October 25, 2022 • 37 mins
Coming out to family is hard. And Lauren should know — she’s already done it once. But if Lauren wants to fully inhabit her autism, she’s going to have to let all the people into her reality. So it’s time for Lauren to pull up her big girl pants and get to it. And no better time to disclose than during an already stressful family holiday.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. If you are a person, and I'm guessing you are,
you have had to tell someone you love a big
and scary thing at least once. It's part of the
human condition. Maybe you've had to tell your supportive spouse
that you've flunked out of med school again. Maybe you
(00:36):
had to explain to your grandparents why you brought a
boyfriend and a girlfriend to cousin Gabe's bar mitzvah. Or
maybe you've had to reveal to Papa that you're in
an awful mess, but you've made up your mind and
you're keeping the baby and you don't mean. Maybe we
reveal these truths to our people because the alternative is
(00:59):
often way worse, even if you manage to skillfully avoid
the telling. If you're like me, the secret you're hiding
will devour you from the inside, and that's no fun
at all. Because I did not want the gnawing feeling
of withholding to consume me. It was time to reveal
my autistic truth to my family a year after my diagnosis,
(01:21):
but still at least I was doing it or thinking
about doing it. Now. I like to control for every
possible outcome when I am telling people things, so I
couldn't go into the big reveal without some preparation. I
had to do some practicing first. What am I doing
role playing? Okay, okay, make up, daddy. I'm with my
(01:48):
girlfriend Hannah and her son Jacob. We're at a noisy
food hall pretending to be my family. When I do
my big autistic reveal, what if I just like say, like, hey, guys,
I just want to let you know that I was
a diagnosed with autism a year ago by and I
leave the room, like I run out of the room.
What if I just write it on a piece of
(02:09):
paper and hand it to them. Oh, I do the
cards from like um love love Actually? I do the
love actually cards like hey you right now? Like she's
she's an autour? Oh my god, how our point is?
(02:30):
How hilarious would that be? Can you imagine? What would
the first slide? Baby? I wasn't experious. I mean no,
I know it's but I'm not going to do it
because it seems like a lot of world. Okay, I
know this isn't role playing in the classical sense, but
still working it from all sides, ridiculous or not is helping.
(02:53):
It just takes the heaviness out of it? What about
a like a interpretive dance and no altisic dance, So
no doing interpretive dance. I'm sorry, I don't have any
realian What if what if I do like a like
(03:15):
a mind routine like I mind it, or like charades?
I just don't have any serious answer. No, I know,
I'm I mean, look, if you don't have any serious answers,
you don't have any serious answers, because really the only
serious answer is to be direct and open hearted, even
though it's scary as hell. My inner therapist would tell
(03:37):
me to try to understand why telling my family I
am autistic fills me with dread? What's the worry? And
how can I honor that anxiety without succumbing to it?
I mean, I guess part of it is like you
have to think the best of people, right, Like in
order to mitigate your own anxiety, you have to kind
(03:58):
of be like these people are my family, they love
me in a particular way, and hopefully like whatever I
talk to them about, I'm not telling them I'm going
to jail, you know, or I committed a crime. It's
like there's two ways to go in. One is like
self protected, like I have to set boundaries and protect
(04:19):
myself because like, this isn't going to go well. It's
like if you're telling your vandolphal parents that you're gay
or like, that's one way to go in, and another
way to go in is like I like just clean minded,
like clear minded, and a third way to go in
would be like expect the best. So that's the spectrum.
(04:40):
I was really split about this. One voice in my
head was telling me, just get on with it already,
you giant baby, tell your family, what's the big deal,
And the other voice was like, oh, yeah, no, this
is going to go very badly indeed, And that's reflective
of our family dynamics. See, my family is a particular
kind of supportive. If I needed to get out of
(05:03):
a legal jam, or I wanted help painting my apartment
or planting my garden, then yeah, they're all about and
that's not nothing. But we don't all sit around and
gas bag about our feelings. Emotional problem solving really isn't
our jam. But if I was going to divulge, it
was going to have to get emotional. You're listening to
(05:30):
the loudest girl in the world, who is not that
granny in line with you at the bakery, telling you
all about her favorite types of lemon bars. It's me
Lauren over The Loudest Girl in the World is a
show about finding yourself broken in a pretty dark place
and emerging from that place a mostly glued back together person.
(05:54):
A few weeks before Thanksgiving, my producer writer put an
event on my calendar for November twenty fifth. The name
of the event was Shruggy Emoticon upside down question mark
Lauren comes Out to Family question mark Shruggy Emoticon. I mean,
Rider puts so much care and thought into the event title,
how could I back out? At this point I had
(06:17):
already told Hannah and a handful of friends, and I
was even many months into making this actual show, and
I still hadn't told the OBErs. But I had to
so part of this process, both in the making of
the podcast and also just irel in your life. Is
(06:38):
you telling your parents that's Rider audio producer to the Stars.
How do you feel about that? It feels super scary
for reasons that I can't quite put my finger on,
but which maybe you can help me put my finger on.
It feels m I don't know, it just feels like
(06:58):
a little bit old to be having a revelation for
your parents. You know, Well, that's just ages towards me.
There's no right age to come out about anything but
real talk. I'm just not good at having hard conversations
about me, which Rider knows because she's heard me have
a million of them, each one more embarrassing than the next.
(07:21):
That's one sort of hallmark for me is that, like
it's a lot of like I'm telling you a thing,
but I'm not actually inviting any questions, and you want
something different. Wow, I feel like I don't know. I mean,
my gut feels like I just want to like tell
them and then like run away. You know. I think
(07:41):
it's because I worry about the judgment that I don't
want to have to face the judgment. Like I want
to tell you the thing, but I don't want to
be judged for it, and then I it's like too
vulnerable to engage with it. What kind of judgments do
you think might come up? I guess I worry that
(08:02):
they'd be like what are you talking about? You know,
the same as I've had for other people, you know,
sort of No, You're not like you're fine, You have
a job. This that all of the things that people
with a subtle autism presentation experience, you know, like when
(08:22):
you tell people something like that, it's not just yours anymore.
