A blind autistic woman's life

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08/05/2026

I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting since my autism and ADHD diagnosis in July 2026.

And one of the hardest realizations has nothing to do with sighted people.

It has to do with my own community.

Some of the most painful rejection I’ve ever experienced came from fellow blind people.

The same people who talked endlessly about equal treatment.

The same people who wanted society to stop judging them.

The same people who knew what oppression felt like.

Some of those very people turned around and did the exact same thing to anyone who was different from them.

For over twenty-five years, I was on blind chat lines and blind social platforms.

People didn’t just disagree with me.

They followed me.

They’d come from room to room.

They’d organize little campaigns trying to get me kicked off platforms instead of doing something incredibly simple…

Blocking me.

Think about that.

If someone online bothers me, I block them.

Apparently that wasn’t enough.

Some people wanted me erased.

They mocked my prosthetic eyes.

My own blind peers.

They mocked the way I talked.

They mocked my personality.

They mocked my emotions.

They mocked my parenting.

They brought up my son over and over again, despite the fact that not one of them had to live my life.

Not one of them had to make my decisions.

Not one of them had to ride trains across the country to see their child.

Not one of them had to stand in my shoes.

Yet somehow they appointed themselves experts on my motherhood.

Here’s the irony.

Many of the loudest critics had never faced the situations they were judging.

Some had never lived independently.

Some had never raised children.

Some had never navigated custody.

Some had never been forced to choose between two impossible outcomes.

But they always had an opinion about mine.

For years I believed there was something fundamentally wrong with me.

Now I know there wasn’t.

I was autistic.

I have ADHD.

I spent decades masking because I thought if I could just act “normal” enough, people would finally leave me alone.

They didn’t.

So I’m done.

I’m done apologizing for the way I communicate.

I’m done apologizing because I take words seriously.

I’m done apologizing because my body processes the world differently.

I’m done shrinking myself to make insecure people comfortable.

The beautiful thing about getting diagnosed at 44 is that it answered questions I’d been asking my whole life.

I wasn’t “too much.”

I wasn’t “crazy.”

I wasn’t “broken.”

I was neurodivergent in communities that often demanded conformity while preaching acceptance.

That’s a painful truth.

Disability doesn’t automatically make someone compassionate.

Being marginalized doesn’t automatically stop someone from marginalizing others.

I’ve learned that the hard way.

So here’s where I stand today.

If you don’t like me…

Block me.

Seriously.

Use the button.

Go in peace.

You don’t have to follow me from room to room.

You don’t have to obsess over my life.

You don’t have to build little hate clubs because I exist differently than you do.

I’m not masking anymore.

I’m not auditioning for acceptance anymore.

I’m not asking permission to exist anymore.

My son is 19 years old.

He’s serving in the United States Air Force.

He’s healthy.

He’s loved.

He’s building his own life.

Looking back, I know I made the right decisions for him, even when strangers decided they knew better.

The people who mattered most are still here.

The rest were just noise.

And after all these years…

I’m finally free of needing that noise to approve of me.

07/22/2026

Today, something happened that has changed the way I understand my entire life.

It’s official.

After a little over two hours of interviews, developmental history, questionnaires, and observation, I was formally diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder and ADHD by a clinician. She had already reviewed all of the questionnaires I completed beforehand, and during the appointment she asked me question after question while also observing me on camera—how I communicated, how I thought, how I responded, and how I described my life.

I don’t think I’ve fully processed it yet.

I feel relieved.

I feel stunned.

I feel excited.

I feel shocked.

More than anything, I feel understood.

Over the last year, I’ve done an enormous amount of soul-searching. I built timelines, wrote journals, mapped memories, studied my own developmental history, and spent countless hours trying to understand why my brain worked the way it did. I wasn’t looking for a label to collect. I was trying to find the explanation that best matched my life.

This diagnosis wasn’t something I chased casually. It came after a lot of reflection and after realizing that autism and ADHD explained lifelong developmental patterns that trauma alone never fully accounted for.

Looking back now, so many memories make sense through a different lens.

The times I didn’t have friends.

The times I said something that sounded blunt or harsh without understanding why people were upset.

The way I took language literally.

My need for routines and structure.

My deep interests.

The way I organized memories.

The masking.

The feeling of always being “different” without knowing why.

I sought this evaluation for myself—not because I needed permission to exist, but because I wanted internal validation. I wanted to know whether the story I’d been putting together was actually true.

For years, I wondered if I had some vague “mental illness.” There is absolutely nothing wrong with living with mental illness, and people deserve compassion and support. But for me, that framework never quite fit. What fit was a lifelong neurodevelopmental profile that had gone unrecognized, in part because I was blind and so many of my differences were explained away through that lens.

My full diagnostic report and clinician’s letter are on their way, and I’m looking forward to reading them.

