Different Can Be Extraordinary

Haley Moss is an advocate, author, artist, attorney and openly autistic. She talks about what her experience has been with her disability and how she has gone on to push for more neurodiversity in society. 

Links from today's episode:

• Haley's website for all her advocacy work. https://haleymoss.net/
• An article Haley recommended about Neurodiversity as a competitive advantage.
• Drexel University has done comprehensive research on the factors that influence the life of those on the autism spectrum. Haley's referenced their findings in her work. You can learn more here.

Transcript

Haley Moss:   0:00
I think the dream is with all of these different things is that your voice doesn't need to be amplified and you don't have to tell your story. And you don't have to do this kind of work because we're already at a point that we're so accepting. So my favorite of a lot of non profits in the space often say that their dream is to put themselves out of business and while at the same time you're like 'No, you don't'. You're sitting there thinking, 'No, you don't because people will lose jobs and people need to make money and that's all very, very good and important.' But on paper, it's perfect that you want to go out of business because you don't want to be having a shout. Please employ people with disabilities. Please be friends with us. Please do this. Please do that.

Lexi Read:   0:35
Right, Right,  

Haley Moss:   0:36
...because we should be at a point that it's so accepting that we don't have to have these discussions.  

Lexi Read:   0:40
Yeah.

Haley Moss:   0:41
...and as much as I love what I do as well, I feel the same way that I hope to see a time when we don't need to scream and shout just to feel heard or beg to be included at a table that talks about us without us.

Lexi Read:   0:54
I'm Lexi,

Zach Read:   0:54
And I'm Zach

Lexi Read:   0:55
And you're listening to Proximity, a podcast where we examine the forces that draws closer and those that push us apart...one story at a time... Many people hear the word disability and probably think different. And to that, our guest today would probably say exactly what her mom told her when she was diagnosed with autism as a young kid. "Different isn't bad, it's just different. And in fact, it can be extraordinary." Our guest today is Haley Moss. She's an author, artist, attorney, activist, speaker, and she's also openly autistic. A few years ago, she made headlines as Florida's first openly autistic attorney. But she says that if that is all someone takes from her story, she is not doing her job... Here's Haley.

Haley Moss:   1:56
I was diagnosed with autism when I was three years old, and kind of the big hallmarks that I was showing at the time is that I wasn't speaking. I was crying and screaming as my only means of communication, and I wasn't really socializing with the other kids or making friends. But I was also able to do 100 piece jigsaw puzzles, and one of the big things that I've been told over and over was a couple stories from preschool. One: I didn't color inside the lines. I would just take the crayon and scribble everything. And two, I didn't quite know the right way to drink from a cup. So everyone knows that you kind of take it with your hand and I being the innovator that I was modeled after the dog and thought that you just, like, lick it like you lick everything like your dog And it definitely didn't seem correct for a three year old or a preschooler. So there were like, little things that kind of people were picking up on, and they recommended I get tested, and at first my mom kind of thought that it was gifted testing cause I was doing all these jigsaw puzzles and things like that, and I was also able to read the Dr Seuss books on TV. So she played the Dr Seuss videos, and I was a little follow along  and definitely understand what was going on. So the first time that they heard autism in 1997, I think it was a bit of a shock because at the time as well, the autism that we think of wasn't the big, varied spectrum that we think of now. We would think, because we didn't have that mainstream awareness, so to speak. We had Rain Man, we had Temple Grandin. That's it.  

Lexi Read:   3:24
Like Haley mentioned in 1997 there were a couple notable figures in popular culture, but in general, autism didn't have nearly the visibility or awareness that it does today. And it was in this environment that Haley began to pick up on how her world was just a little bit different than others.  

Haley Moss:   3:43
I just know that the world was very loud and very and there were a lot of adults in my world, so that was the one thing I knew like after getting diagnosed, because there were different speech therapists and occupational therapists, and we do a lot of play therapy. I just knew there were always a lot of adults around that wanted to hang out with me. That's kind of what I caught on to. But I don't remember when it  was that I realized that these people were there to help me and we're also getting paid to play with me. I think that was probably a much later in life revelation. And it's something that I think about now, especially cause I do get to hang out with different  professionals now that do work with young kids. Now I realize like, 'Oh', It's like that moment I think that kids have any, really that Santa isn't real.

Lexi Read:   0:00
Right...

Lexi Read:   4:23
When Haley was nine, her parents told her about her diagnosis of autism and what it meant. Most notably, they told her that if anything, it meant she was just like someone her nine year old self really looked up to...Harry Potter.  

Haley Moss:   4:39
It made perfect sense like I loved all the books. I love the movies. Harry, J. K. Rowling and I share the exact same birthday. Like everything about this, like lined up and nine year old me got sat down Monday during the summer after being told, "You have magical powers" and, of course, being nine years old, you buy it and my parents explained to me that 'different isn't bad or it's not better or worse. It's just different. It is not a bad thing. It's not better or worse, just different. Different can be extraordinary.' And talking about it in Harry Potter made a lot of sense because Harry doesn't fit in with the Muggles. And then he gets the Hogwarts in Wizarding school, and he doesn't quite fit in there, either, because he's the boy who lived. He has the scar, he's different and they all know he's different, so he doesn't really fit into either of these two worlds. But either way, he still beloved, and he's still the hero of the story. So I think it really made sensing it through that view, because Harry is very much celebrated in those, books in those stories. So I really did appreciate that, and I did identify very strongly with it.  