It becomes the other person's story or a bit of information,
and they get to decide what they want to do
with that, and if they want to ignore it, they can,
if they want to engage with it in a positive way,
(08:45):
like there are lots of choices that people have when
somebody tells them something, And so I think part of
it for me is that there's too much that I
can't anticipate, Like I have massive anticipatory anxiety even just
talking about this, in thinking about the prospect of it,
(09:06):
even though you're making me do it, it's like very
stressful to think about. Writer is making me do it,
and I will hold it against her for the rest
of my days. But also I am a person with
agency and this is important for me to do. Writer
and I agreed that the day after Thanksgiving I would
(09:28):
have some chat skis with Kathy Russ and rj aka mom,
dad and brother. So much for me bum rushing the
best buy on Black Friday. I would instead be telling
my family a hard thing. Thanks writer. I emailed the
family and told them I had something I wanted to
tell them about. I let them know that the topic
(09:48):
was a sensitive one for me. That's what my buddy
and a sale author of the book Let's Talk About
Hard Things, told me to do. Christ Almighty. Just writing
that little email out was hard. Now I actually have
to go through with telling them the hard thing. It
would have been better if they had all declined because
they were busy perming their hair or organizing their paperweight
(10:10):
collection or something. But everyone agreed to stick around after dinner,
so I had to go through with it, or did I.
A few days before Thanksgiving, I called up my pal
Becca and hopes that she might be able to ease
my nerves around the whole situation. Becca's my ex partner,
(10:30):
and yes we're still great friends. And yes, I know
that's a lesbian stereotype. Big whoop. I I'm making a
like a red lunt hole happening Special is quite flavorful
and it's it's very super season right now. It's very
like like I like blah, everything is terrible. I've been
(10:54):
feeling really bad about the weather turning and endless COVID
and how hard. This journey of reckoning had been and
I was being a real eore off his meds about it.
But Becca knew the right thing to say. If you
go and you come out to your paris, it's hard,
and it will probably be hard or the reactions and
I can feel good. You can just call me well,
(11:16):
I really appreciate it. I mean I will. So I
had a plan. I emailed my family to let them
know I wanted to have a conversation with them. My
autism support human slash girlfriend Hannah was down to be
there with me, and Becca offered her emotional phone of
friends support. So I was well on my way to
(11:36):
gathering up all my courage and stealing myself for the
great autism reveal of twenty twenty one. But then I
had a very intense setback. I fully melted down. The
bad feelings really dug in on this one. It happened
the day before Hannah and I drove to Pittsburgh for
the holiday. I was racing to finish a work project
(11:59):
and feeling generally overwhelmed by the prospect of heading out
of town. Because nothing grinds my gear is quite like
a highway rest stop before a holiday Also, I remember
that it was exactly one year since my diagnosis. Naturally,
I had some feelings about that. So we had all
the ingredients for a deluxe sized meltdown. Because I've gotten
(12:22):
into the habit of documenting myself being a SADO, I
pulled out my phone and hit record today is the
diagnosis adversary in one year since I got my results back?
And this is not this state that I wanted to
(12:43):
be in when you know, a year later, still trying
to figure out how the process isn't even how to
like tell my family, and I think I have to
abort the mission because I don't think it's wise in
this time to try to shoe or something like that
(13:04):
in at a very at a time that's already going
to be quite stressful for everyone. I really felt like
I needed to pack it in. This was not my time.
My brother and sister in law were traveling to Pittsburgh
for the first time with my two year old nephew,
and my mom had just gotten a puppy, so three
(13:28):
quarters of my family was already preloaded for maximal anxiety.
Even if it wasn't a holiday, it was already a
powder keg just waiting for a spark. I texted Rider
and told her I couldn't go through with it. It
was just too much to tell my family on mass
I would rather eat a barrel of a rugolo with
(13:48):
a chaser of capers than sit mom, dad, and little
brother down to tell them this. I could maybe handle
it if I did it one by one, but not
all in a group, No way. My stress level was
at an eleven just considering the proposition. Rider wrote back
that it was no big deal and I should take
my time with it. Girlfriend Hannah, on the other hand,
(14:11):
was not going to let me off the hook. She
was like, don't be a weansickle, you're doing it. I mean,
sometimes you just need a person to push you out
of an airplane when you're skydiving for the first time.
Hannah is that person. So after the break, I free
fall into the Great Autism Reveal of twenty twenty one
(14:33):
and it goes, well, you'll see, I have never cared
much for holidays. They're always too unpredictable, too unwieldy, too sad,
too prescribed, just too much and they always kick up
(14:56):
a huge cloud of anxiety for me. So right off
the bat, Thanksgiving isn't my favorite day, and not just
because of its genocidal origin story. Also, Thanksgiving is an
eating holiday, and eating is not one of my favorite hobbies. Also,
I'm a vegetarian, so turkey, stuffing and gravy will never
(15:16):
touch my plate. One of the only things I actually
like about this particular holiday is the jellied cranberry sauce
in a can that no one else in my family
will eat but me. Also, green beans. I love green beans.
I really enjoyed beans, like green beans, Like that makes
(15:38):
amazing green beans. I really like to use green beans.
That is the one thing my children lively eat for
their tire. I think they're one of the best. To me,
they're the best. But makes these crispy green beans with
like a dijon. What is the sauce? I think we
have all your ten thousand times. Yeah, we have it
at your house. Oh yeah right. And if that isn't
(15:59):
riveting dinner conversation fair, I don't know what is. Other
dinner table topics included my nephews daycare. We pay extra
for him. Best, that's cute. The provenance of Hannah's rugs
and a jacket Hannah and I saw on a visit
to Marshals earlier in the day. The color was like
(16:19):
a mauve puce. Was not attractive. It was like a
fancy brick. We also chatted briefly about the foods my
mother cannot stand now, what about eggplant which seems also
similarly Oh that and sweet potatoes. Yeah, they're the things
that really grabbed me at ps Cathy's fibbing big time.
(16:41):
Her list of off limits foods includes basically all dishes
flavored with curry powder, humin, and cardamom, and anything with
a whiff of watermelon. Anyway, I was glad for all
this Thanksgiving small talk. It helped distract me from the
anxiety fog that was rapidly descending on me. But at
some point the meal had to end and I just
had to get on with it. So after a delicious
(17:04):
dessert of cranberry sauce from a can for me and
homemade pumpkin pie for everyone else, we cleaned up the dinner,
sent my nephew to bed, and reconvened around the table.
And then it was time. It was just my dad Russ,
my mom, Kathy, and my brother RJ. No in laws,
(17:27):
no step parents, and of course Hannah was there doing
her best Autismo junior stand in routine. Oh how I
long for autism pleasant Phil. In this moment, we were
all sitting around my mom's tiger maple dining room table,
Hannah to my right, Russ Catty corner to my left,
Mom and brother directly across from me. My two recorders
(17:50):
were like table center pieces, awkwardly perched between us. Russ
is a lawyer, so he couldn't help but look like
he was primed to rebut opposing counsel's arguments. R J
is a cool guy, so he was leaning back in
his chair enjoying a beer. Kathy, the quiet one, sat
neatly with her hands folded in her lap. The mood
(18:12):
was one of curious amusement. I started the conversation off
in a way that Anna's sale I'm pretty sure would
not have endorsed, with a lazy, half hearted joke. I
feel like very nervous about this, and I feel like, like,
you know, it's this is like a hard thing to
talk about for me, and I just wanted to let
(18:35):
you guys know that I'm gay. You know, I'm for
quite a while just sea, yeah, somebody kill me now.
