like many late discovered autistic people I found my ‘tribe’ online.
Just before my autism assessment feeling accepted in an online forum of autistic people persuaded me I was on the right track.
Now my main connection with other #ActuallyAutistic people is through @Twitter.
2/

None of the people on the online forum I was part of lived near me, but I made a particular connection with one of them.
We emailed and met up to go dog walking before Covid, and we still stay in touch intermittently.
If we lived closer we’d probably get together regularly.
3/

I’ve been interested in autistic intentional communities and co-housing for some time.
The idea of living in the vicinity of other autistic people appeals to me.
The day before yesterday I had a breakthrough moment when I realised I already am…
I just haven’t met them yet!
4/

The barrier to meeting #autistic people in my own #neighbourhood isn’t that they aren’t there, they almost certainly are.
Most people in my age group don’t know they’re autistic, which complicates things.
Which isn’t to say friendships need to be age specific.
They don’t.
5/

As a child I was fortunate to have creative, eccentric, (almost certainly autistic) older people as part of my family’s social circle.
Inter-generational or age-gap friendships always seemed perfectly natural to me.
Why should socialising be limited by when we were born?
6/

I feel the same way about gender, education, social background, employment status, ethnicity, and many other ways in which people might seek to divide us.
After discovering I was autistic I went on a course where I met other very late diagnosed people.
It felt so supportive.
7/

But it was in a city a long drive away.
They took pity on me because there was nothing like it in my vicinity.
The service in my area doesn’t offer any online or face to face groups.
I checked again a few weeks ago.
I’m going to get in touch and explain why this matters.
8/

Peer support can be incredibly helpful to people in marginalised and minoritised groups.
The reason my local service doesn’t run groups may be to do with their premises - there’s no space for people to meet up in person.
It might also have something to do with power dynamics.
9/

The model they’re operating is a service provider/service user one.
The autistic person takes them a problem, and one of their support workers helps to fix it.
Perhaps I should take them the problem of there not being any meet-ups for #ActuallyAutistic people in my locality.
10/

They may suggest I set up something myself (that happens a lot).
This could be seen as an empowering approach.
But they’re getting £££ to provide support services, they have offices, admin staff, and people’s contact details.
I’ll give it a go and let you know what happens.
11/

Social isolation has been compounded by the pandemic and we’re not clear of Covid yet.
But there are many ways of building community and connectedness in spite of this, as I’ve seen from other autistic-led projects.
#AskingAutistics please add good examples you know of!
12/end

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