We can all stand to learn so much from marginalized folks about change-making. To be a changemaker, people often feel they need to be a perfect representative. This is a lie you tell yourself. You think you need to live a perfect example free from trauma & who makes no mistakes
But that's not true. You're going to make mistakes. Small ones, big ones, mistakes beyond your control. It's going to happen. You think you need to be organized and have everything planned in advance. You think you have to drop your emotions and be calculated. Lies, again.
You just have to be willing and brave, and sometimes being angry is the force that will push you through those insurmountable odds. Sometimes, being scared is a lie you tell yourself, because nothing is going to hurt more than doing nothing.
I think some of the most successful changemakers in history were ADHDers and autistics. There's a fair amount of helplessness and hopelessness and anger that can be a totally unavoidable part of ADHD and autistic existence.
The world rewards mediocrity in multiple areas over exceptionality in one or two. You can't organize a stack of papers, but who cares when your impulses and your passions and your talents can start a revolution?
We have to take thoughtful and purposeful measures to stop penalizing changemakers for imperfections. There is N-O-T-H-I-N-G in the world more demoralizing and disheartening than thinking that your own community of marginalized "others" see you as inadequate or too flawed.
Is someone willing to listen, to adjust their trajectory, to do the work, to take the risks, and to take the hits for their community? Yes? Then THAT. IS. GOOD. ENOUGH.
Hot damn, let's not let another advocate have their last thoughts be that their own marginalized community wouldn't accept them because of their imperfections. Being a subversive risktaker drives progress. Breaking the status quo despite the mountain of pain it brings is bold.
Let's rally behind our people, support them, ask them what they need if we have time. If they will use themselves as a shield to take the hits for you, even when you're a stranger, even when your own family won't-- let's not hold them to impossible standards.
Let's make the insider neurodivergent community unbreakable.
This is not a subtweet. This is not inspired by anything happening with anyone specific. Sometimes the people most important to a movement are the quiet ones who support the loud ones. Sometimes they are the glue.
This is not a subtweet. This is not inspired by anything happening with anyone specific. Sometimes the people most important to a movement are the quiet ones who support the loud ones. Sometimes they are the glue.
That's the beauty of the neurodivergent community. We don't all need to have an audible voice to be powerful changemakers. We don't need to be speakers at all. We just need to be that one weird niche no one is currently filling-- and that's our asset.
If we can work together, nobody would be able to stop us.
@threadreaderapp unroll, ya salty botface