So so basically, like I had been feeling for a
long time, like like something like was off, like mental
(18:55):
health wise, or it wasn't quite like just was overly sensitive,
or lots of things about like just not like flowing right.
And then you know, I would talk to my therapist
about it, and and you know, it didn't like didn't
seem anything, you know, like diagnosed for or whatever. And
(19:18):
then and then when the pandemic happened, I kind of
like lost my shit. I mean, you know how the
spiel goes. You've heard it before, and at this point,
I've repeated it a bunch of times. I should have
been sort of on autopilot, but I wasn't. I was
passing through every word so so carefully, trying to be
(19:40):
as specific as possible. I didn't want there to be
any confusion about what I was saying. Listening back to
the tape, I realized I don't fully remember this moment.
At some point in the telling, I think I just dissociated,
not clinically, just that my words were trying to thread
the finest of needles while my brain was sizzling in
(20:02):
my skull. I couldn't make eye contact, though that's no
big surprise. I just kept looking at this weird print
of a crow wearing boots that Kathy had hanging over
her mantle on the recording. I noticed my voice is
uncharacteristically thin and shaky, and so I ended up going
(20:24):
to a psychologist and taking a number of tests for autism,
and and I have an autism diagnosis. Oh man, I
did it. I revealed my hard thing, And so I
(20:44):
wanted to tell you guys about that, because obviously you're
my family and I love you, and I've been trying
to figure out how to navigate like the next forty
three years of my life. Knowing that the troubles that
I was having and the things that are difficult, a
lot of them can be chopped up to this diagnosis.
(21:07):
In retrospect, this would have been in a great moment
for me to pause and wait for a response, but
that's not what happened. I kept going. I was basically
like a human Wikipedia page for autism. I told them
everything I knew about the condition, about cultural tropes and
the underdiagnosis of girls and women, and the mental health
(21:28):
challenges that can go hand in hand with autism. Then,
after talking at them for eleven straight minutes, also not
something in a sale would endorse. I waited for someone
to respond. Finally, my mom, Cathy, tapped in, well, I
think it's very brave if you just to talk about it.
I see that it's very painful for you to go
(21:50):
through this and to talk to your family about really
get that, and it makes me sad too, And personally,
I really don't know much about autism or aspergers. I
really don't think I know anyone other than Jacob, and
(22:11):
so I don't have any basis to make a comment
on how you fit in to that diagnosis or that
I understand it because I don't. Yeah, don't. Listening to
this months later, I don't know so much that it's
brave to tell my family I'm autistic. Sure it's scary,
(22:35):
and sure there are steaks. But more than anything, the
reveal seems post brave. I don't even really seem to
have that much control over it. The reveal felt imperative,
as if I was compelled by a force larger than
myself that I cannot see or name to show the
full measure of my humanity to the people who raised me.
(22:58):
In that way, the revelation feels every bit as critical
as breathing air or drinking water, but exponentially more terrifying
because you're asking to be seen, and how many of
us truly feel seen. Luckily, right off the bat, Kathy
seemed to at least try to see. I mean, some
(23:20):
of the things that you were saying, I really I
agree with I see. I see your sensitivity to noise,
and I see your sensitivity to smells and textures. You
always have had that for me. I always was aware
that there was some issue. I didn't have a name
(23:41):
for it. I didn't understand it. I knew you were struggling, yeah,
and I had no idea that it was part of
an autism issue. I didn't have the knowledge to to
know what it might be, or to even think to
(24:02):
take you for testing. I mean, I just it wasn't
a thing we did. Nobody would have backed that. Little
girls like me didn't register as kids who needed support
or accommodations. So I can hardly blame my parents for
not getting me help, because what help was there to get.
I don't really remember how I felt when my mom
(24:24):
said these words because dissociation, but hearing them now, I
feel heartened. I appreciate that in the moment Kathy could
mirror at least some of my challenges. It meant that
she was at least trying to engage with what I
was ham handedly telling them. I continued explaining to my
family the ins and outs of autism and the way
(24:45):
my movement through the world was so much different than theirs,
Like the sensitivity goes way beyond and it's like I've
learned that a lot of my anger and sort of
aggression or hostility, how will we come from both the
anxiety of having so many feelings and not an understanding
and how to express them. But also there's a thing
(25:07):
that particularly women who are autistic too, It's like you're
trying so hard to do all of the right things.
You're trying hard to communicate in the way that everybody
else says, and you're trying hard to fix your body
in your face, and all of these things. You're thinking
about them all the time, and then it is absolutely
exhausting and you're just laid out. At this point, I
(25:29):
was sweating through my pants and trying desperately to sit
still and not rock back and forth while the three
of them stared back at me. My dad Ross is
the scariest star in the history of staring. He's a
trial lawyer and a former prosecutor, and I'm pretty sure
he could stare me into an admission of guilt for
a crime I most assuredly did not commit. So just
(25:53):
picture a man boring his eyeballs into the back of
your brain when you hear this. So, now that you've
revealed this to us, how would you like this will
treat you differently from the way we've treated you as well.
I don't think it's differently. I appreciate the question. I mean,
I think it's more just like an understanding of like
(26:17):
how I moved through the world and how I have
moved through the world for the last like forty three years,
which is that, like things have been very hard, and
you know, I've had a real jagged work history, and
and I'm not saying it's because of that necessarily, but like,
you know, even though like I work hard, and I
work hard, and I work hard, like I often feel
(26:39):
like I'm being in my head against a wall, and
I've you know, I've had some really bad dark times
around that, and so just sort of knowing like, yeah,
like I have a little bit of a different neurology
and doesn't require like anybody to do anything or just
(27:01):
like just an understanding. I think as we continued, I
started to feel like they got it, or at least
we were scratching the surface. Rush asked me about my
coping strategies and workplaces, and I told him how I'd
instituted a rule where I no longer work with incompetent assholes.
(27:21):
Also therapy, lots of therapy. We dipped into my executive
functioning challenges with punctuality and memory, and we talked about
emotional dysregulation and the anger that comes from routinely being misunderstood.