For now, I’m just sitting with the realization that the little girl who spent her life wondering why she felt different wasn’t imagining it.

She wasn’t broken.

She wasn’t failing.

She was autistic.

And today, at 44 years old, someone finally recognized her.

07/17/2026

Yesterday I completed over 200 questions for my autism and ADHD evaluation and submitted everything through the portal. There were pages and pages of questions about my childhood, relationships, sensory issues, routines, emotions, communication, special interests, and how my brain works. Jose even filled out a family questionnaire about me.

Next Wednesday is my official evaluation.

At this point, it doesn’t feel like I’m trying to figure out if I’m autistic.

It feels like I’m finally making official something I’ve known in my heart for a very long time.

We paid $1,300 for this evaluation, and honestly, I believe it’s going to change my life forever.

Not because it’s going to make me autistic.

Because it’s finally going to explain why I’ve experienced the world the way I always have.

Some of the screening scores came back very high for autism. I know those questionnaires are only one part of the evaluation, but answering them changed something inside me.

There was one section that absolutely broke me.

It kept asking questions about whether people disliked me.

Whether I had trouble fitting in.

Whether I felt rejected.

Whether people misunderstood me.

Over and over again, I had to answer…

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

I found myself crying while I was filling it out.

Not because the questions were cruel.

Because they were true.

The truth is, when I wasn’t masking, people often did dislike me.

I was told I was too loud.

Too emotional.

Too intense.

Too much.

Too opinionated.

Too sensitive.

And the saddest part is…

Most people have never actually known the real me.

They knew the version of me that was constantly editing herself.

The version that watched every word.

The version that apologized for existing.

The version that tried desperately to predict what everyone else wanted so she wouldn’t be rejected again.

That realization has been heartbreaking.

Would people have liked me if they’d seen my meltdowns?

Would they have stayed if they’d watched my brain freeze when I couldn’t think on my feet?

Would they have understood me if I hadn’t spent decades learning how to hide?

I don’t know.

And that’s a painful thing to sit with.

I’ve found myself crying in little waves ever since. Not sobbing. Just sitting quietly, thinking about everything, and suddenly tears start streaming down my face. Then, just as quickly, they stop.

I don’t think I’m crying because I’m sad.

I think I’m grieving.

I’m grieving the little blind girl who grew up surrounded by neglect, criticism, and chaos. The teenager who never understood why she always felt so different. The young woman who spent years trying to become someone people would finally accept.

When I entered the adult blind community, I honestly thought I had found my people.

Instead, I found myself hearing the same things I’d heard my whole life.

“You’re too much.”

“You’re too loud.”

“You’re too emotional.”

“You’re too intense.”

No matter how hard I tried, it always felt like I was somehow the problem.

When I was raising my son, people judged decisions I made while I was doing the very best I could with the knowledge and support I had. Their opinions cut deeply because I already questioned myself enough.

Even in online blind spaces, I became “that person.” On apps like Vorail, there were times people wanted me banned instead of simply muting me or choosing not to engage with me.

Imagine carrying that for years.

Imagine believing there must be something fundamentally wrong with you because everywhere you went, people made you feel like you were the one who didn’t belong.

For a long time…

I hated myself.

Not because I wanted to.

Because I believed what other people kept telling me.

Now, for the first time, I’m looking back at my life through a completely different lens.

It wasn’t because I wasn’t trying hard enough.

It wasn’t because I didn’t care enough.

It wasn’t because I was selfish or dramatic or “too much.”

My brain has simply been wired differently from the very beginning.

I’ve heard people ask, “Why would you want an autism diagnosis at 44?”

Because understanding yourself is never too late.

I’ve also heard people talk about autism like it’s a tragedy or a death sentence.

I don’t see it that way.

I’ve been autistic my whole life.

I’ve still laughed.

I’ve loved.

I’ve gotten married.

I’ve raised a son.

I’ve survived things that should have broken me.

I’ve built a life.

An evaluation doesn’t change any of that.

It simply gives a name to the person I’ve always been.

Next Wednesday isn’t about becoming someone new.

It’s about finally being understood.

And maybe, for the first time in my life…

Learning that the person I’ve spent all these years trying so hard to fix was never broken to begin with.

07/04/2026

I got Braille back.

A few days ago, I received an NLS eReader with a refreshable Braille display from the Braille and Talking Book Library. I honestly thought, “Cool, another piece of technology.”

I was completely unprepared for what happened next.

The second my fingers touched those dots, it was like twenty-one years disappeared. I haven’t used Braille regularly since I was about 23. I’m 44 now. I figured I’d forgotten most of it.

I hadn’t.

My fingers still remembered. They’re a little rusty, but they remembered.

What surprised me even more was how emotional it made me. So many memories came flooding back. As a kid, my house was chaos. There was yelling, fighting, addiction, anger… there was always something. But when I picked up a Braille book, all of that disappeared.

