(And no, there’s no social skills training in there. Neurotypicals – it’s your turn to realise you communicate weirdly.)

Nothing About Us Without Us
– understanding your rights, using your voice, co-production and collective action
Access All Areas
– access riders, positively understanding yourself, advocating for reasonable adjustments
Two Truths and a Lie
– navigating your digital life and legacy, online vulnerability and hate, what is an online ‘friend’

Digital life and legacy is particularly close to my heart this week, particularly with what’s happening in the USA to transgender people and those with disabilities/differences, especially autism and ADHD.

Whilst the response to my ‘The Story Sanctuary’ proposal has been overwhelmingly positive, I’ve come under fire from a few who are still aggrieved that libraries have been closed in Croydon. Their anger has legitimised them to cast aspersions and lie about who I am and my intentions online.

It’s best ignored, but also, argh, is it? It’s about me, on the internet, and on its way to becoming fact, and at any point, it could be amplified or preferenced as fact over what’s true about me.

Can I ignore it? Should I?

As a young (or older) autistic / AuDHD person – deep-thinking, sensitive, with a strong moral compass – it’s overwhelmingly complex and painful to navigate a digital life. It is tricky to understand the consequences of what you post online and your subsequent (lack of) ability to control it.

Worse still is the lack of agency over what others post about you – not just your peers – we have the first generation of teenagers who have to live with a digital footprint that their parents created for them, often from birth, sharing all sorts of intimacies on Facebook and blogs without their knowledge or consent. This issue is particularly poignant for how we discuss and expose autistic kids, showing meltdowns in particular.

It’s not been that easy for me as an adult show pony. The internet is littered with previous iterations of myself (and things I’ve shared about Bea, my teen) that I no longer feel comfortable with and cannot get rid of (Huffington Post, I’m fed up with emailing you to request deletion of my blogs to zero response).

Bea also has to live with that. They have to process that as part of their story, their digital legacy, that they didn’t have an opportunity to control. My heart hurts.

As A Collective, we expressly understand the value of being autistic role models – show not tell – sharing our experiences (good and bad) and how they make us feel to create more meaningful learning for autistic young people. Being vulnerable and strong: making mistakes and modelling how we move forward, feeling big emotions about the things we can’t control.

I’m not an expert on Dick Whittington. That’s another Jill Finch.

She may or may not be Jill Finch, City of London tour guide, the only other Jill Finch with more than a few Google results. Who knows.

The ‘Dick Whittington me’ will feature in our course material for Two Truths and a Lie. It’s an innocent error: someone was told to grab a photo of Jill Finch off the internet, and they grabbed the wrong one.

Overall, this example of mistaken identity is relatively harmless. It’s amusing to me, and members of our Youth Hub think it’s hilarious. It’s a good icebreaker to get onto the more difficult conversations about handling something like that when it’s more malicious.

After this week, I’m also now “utter Croydon crony tosh” Jill, “exploiting Croydon’s residents by wanting a library for personal gain” Jill, “didn’t go to the meetings” Jill, and I’m “you clearly have no idea about the strength of feeling. That doesn’t bode well.” Jill.

(That last one is a tiny bit too ominous for my comfort.)

People say, “just ignore it” but many autistic people find that incredibly hard.

Preaching resilience and a growth mindset at kids, particularly autistic kids, telling them to move on without sitting with them and holding what they’re experiencing, is one of the most ‘othering’ things trusted adults do.

It is a very different process to walk together and understand how to ‘sit in the grey’ with the consequences of our (very online and) autistic existence and keep going: grief, rest, iterative talking and processing, slow learning, forgiveness, community and radical self-care.

I’m hoping our new courses for autistic young people help them do this, developing a sense of self-worth that celebrates their integrity, accepts their mistakes, and fosters the adaptive skills and strengths that will protect them lifelong.

Somewhat like Dick Whittington?