It seemed like it was going okay. I mean I
still wanted to bolt out of the room, but at
(27:41):
least it was less awkward than the start. Then some
number of beers in. My brother RJ confronted me about
the impact my anger had on him. Yeah. I was
just a little kid starting to kind of understand. Yeah,
the world around me I was looking up to all
the time, and that intolerance for you know, a sound
(28:05):
or habit or a behavior that often was coming from me, Yeah,
came out in like extreme aggression, and it made me think, like,
what the fuck is wrong with me. No, I mean
it is like I remember, like you used to wear
your keys on your belt, not a great look, but
(28:27):
not a great look now. But my chairs bear the scars,
let me tell you. Like the sound of the keys
jingling was like un manageable for me, and I would
be like, like, it builds up, builds up, builds up,
and then it gets really trying personal when it comes out. Yeah,
(28:48):
but you're trying to tamp it down. It's like you
would be listening to your music and I could hear
the music bleeding out and you're trying, and you're trying
and trying to ignore it, try to ignore, trying to ignore,
try to ignore, and then it bubbles over and it
comes out probably ex ressive, and I feel terrible about that,
but I remember all of those moments. I remember one
time Kathy was singing in the card in a low
(29:10):
saying and I could not I hate it. I hate
it so much. It's it's it's it's if she's blash,
she's singing so loud, it would not bother me at all.
It's the low, it's low, it's frequency saying. It's and
you can't control it. If I could control that if
I could ignore those things, I totally would. Why Why
(29:32):
does anybody want to be saddled with that? Nobody wants
to be thinking about those things all the time. It's
awful and so yeah, like you're suppressing all of that.
And then when the bubbalo, it's like, awful, you don't
be yelling at somebody for the headphones or the keye strangling,
like I feel terrible like that. It comes off as
(29:53):
like who the fuck is this person wants? Wrong with them?
Like shut up about it? But you probably didn't have
that reaction with with people who were younger than you're.
Very often that was me, where it's like I don't
know what's right. This person's older than me, everything is wrong.
Those are some hard pills to swallow. My brother had
(30:14):
clearly been holding onto some stuff for many, many years,
and I feel awful about that, truly I do. But
I also can't help the way my brain works, the
way some sounds just send my body into fight mode,
because in the fight flight or freeze paradigm of self protection,
I am a fighter. And if I had known then
(30:37):
what I know now, well then we'd all be in
a better place. Hindsight's a real jerk, so we should
probably take a little break to process. So turns out
(30:59):
it's not that easy to field comments and questions and
critiques from the family. Thankfully, my stand in emotional support
human Hannah was there to ease the tension and to
pinch hit a few questions. Can I ask you, guys,
does any but any of you see anything I mean,
I know this is all new, but anything that you
remember throughout all of your years of being in a
(31:22):
family foreign and that you would evaluate or think of differently. Well,
of course it was a whole school thing. I mean
her quote disruptive behavior. There was no mean intent behind it.
She could not manage herself in a classroom setting and
(31:43):
not being able to be the one who was talking.
That always stood out. And also through the years in
her jobs, having difficulties in every work environment with one
particular person or another. And it's what you said, it
was they were incompetent, they couldn't do their job, and
(32:03):
they were telling you to do something that you could
do better or that you knew wasn't right. The things
that's two big things that stand out for me. What
about other kids? Just curiosity? Lauren had a difficult time
connecting with kids. Always from the time she was young,
when we would have play dates and stuff, and she'd
(32:26):
want to play her own thing, and the girls that
came over would want to do something different. Even now,
as a person with forty plus years in the can,
it's hard to hear that I sucked at play dates
because I was a genuinely lonely kid. I spent a
lot of time by myself. If it weren't for my
athletic abilities and the fact that I was on a
(32:48):
million teams, I'm pretty sure I would have gone my
entire childhood with no real peer interaction. I just didn't
really know how to friend. As we were getting to
the end of our chat, my younger brother RJ asked
a question, This has been like a process of understanding
yourself that's been going on for a while, and I'm
curious how it compares to, you know, twenty years removed
(33:11):
your experience coming out. Oh, because you started this with
a joke, like, guys, I'm good. I know it's kind
of a coming out, Sure it is. I just think
of it as like, I mean, it sounds cheesy to
say that, it's sort of like letting in, Like I
don't feel like I'm revealing anything that I feel ashamed
(33:31):
of or anything like that. I feel like we're all
We're all the same page. You know. I remember with
great priority you and I having that first conversation. Oh yeah,
and I remember I remember telling you that I you know,
I love you and I just want you to be happy.
And I feel the same way right now. Yeah, it
doesn't mean anything in terms of how we feel or
(33:54):
treat you. In that moment, after I said what I
needed to say and my family heard me, I felt relief.
I never have to do that again. Though working myself
up into a ladder was mostly for not as these
things tend to go. But after the big reveal, which
was not so much a bombshell as it was a
tiny grenade, I felt a little hollow. I was so
(34:18):
wrapped up and getting the telling right that I forgot
about me. What did I actually want from the reveal
beyond just a basic exchange of information? And what I
realized later is that I want to be treated differently.
I need to be treated differently. When my dad asked
(34:38):
me the question earlier about how the family should regard
me in light of this new information, here's how I
should have responded. I want to have this revelation inform
how I'm considered. I want my particular brain to be
taken into account. I want my neurobiology to be understood,
if not embraced. But what I really want and have
(35:03):
no business asking for, is that all of my family's
bad feelings about me, that I'm judge mental or aggressive
or overly opinionated, be seen through this new lens. I
don't want them to think of me as insolent or obnoxious.
I don't want to be fixed in their brains as
difficult or selfish. I want them to see how hard
(35:25):
it's been for me, and to really digest all the
ways I have to fold myself into a little origami
version of me just to appear normal. I want an
abundance of empathy and I want to be enveloped by it,
and I want every little Lauren out there to have
the same, and maybe over time that can happen. But
(35:47):
I suspect that before I am swaddled in compassion, I
have to have compassion for myself. I have to accept
who I am. I didn't ask to be this way,
but I am this way all the same. I am
a middle aged autistic lesbian with too many houseplants, not
enough self control, and a whole lot of life left
(36:07):
to live. God swelling. But in order to get on
with the business of living, there's one more thing I
have to do. I have to absolve myself. I have
to send shame packing. I have to be okay to
feel things, and I need to enlist the help of
an ex girlfriend, a dying squirrel, and a Grammy nominated
(36:31):
musician to make all that happen. You've been listening to
the Loudest Girl in the World. It's hosted, written in
executive produced by me Lauren Obert. Our senior producer is
Writer Alsop. Our associate producer is David John. Sophie Crane
(36:54):
is our showrunner and senior editor. Jay Gorski is our
mix engineer. Music composed by my autistic Kiwie Palell the
Inimitable Lady Hawk. Our artwork was created by the autistic
illustrator Loretta Ipsum, was fact checked by Andrea Lopez Cruzado,
and our autism consultant is Sarah Cappett. Our executive producers
(37:16):
are Mia Lobelle and LEETM. Lulat Big. Thanks to my family, Russ,
Kathy and RJ for taking in all the hard Thanks
love you, guys, and special thanks to Jessica Chamberlain and
Heather Kenyon for sharing their hard things with us even
(37:37):
though we didn't end up using them. And thanks to
you friend for listening.