I didn’t just read books.

I lived in them.

I’d sit there gliding across those little dots while the world around me fell apart. Those pages gave me somewhere safe to go when home didn’t.

I’ve heard blind people say that Braille isn’t necessary anymore because we have screen readers, audiobooks, and AI.

I couldn’t disagree more.

Braille isn’t old-fashioned. It’s literacy.

VoiceOver is amazing, and I’ll always use it. But there’s something about Braille that speech can never replace. My fingertips hit the words before VoiceOver can even get a sentence out. I’m not waiting for someone else’s voice to feed me information. I’m reading it myself.

There’s something comforting about the repetition. Cell after cell. Word after word. Line after line. My hands know where to go. My brain settles down. Everything gets quieter.

Something else surprised me too.

When I write in Braille, I sound different.

Softer.

Calmer.

More like myself.

It’s hard to explain unless you’ve experienced it, but dictating feels like talking. Braille feels like thinking.

So I’m going to start journaling again. In Braille.

I have a feeling this little display is going to become one of the most important pieces of technology I’ve owned—not because it’s new, but because it gave me something back that I didn’t even realize I’d been missing.

Braille isn’t just dots.

For me, it’s home.

06/12/2026

I've been watching that show love on the spectrum. For my blind followers it is described on Netflix. Anyway, this show made me cry sometimes. I saw myself in these people. Not the intellectual disabilities. But a lot of the struggles are the same. I don't like how some of the people are infantilized. But parts of the show are very knowledgeable. Our power is out here in Chicago. I'm just in my kitchen using my Bluetooth speaker until it dies. They've been working on the power all day I guess. We've been without power for over 12 hours now. 

05/30/2026

2026 has been teaching me something unexpected.

I spent a lot of years putting away the things that brought me joy because they weren’t socially acceptable. I learned to care what everybody thought. I learned to explain myself. Defend myself. Shrink myself.

But lately I’ve been looking back at my life and realizing those things weren’t random.

The radio wasn’t random.

The Disney movies weren’t random.

The Michael Jackson albums weren’t random.

The Judy Garland records weren’t random.

The braille books, the boom boxes, the country music, the old TV shows, the fairy tales, the answering machines, the chat lines, the long walks with music in my ears—none of it was random.

Those things raised me.

When adults were absent, the stories stayed.

When people talked around me, the music stayed.

When I was lonely, the voices stayed.

I grew up listening to KYMX in Sacramento, singing songs from The Bodyguard, watching Designing Women and The Golden Girls, reading Narnia and The Boxcar Children, carrying baby dolls around the house, taking care of my brother, and building entire worlds inside my head.

I was the little girl with the radio.

I was the teenager with the CD wallet.

I was the young woman on telephone chat lines talking until sunrise.

I was Holly trying to survive.

I was TAMSIN taking notes.

And I was always Andrea.

Somewhere along the way I started treating the things I loved as evidence against me.

Too childish.

Too weird.

Too intense.

Too much.

But grief has a funny way of showing you what mattered.

What I miss isn’t just people.

I miss the joy.

I miss the wonder.

I miss the permission I once gave myself to love things completely.

So maybe that’s my theme for 2026.

Not becoming somebody new.

Coming home to the parts of myself I packed away.

The girl who still loves Michael Jackson and country music.

The girl who drinks RC Cola and goes for walks.

The girl who believes stories matter.

The girl who finds meaning in songs, voices, memories, and old movies.

People will always have opinions.

They always have.

I’m getting tired of carrying them.

I think I’d rather carry my joy.

05/05/2026

I’ve been thinking a lot about friendship lately.

I’ve only had one best friend in my life. That was back in fifth grade. That’s not an exaggeration.

Growing up, I always felt two or three years behind socially. Now I understand why.

I was in RSP (Resource Specialist Program), which means I was placed in separate classes for students who needed extra support. In reality, that often meant being separated from other kids most of the day.

At my public school, I wasn’t even fully in the main building. I was in a separate area—trailers with ramps. I was only around the “regular” kids for maybe an hour or two a day.

The rest of the time, I was off to the side.

By junior high and high school, I became invisible.

I would stand by the wall near the water fountain for 30 minutes at a time and not speak to a single person. Eight-hour school days would pass where the only people who talked to me were teachers.

Kids didn’t bully me much.

They just walked around me.

Like I was furniture.

I didn’t know how to join conversations. I didn’t understand how people were connecting so easily. No one explained the rules, and I wasn’t included enough to learn them by practice.

So I stayed quiet. I observed. I tried not to get it wrong.

And over time, you start to believe:
maybe you just don’t belong anywhere.

Now, as an adult in the blind community, something interesting has happened.

I’m no longer invisible.

People know me. Not in a “popular” way, but in a way where people have strong opinions about me.

