Alaina Leary

I told Winnie that I was queer before I told anyone human—late at night, in my room, after writing it down in my journal. “You won’t stop loving me if I’m gay, will you?” I asked him. He replied with his signature loud meow.

September, for the first time in many years, wasn’t the start of any new beginnings. I’ve been in some form of school — general education in public schools, then an undergraduate degree, and then a graduate degree — since I was in preschool.

Welcome to #RavsWriters, an opportunity for you to get to know some of th

We think of holidays and big moments first when we think about death. What we don’t talk about are the little moments in between, like surviving Autumn.

It’s helpful if you talk to your disabled loved ones to see what works for them. My family and friends have always been great at figuring out accessibility.

The education system isn’t designed for students like me. From as early as preschool up through my master’s degree, I struggled in a traditional classroom setting for a few reasons, and needed to adapt my own methods of surviving education.

Moving can be a traumatic experience. We often forget how many remnants of the past we hold onto—whether intentionally or accidentally, just because we put a letter away in a drawer and forgot about it.

I have a lifetime of momless moments ahead of me, but I’ve prepared for those since her death. What I hadn’t prepared for was that I’d have to celebrate one of those milestones on a day that I typically spend in mourning.

"Writing about trauma or difficult experiences doesn’t repair that trauma,” said Melanie. “It doesn’t make it go away. But I kept hearing what a transformative thing it was for [the memoirists] to shape these stories into something that they could be proud of.”

Halloween can be an autistic person’s worst nightmare with the sensory overload. Yet, I'm autistic and Halloween is my favorite time of year.