Pushkin. If you are a person, and I'm guessing you are,
you have had to tell someone you love a big
and scary thing at least once. It's part of the
human condition. Maybe you've had to tell your supportive spouse
that you've flunked out of med school again. Maybe you
(00:36):
had to explain to your grandparents why you brought a
boyfriend and a girlfriend to cousin Gabe's bar mitzvah. Or
maybe you've had to reveal to Papa that you're in
an awful mess, but you've made up your mind and
you're keeping the baby and you don't mean. Maybe we
reveal these truths to our people because the alternative is
(00:59):
often way worse, even if you manage to skillfully avoid
the telling. If you're like me, the secret you're hiding
will devour you from the inside, and that's no fun
at all. Because I did not want the gnawing feeling
of withholding to consume me. It was time to reveal
my autistic truth to my family a year after my diagnosis,
(01:21):
but still at least I was doing it or thinking
about doing it. Now. I like to control for every
possible outcome when I am telling people things, so I
couldn't go into the big reveal without some preparation. I
had to do some practicing first. What am I doing
role playing? Okay, okay, make up, daddy. I'm with my
(01:48):
girlfriend Hannah and her son Jacob. We're at a noisy
food hall pretending to be my family. When I do
my big autistic reveal, what if I just like say, like, hey, guys,
I just want to let you know that I was
a diagnosed with autism a year ago by and I
leave the room, like I run out of the room.
What if I just write it on a piece of
(02:09):
paper and hand it to them. Oh, I do the
cards from like um love love Actually? I do the
love actually cards like hey you right now? Like she's
she's an autour? Oh my god, how our point is?
(02:30):
How hilarious would that be? Can you imagine? What would
the first slide? Baby? I wasn't experious. I mean no,
I know it's but I'm not going to do it
because it seems like a lot of world. Okay, I
know this isn't role playing in the classical sense, but
still working it from all sides, ridiculous or not is helping.
(02:53):
It just takes the heaviness out of it? What about
a like a interpretive dance and no altisic dance, So
no doing interpretive dance. I'm sorry, I don't have any
realian What if what if I do like a like
(03:15):
a mind routine like I mind it, or like charades?
I just don't have any serious answer. No, I know,
I'm I mean, look, if you don't have any serious answers,
you don't have any serious answers, because really the only
serious answer is to be direct and open hearted, even
though it's scary as hell. My inner therapist would tell
(03:37):
me to try to understand why telling my family I
am autistic fills me with dread? What's the worry? And
how can I honor that anxiety without succumbing to it?
I mean, I guess part of it is like you
have to think the best of people, right, Like in
order to mitigate your own anxiety, you have to kind
(03:58):
of be like these people are my family, they love
me in a particular way, and hopefully like whatever I
talk to them about, I'm not telling them I'm going
to jail, you know, or I committed a crime. It's
like there's two ways to go in. One is like
self protected, like I have to set boundaries and protect
(04:19):
myself because like, this isn't going to go well. It's
like if you're telling your vandolphal parents that you're gay
or like, that's one way to go in, and another
way to go in is like I like just clean minded,
like clear minded, and a third way to go in
would be like expect the best. So that's the spectrum.
(04:40):
I was really split about this. One voice in my
head was telling me, just get on with it already,
you giant baby, tell your family, what's the big deal,
And the other voice was like, oh, yeah, no, this
is going to go very badly indeed, And that's reflective
of our family dynamics. See, my family is a particular
kind of supportive. If I needed to get out of
(05:03):
a legal jam, or I wanted help painting my apartment
or planting my garden, then yeah, they're all about and
that's not nothing. But we don't all sit around and
gas bag about our feelings. Emotional problem solving really isn't
our jam. But if I was going to divulge, it
was going to have to get emotional. You're listening to
(05:30):
the loudest girl in the world, who is not that
granny in line with you at the bakery, telling you
all about her favorite types of lemon bars. It's me
Lauren over The Loudest Girl in the World is a
show about finding yourself broken in a pretty dark place
and emerging from that place a mostly glued back together person.
(05:54):
A few weeks before Thanksgiving, my producer writer put an
event on my calendar for November twenty fifth. The name
of the event was Shruggy Emoticon upside down question mark
Lauren comes Out to Family question mark Shruggy Emoticon. I mean,
Rider puts so much care and thought into the event title,
how could I back out? At this point I had
(06:17):
already told Hannah and a handful of friends, and I
was even many months into making this actual show, and
I still hadn't told the OBErs. But I had to
so part of this process, both in the making of
the podcast and also just irel in your life. Is
(06:38):
you telling your parents that's Rider audio producer to the Stars.
How do you feel about that? It feels super scary
for reasons that I can't quite put my finger on,
but which maybe you can help me put my finger on.
It feels m I don't know, it just feels like
(06:58):
a little bit old to be having a revelation for
your parents. You know, Well, that's just ages towards me.
There's no right age to come out about anything but
real talk. I'm just not good at having hard conversations
about me, which Rider knows because she's heard me have
a million of them, each one more embarrassing than the next.
(07:21):
That's one sort of hallmark for me is that, like
it's a lot of like I'm telling you a thing,
but I'm not actually inviting any questions, and you want
something different. Wow, I feel like I don't know. I mean,
my gut feels like I just want to like tell
them and then like run away. You know. I think
(07:41):
it's because I worry about the judgment that I don't
want to have to face the judgment. Like I want
to tell you the thing, but I don't want to
be judged for it, and then I it's like too
vulnerable to engage with it. What kind of judgments do
you think might come up? I guess I worry that
(08:02):
they'd be like what are you talking about? You know,
the same as I've had for other people, you know,
sort of No, You're not like you're fine, You have
a job. This that all of the things that people
with a subtle autism presentation experience, you know, like when
(08:22):
you tell people something like that, it's not just yours anymore.
It becomes the other person's story or a bit of information,
and they get to decide what they want to do
with that, and if they want to ignore it, they can,
if they want to engage with it in a positive way,
(08:45):
like there are lots of choices that people have when
somebody tells them something, And so I think part of
it for me is that there's too much that I
can't anticipate, Like I have massive anticipatory anxiety even just
talking about this, in thinking about the prospect of it,
(09:06):
even though you're making me do it, it's like very
stressful to think about. Writer is making me do it,
and I will hold it against her for the rest
of my days. But also I am a person with
agency and this is important for me to do. Writer
and I agreed that the day after Thanksgiving I would
(09:28):
have some chat skis with Kathy Russ and rj aka mom,
dad and brother. So much for me bum rushing the
best buy on Black Friday. I would instead be telling
my family a hard thing. Thanks writer. I emailed the
family and told them I had something I wanted to
tell them about. I let them know that the topic
(09:48):
was a sensitive one for me. That's what my buddy
and a sale author of the book Let's Talk About
Hard Things, told me to do. Christ Almighty. Just writing
that little email out was hard. Now I actually have
to go through with telling them the hard thing. It
would have been better if they had all declined because
they were busy perming their hair or organizing their paperweight
(10:10):
collection or something. But everyone agreed to stick around after dinner,
so I had to go through with it, or did I.