Someone once told me I have a “polarizing personality.”

I didn’t know what that meant at the time.

Now I do.

It means people either really like me, or they really don’t.

And I’ve come to understand something important:

The people who don’t like me are often reacting to the fact that I don’t mask the way they expect.

They don’t like my autism.

Not in a dramatic way. Not something they would say out loud.

But in how I communicate. How direct I am. How I don’t smooth everything over the way people are used to.

It took me a long time to see that.

For most of my life, I thought:
I don’t know how to be a friend.
I don’t fit in.
Something is wrong with me.

But now I see a different pattern.

I wasn’t given the same chances to learn social skills.
I was separated, observed, and overlooked.
I learned how to survive social spaces, not how to move freely in them.

And now that I’m not invisible anymore, people are seeing me more clearly—but not everyone knows what to do with someone who isn’t masking in familiar ways.

I’m still figuring out what friendship looks like for me as an adult.

But I know this much now:

I wasn’t “bad at people.”

I was navigating a system that never fully included me in the first place.

04/24/2026

For most of my life, I thought I was the problem.

I thought I was lazy.
Too much.
Emotionally unstable.
Dependent.
Bad at life.
Secretly failing adulthood.

I thought I had mental illness because that was the only framework anyone seemed to have for me.

What I understand now is very different.

A huge amount of what I called personal failure was actually:

AuDHD + complex trauma + childhood neglect + blindness + repeated grief

all happening inside the same nervous system.

That is not self-esteem fluff.

That is historical accuracy.

I was a blind autistic ADHD child in environments that were sometimes beautifully structured and sometimes neglectful and chaotic.

I adapted.

Some of those adaptations saved me.
Some of them became painful later.

And child neglect belongs in the center of that story, not the margins.

Because neglect is sneaky.

People think neglect only means no food, obvious abandonment, dramatic visible harm.

But a lot of neglect looks like emotional needs not being noticed.
Adult burdens placed on a child.
No real developmental scaffolding.
Being called “fine” because you were quiet and capable.
Being managed instead of understood.

Especially when you’re a blind AuDHD child who is verbal, observant, and good at performing.

That child gets missed constantly.

People think:
she’s smart, she’s fine

Meanwhile, that child is building adulthood alone out of sitcoms, music, tone of voice, and pattern recognition.

That matters.

A lot.

One of the hardest truths is this:

I was not “late” because I failed.

I was late because my survival strategy worked just enough to hide the actual problem.

That’s brutal.

Because when adaptation works, people praise it.
They don’t ask what it costs.

And masking makes all of it worse.

When autism is hidden under intelligence, beauty, verbal skill, social performance, and caretaking roles, people don’t see disability.

They see “dramatic.”
“Particular.”
“Too sensitive.”

After enough years of that, you start diagnosing yourself as character flaws.

The grief matters too.

Repeated loss on top of unrecognized neurodivergence means your nervous system never really gets a normal baseline.

It becomes:

adapt → loss → adapt → suppress → perform → repeat

No wonder stillness feels like medicine.

No wonder repetition feels like oxygen.

No wonder relief feels unfamiliar.

This page is not about a symptom list.

It’s about life architecture.

And once you can see the architecture, shame starts losing its authority.

That’s the real work.

04/23/2026

1987. I’m five years old and my grandfather gives me a Fisher-Price tape recorder.

From that moment on, I record everything.

Voices. Doors opening and slamming. People talking. Silence in between. I’d play house by myself and create entire families—different voices, different personalities. I had sisters I made up called the Maldonados. I knew who they were. I could hear them. I could be them.

This was long before Facebook. Before iPhones. Before anyone had language for what I was doing.

Then I went to the California School for the Blind.

That’s where it really expanded.

APH tape recorders. Blank tapes. Friends’ voices. Late nights recording, rewinding, replaying. Building whole worlds out of sound. Carrying people with me through audio so I was never alone. Sound wasn’t background for me—it was presence. It was memory. It was how I understood everything.

If you look at my childhood pictures, I’m in dresses—hair done, looking pretty—and I’ve got big headphones on. Every time. I didn’t care how it looked. I needed it.

That was my system.

Sitcoms. Disney movies. Repetition. Music looping over and over. Not because I was stuck—because I was regulating. Because that’s how I stayed here.

I didn’t know any of this back then.

I just knew:
sound made me feel real.

Today something clicked.

Joy isn’t extra for me.
Joy is the engine.

When I have music, when I have rhythm, when I have my little “Bam Bam” moments—my brain comes online. My executive function works. I can move. I can think. I can be.

Without it, everything feels heavy.

And then I saw that autistic Barbie with the headphones.

And for the first time in my life, I felt seen in a way that went all the way back to that five-year-old girl with her tape recorder, building a world out of sound.

Turns out I wasn’t “in my own world.”

I was building one that could hold me.

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