A few days before Thanksgiving, I called up my pal
Becca and hopes that she might be able to ease
my nerves around the whole situation. Becca's my ex partner,
(10:30):
and yes we're still great friends. And yes, I know
that's a lesbian stereotype. Big whoop. I I'm making a
like a red lunt hole happening Special is quite flavorful
and it's it's very super season right now. It's very
like like I like blah, everything is terrible. I've been
(10:54):
feeling really bad about the weather turning and endless COVID
and how hard. This journey of reckoning had been and
I was being a real eore off his meds about it.
But Becca knew the right thing to say. If you
go and you come out to your paris, it's hard,
and it will probably be hard or the reactions and
I can feel good. You can just call me well,
(11:16):
I really appreciate it. I mean I will. So I
had a plan. I emailed my family to let them
know I wanted to have a conversation with them. My
autism support human slash girlfriend Hannah was down to be
there with me, and Becca offered her emotional phone of
friends support. So I was well on my way to
(11:36):
gathering up all my courage and stealing myself for the
great autism reveal of twenty twenty one. But then I
had a very intense setback. I fully melted down. The
bad feelings really dug in on this one. It happened
the day before Hannah and I drove to Pittsburgh for
the holiday. I was racing to finish a work project
(11:59):
and feeling generally overwhelmed by the prospect of heading out
of town. Because nothing grinds my gear is quite like
a highway rest stop before a holiday Also, I remember
that it was exactly one year since my diagnosis. Naturally,
I had some feelings about that. So we had all
the ingredients for a deluxe sized meltdown. Because I've gotten
(12:22):
into the habit of documenting myself being a SADO, I
pulled out my phone and hit record today is the
diagnosis adversary in one year since I got my results back?
And this is not this state that I wanted to
(12:43):
be in when you know, a year later, still trying
to figure out how the process isn't even how to
like tell my family, and I think I have to
abort the mission because I don't think it's wise in
this time to try to shoe or something like that
(13:04):
in at a very at a time that's already going
to be quite stressful for everyone. I really felt like
I needed to pack it in. This was not my time.
My brother and sister in law were traveling to Pittsburgh
for the first time with my two year old nephew,
and my mom had just gotten a puppy, so three
(13:28):
quarters of my family was already preloaded for maximal anxiety.
Even if it wasn't a holiday, it was already a
powder keg just waiting for a spark. I texted Rider
and told her I couldn't go through with it. It
was just too much to tell my family on mass
I would rather eat a barrel of a rugolo with
(13:48):
a chaser of capers than sit mom, dad, and little
brother down to tell them this. I could maybe handle
it if I did it one by one, but not
all in a group, No way. My stress level was
at an eleven just considering the proposition. Rider wrote back
that it was no big deal and I should take
my time with it. Girlfriend Hannah, on the other hand,
(14:11):
was not going to let me off the hook. She
was like, don't be a weansickle, you're doing it. I mean,
sometimes you just need a person to push you out
of an airplane when you're skydiving for the first time.
Hannah is that person. So after the break, I free
fall into the Great Autism Reveal of twenty twenty one
(14:33):
and it goes, well, you'll see, I have never cared
much for holidays. They're always too unpredictable, too unwieldy, too sad,
too prescribed, just too much and they always kick up
(14:56):
a huge cloud of anxiety for me. So right off
the bat, Thanksgiving isn't my favorite day, and not just
because of its genocidal origin story. Also, Thanksgiving is an
eating holiday, and eating is not one of my favorite hobbies. Also,
I'm a vegetarian, so turkey, stuffing and gravy will never
(15:16):
touch my plate. One of the only things I actually
like about this particular holiday is the jellied cranberry sauce
in a can that no one else in my family
will eat but me. Also, green beans. I love green beans.
I really enjoyed beans, like green beans, Like that makes
(15:38):
amazing green beans. I really like to use green beans.
That is the one thing my children lively eat for
their tire. I think they're one of the best. To me,
they're the best. But makes these crispy green beans with
like a dijon. What is the sauce? I think we
have all your ten thousand times. Yeah, we have it
at your house. Oh yeah right. And if that isn't
(15:59):
riveting dinner conversation fair, I don't know what is. Other
dinner table topics included my nephews daycare. We pay extra
for him. Best, that's cute. The provenance of Hannah's rugs
and a jacket Hannah and I saw on a visit
to Marshals earlier in the day. The color was like
(16:19):
a mauve puce. Was not attractive. It was like a
fancy brick. We also chatted briefly about the foods my
mother cannot stand now, what about eggplant which seems also
similarly Oh that and sweet potatoes. Yeah, they're the things
that really grabbed me at ps Cathy's fibbing big time.
(16:41):
Her list of off limits foods includes basically all dishes
flavored with curry powder, humin, and cardamom, and anything with
a whiff of watermelon. Anyway, I was glad for all
this Thanksgiving small talk. It helped distract me from the
anxiety fog that was rapidly descending on me. But at
some point the meal had to end and I just
had to get on with it. So after a delicious
(17:04):
dessert of cranberry sauce from a can for me and
homemade pumpkin pie for everyone else, we cleaned up the dinner,
sent my nephew to bed, and reconvened around the table.
And then it was time. It was just my dad Russ,
my mom, Kathy, and my brother RJ. No in laws,
(17:27):
no step parents, and of course Hannah was there doing
her best Autismo junior stand in routine. Oh how I
long for autism pleasant Phil. In this moment, we were
all sitting around my mom's tiger maple dining room table,
Hannah to my right, Russ Catty corner to my left,
Mom and brother directly across from me. My two recorders
(17:50):
were like table center pieces, awkwardly perched between us. Russ
is a lawyer, so he couldn't help but look like
he was primed to rebut opposing counsel's arguments. R J
is a cool guy, so he was leaning back in
his chair enjoying a beer. Kathy, the quiet one, sat
neatly with her hands folded in her lap. The mood
(18:12):
was one of curious amusement. I started the conversation off
in a way that Anna's sale I'm pretty sure would
not have endorsed, with a lazy, half hearted joke. I
feel like very nervous about this, and I feel like, like,
you know, it's this is like a hard thing to
talk about for me, and I just wanted to let
(18:35):
you guys know that I'm gay. You know, I'm for
quite a while just sea, yeah, somebody kill me now.
So so basically, like I had been feeling for a
long time, like like something like was off, like mental
(18:55):
health wise, or it wasn't quite like just was overly sensitive,
or lots of things about like just not like flowing right.
And then you know, I would talk to my therapist
about it, and and you know, it didn't like didn't
seem anything, you know, like diagnosed for or whatever. And
(19:18):
then and then when the pandemic happened, I kind of
like lost my shit. I mean, you know how the
spiel goes. You've heard it before, and at this point,
I've repeated it a bunch of times. I should have
been sort of on autopilot, but I wasn't. I was
passing through every word so so carefully, trying to be
(19:40):
as specific as possible. I didn't want there to be
any confusion about what I was saying. Listening back to
the tape, I realized I don't fully remember this moment.
At some point in the telling, I think I just dissociated,
not clinically, just that my words were trying to thread
the finest of needles while my brain was sizzling in
(20:02):
my skull. I couldn't make eye contact, though that's no
big surprise. I just kept looking at this weird print
of a crow wearing boots that Kathy had hanging over
her mantle on the recording. I noticed my voice is
uncharacteristically thin and shaky, and so I ended up going
(20:24):
to a psychologist and taking a number of tests for autism,
and and I have an autism diagnosis. Oh man, I
did it. I revealed my hard thing, And so I
(20:44):
wanted to tell you guys about that, because obviously you're
my family and I love you, and I've been trying
to figure out how to navigate like the next forty
three years of my life. Knowing that the troubles that
I was having and the things that are difficult, a
lot of them can be chopped up to this diagnosis.
(21:07):
In retrospect, this would have been in a great moment
for me to pause and wait for a response, but
that's not what happened. I kept going. I was basically
like a human Wikipedia page for autism. I told them
everything I knew about the condition, about cultural tropes and
the underdiagnosis of girls and women, and the mental health
(21:28):
challenges that can go hand in hand with autism. Then,
after talking at them for eleven straight minutes, also not
something in a sale would endorse. I waited for someone
to respond. Finally, my mom, Cathy, tapped in, well, I
think it's very brave if you just to talk about it.
I see that it's very painful for you to go
(21:50):
through this and to talk to your family about really
get that, and it makes me sad too, And personally,
I really don't know much about autism or aspergers. I
really don't think I know anyone other than Jacob, and
(22:11):
so I don't have any basis to make a comment
on how you fit in to that diagnosis or that
I understand it because I don't. Yeah, don't. Listening to
this months later, I don't know so much that it's
brave to tell my family I'm autistic. Sure it's scary,
(22:35):
and sure there are steaks. But more than anything, the
reveal seems post brave. I don't even really seem to
have that much control over it. The reveal felt imperative,
as if I was compelled by a force larger than
myself that I cannot see or name to show the
full measure of my humanity to the people who raised me.
(22:58):
In that way, the revelation feels every bit as critical
as breathing air or drinking water, but exponentially more terrifying
because you're asking to be seen, and how many of
us truly feel seen. Luckily, right off the bat, Kathy
seemed to at least try to see. I mean, some
(23:20):
of the things that you were saying, I really I
agree with I see. I see your sensitivity to noise,
and I see your sensitivity to smells and textures. You
always have had that for me. I always was aware
that there was some issue. I didn't have a name
(23:41):
for it. I didn't understand it. I knew you were struggling, yeah,
and I had no idea that it was part of
an autism issue. I didn't have the knowledge to to
know what it might be, or to even think to
(24:02):
take you for testing. I mean, I just it wasn't
a thing we did. Nobody would have backed that. Little
girls like me didn't register as kids who needed support
or accommodations. So I can hardly blame my parents for
not getting me help, because what help was there to get.
I don't really remember how I felt when my mom
(24:24):
said these words because dissociation, but hearing them now, I
feel heartened. I appreciate that in the moment Kathy could
mirror at least some of my challenges. It meant that
she was at least trying to engage with what I
was ham handedly telling them. I continued explaining to my
family the ins and outs of autism and the way
(24:45):
my movement through the world was so much different than theirs,
Like the sensitivity goes way beyond and it's like I've
learned that a lot of my anger and sort of
aggression or hostility, how will we come from both the
anxiety of having so many feelings and not an understanding
and how to express them. But also there's a thing
(25:07):
that particularly women who are autistic too, It's like you're
trying so hard to do all of the right things.
You're trying hard to communicate in the way that everybody
else says, and you're trying hard to fix your body
in your face, and all of these things. You're thinking
about them all the time, and then it is absolutely
exhausting and you're just laid out. At this point, I
(25:29):
was sweating through my pants and trying desperately to sit
still and not rock back and forth while the three
of them stared back at me. My dad Ross is
the scariest star in the history of staring. He's a
trial lawyer and a former prosecutor, and I'm pretty sure
he could stare me into an admission of guilt for
a crime I most assuredly did not commit. So just
(25:53):
picture a man boring his eyeballs into the back of
your brain when you hear this. So, now that you've
revealed this to us, how would you like this will
treat you differently from the way we've treated you as well.
I don't think it's differently. I appreciate the question. I mean,
I think it's more just like an understanding of like
(26:17):
how I moved through the world and how I have
moved through the world for the last like forty three years,
which is that, like things have been very hard, and
you know, I've had a real jagged work history, and
and I'm not saying it's because of that necessarily, but like,
you know, even though like I work hard, and I
work hard, and I work hard, like I often feel
(26:39):
like I'm being in my head against a wall, and
I've you know, I've had some really bad dark times
around that, and so just sort of knowing like, yeah,
like I have a little bit of a different neurology
and doesn't require like anybody to do anything or just
(27:01):
like just an understanding. I think as we continued, I
started to feel like they got it, or at least
we were scratching the surface. Rush asked me about my
coping strategies and workplaces, and I told him how I'd
instituted a rule where I no longer work with incompetent assholes.
(27:21):
Also therapy, lots of therapy. We dipped into my executive
functioning challenges with punctuality and memory, and we talked about
emotional dysregulation and the anger that comes from routinely being misunderstood.
It seemed like it was going okay. I mean I
still wanted to bolt out of the room, but at
(27:41):
least it was less awkward than the start. Then some
number of beers in. My brother RJ confronted me about
the impact my anger had on him. Yeah. I was
just a little kid starting to kind of understand. Yeah,
the world around me I was looking up to all
the time, and that intolerance for you know, a sound
(28:05):
or habit or a behavior that often was coming from me, Yeah,
came out in like extreme aggression, and it made me think, like,
what the fuck is wrong with me. No, I mean
it is like I remember, like you used to wear
your keys on your belt, not a great look, but
(28:27):
not a great look now. But my chairs bear the scars,
let me tell you. Like the sound of the keys
jingling was like un manageable for me, and I would
be like, like, it builds up, builds up, builds up,
and then it gets really trying personal when it comes out. Yeah,
(28:48):
but you're trying to tamp it down. It's like you
would be listening to your music and I could hear
the music bleeding out and you're trying, and you're trying
and trying to ignore it, try to ignore, trying to ignore,
try to ignore, and then it bubbles over and it
comes out probably ex ressive, and I feel terrible about that,
but I remember all of those moments. I remember one
time Kathy was singing in the card in a low
(29:10):
saying and I could not I hate it. I hate
it so much. It's it's it's it's if she's blash,
she's singing so loud, it would not bother me at all.
It's the low, it's low, it's frequency saying. It's and
you can't control it. If I could control that if
I could ignore those things, I totally would. Why Why
(29:32):
does anybody want to be saddled with that? Nobody wants
to be thinking about those things all the time. It's
awful and so yeah, like you're suppressing all of that.
And then when the bubbalo, it's like, awful, you don't
be yelling at somebody for the headphones or the keye strangling,
like I feel terrible like that. It comes off as
(29:53):
like who the fuck is this person wants? Wrong with them?
Like shut up about it? But you probably didn't have
that reaction with with people who were younger than you're.
Very often that was me, where it's like I don't
know what's right. This person's older than me, everything is wrong.
Those are some hard pills to swallow. My brother had
(30:14):
clearly been holding onto some stuff for many, many years,
and I feel awful about that, truly I do. But
I also can't help the way my brain works, the
way some sounds just send my body into fight mode,
because in the fight flight or freeze paradigm of self protection,
I am a fighter. And if I had known then
(30:37):
what I know now, well then we'd all be in
a better place. Hindsight's a real jerk, so we should
probably take a little break to process. So turns out
(30:59):
it's not that easy to field comments and questions and
critiques from the family. Thankfully, my stand in emotional support
human Hannah was there to ease the tension and to
pinch hit a few questions. Can I ask you, guys,
does any but any of you see anything I mean,
I know this is all new, but anything that you
remember throughout all of your years of being in a
(31:22):
family foreign and that you would evaluate or think of differently. Well,
of course it was a whole school thing. I mean
her quote disruptive behavior. There was no mean intent behind it.
She could not manage herself in a classroom setting and
(31:43):
not being able to be the one who was talking.
That always stood out. And also through the years in
her jobs, having difficulties in every work environment with one
particular person or another. And it's what you said, it
was they were incompetent, they couldn't do their job, and
(32:03):
they were telling you to do something that you could
do better or that you knew wasn't right. The things
that's two big things that stand out for me. What
about other kids? Just curiosity? Lauren had a difficult time
connecting with kids. Always from the time she was young,
when we would have play dates and stuff, and she'd
(32:26):
want to play her own thing, and the girls that
came over would want to do something different. Even now,
as a person with forty plus years in the can,
it's hard to hear that I sucked at play dates
because I was a genuinely lonely kid. I spent a
lot of time by myself. If it weren't for my
athletic abilities and the fact that I was on a
(32:48):
million teams, I'm pretty sure I would have gone my
entire childhood with no real peer interaction. I just didn't
really know how to friend. As we were getting to
the end of our chat, my younger brother RJ asked
a question, This has been like a process of understanding
yourself that's been going on for a while, and I'm
curious how it compares to, you know, twenty years removed
(33:11):
your experience coming out. Oh, because you started this with
a joke, like, guys, I'm good. I know it's kind
of a coming out, Sure it is. I just think
of it as like, I mean, it sounds cheesy to
say that, it's sort of like letting in, Like I
don't feel like I'm revealing anything that I feel ashamed
(33:31):
of or anything like that. I feel like we're all
We're all the same page. You know. I remember with
great priority you and I having that first conversation. Oh yeah,
and I remember I remember telling you that I you know,
I love you and I just want you to be happy.
And I feel the same way right now. Yeah, it
doesn't mean anything in terms of how we feel or
(33:54):
treat you. In that moment, after I said what I
needed to say and my family heard me, I felt relief.
I never have to do that again. Though working myself
up into a ladder was mostly for not as these
things tend to go. But after the big reveal, which
was not so much a bombshell as it was a
tiny grenade, I felt a little hollow. I was so
(34:18):
wrapped up and getting the telling right that I forgot
about me. What did I actually want from the reveal
beyond just a basic exchange of information? And what I
realized later is that I want to be treated differently.
I need to be treated differently. When my dad asked
(34:38):
me the question earlier about how the family should regard
me in light of this new information, here's how I
should have responded. I want to have this revelation inform
how I'm considered. I want my particular brain to be
taken into account. I want my neurobiology to be understood,
if not embraced. But what I really want and have
(35:03):
no business asking for, is that all of my family's
bad feelings about me, that I'm judge mental or aggressive
or overly opinionated, be seen through this new lens. I
don't want them to think of me as insolent or obnoxious.
I don't want to be fixed in their brains as
difficult or selfish. I want them to see how hard
(35:25):
it's been for me, and to really digest all the
ways I have to fold myself into a little origami
version of me just to appear normal. I want an
abundance of empathy and I want to be enveloped by it,
and I want every little Lauren out there to have
the same, and maybe over time that can happen. But
(35:47):
I suspect that before I am swaddled in compassion, I
have to have compassion for myself. I have to accept
who I am. I didn't ask to be this way,
but I am this way all the same. I am
a middle aged autistic lesbian with too many houseplants, not
enough self control, and a whole lot of life left
(36:07):
to live. God swelling. But in order to get on
with the business of living, there's one more thing I
have to do. I have to absolve myself. I have
to send shame packing. I have to be okay to
feel things, and I need to enlist the help of
an ex girlfriend, a dying squirrel, and a Grammy nominated
(36:31):
musician to make all that happen. You've been listening to
the Loudest Girl in the World. It's hosted, written in
executive produced by me Lauren Obert. Our senior producer is
Writer Alsop. Our associate producer is David John. Sophie Crane
(36:54):
is our showrunner and senior editor. Jay Gorski is our
mix engineer. Music composed by my autistic Kiwie Palell the
Inimitable Lady Hawk. Our artwork was created by the autistic
illustrator Loretta Ipsum, was fact checked by Andrea Lopez Cruzado,
and our autism consultant is Sarah Cappett. Our executive producers
(37:16):
are Mia Lobelle and LEETM. Lulat Big. Thanks to my family, Russ,
Kathy and RJ for taking in all the hard Thanks
love you, guys, and special thanks to Jessica Chamberlain and
Heather Kenyon for sharing their hard things with us even
(37:37):
though we didn't end up using them. And thanks to
you friend for listening.
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