Lexi Read:   5:46
For Haley, her diagnosis wasn't a point of shame. It was the source of her magical powers, and she took pride in that fact. But even with that confidence in herself, she still had a little trouble navigating the social waters of childhood.  

Haley Moss:   6:03
I feel like I always struggled making friends. I don't think that's changed since I've gotten older, but growing up most of my friends were the boys because I love to play video games, and I didn't really identify with the girls and the different female social rules as much. So there were different rules about, like, cliques and what we would talk about and different interests that I didn't really hold. I didn't get into boys until later on. I wasn't really into the makeup and the girly-girl stuff right away. I mean, I love to shop and things now, but I wasn't into it at the time when I was younger. And I remember being in the fourth grade telling my teacher, I wanted to be friends of the girls and none of them wanted to- had the same interests I did, really, except for art class. And one of them had hermit crabs and she always would bring her hermit crabs. And I was so scared of her hermit crabs. But I don't think we I think it was a definitely friendship damper, or made it like, very impossible. And I remember one time I finally was brave enough to let- to try to hold her hermit crabs, and I just can't forget the way that the little legs like poke your hand. It was such a sensory experience that kind of freaked me out.  

Lexi Read:   7:09
Yeah,  

Haley Moss:   7:09
...and I didn't know how to, like, explain that. But I didn't care because I really just wanted to be friends of this girl.  

Lexi Read:   7:16
And Haley quickly realized that if she wanted to fit in, she would have to adapt to the social environment around her. And in high school that went beyond just pushing through holding a friend's hermit crab,  

Haley Moss:   7:29
In junior high and high school, I was kind like a secret agent. That's how I always looked at it is that I was trying to learn the rules, try to learn what everyone else thought was cool and blend in because I realized if you stand out too much or you don't look or act the right way, you might be a target for bullying. So my goal was to try to blend in and know as much as humanly possible. Which is why right now I kind of laugh a little bit, cause the big thing when I was in high school was the Twilight Series, Of course now we have a new twilight book coming out, and I'm sitting there going, 'Oh my God!' Like ninth grade me is having flashbacks to making sure that I knew everything about the twilight universe because everyone I knew was a twi-hard. And I thought it was the coolest thing to act like I understood it and knew everything about it, even though it was the last thing I cared about because I realized if I knew what was going on in the twilight universe, one: I would have a great point of conversation. I'd maybe be able to make a friend and fit in, and it wouldn't make me the odd man out. So even knowing the rules ow how to dress or what to say. For me, the Bible was Seventeen magazine as I learned everything from Seventeen and I would be like 'That's the cool thing'. And even in junior high when you were reading Seventeen you were already cool cause your parents, like, let you get these older teen magazine, you knew what the high schoolers thought was cool. So it was kind of this way of being the cool kid, even if I didn't have the social skills to be the cool kid, at least in the neuro typical view. But I also still had my interests and things that I loved, and I realized I didn't really have to give that up. And I knew that the right people- that if I did make friends with the right people, we'd all have- we'd end up having similar interests anyway.  

Lexi Read:   8:57
This concept that Haley is describing of reflecting back behaviors and interests to people in order to fit in socially is actually well documented among autistic women and even has a name: masking.  

Haley Moss:   9:12
Like this idea of, like camouflaging or masking. It's usually something that's a lot bigger with autistic women and girls and why we don't get diagnosed as much as we kind of do this, disguise in a way of trying to blend in and fit in and try to kind of go unnoticed. And at the same time, it's not because you want to, it's a survival strategy because everyone knows that being a young person in middle and high school is hard, and being the target of bullies really sucks.    

Lexi Read:   0:00
Yeah  

Haley Moss:   9:37
...or being teased or any of that stuff. I mean, sure, I've had my instances of it, too, but not because of how I looked or what I liked. A lot of the bullying that I have experienced, I realized when I look back was more like a benevolent ableism type stuff. So people that are your friends or they say they're your friends and they will do things and exclude you because they think they're doing the right thing. So 'Oh, you really don't like loud and crowded places? Well, we didn't invite you to our party, because we didn't think you'd want to go.' And it's like, 'But that's my decision to make that please have enough faith in me that I can make that decision myself.' Like if you didn't want to include me, just don't tell me all about this party, then say we did the right thing by not having you there. So like it's a much more subtle version of bullying and they say they have good intentions, maybe they do, but at the same time they're excluding you and they're telling you they love you at the same time. And it's a very confusing thing to think about... And I remember this really vividly and I wrote about it actually, with a sweet 16 party and the whole group is going to Disney world. And the whole friend- our entire friend group was going or this group that I kind of drifted in and out of was going, and I was the only one who wasn't invited. And I kept hearing about this trip to Disney. Of course, I knew what's happening. And the mom of the girl tells my mom like we didn't invite Haley because we don't know her challenges are and we didn't want to really like get involved in that. It's like- and my mom and I, and my family, we've always been very involved in those kinds of decisions, like we wouldn't go if we didn't think it was possible or didn't feel comfortable and I'm sitting here like, we could have made that decision ourselves like, 'Yeah, I might not have went' and I probably wouldn't have felt comfortable going, especially that was tone that was being sent, but at least let us make that decision.

Lexi Read:   11:31
After graduating high school, Haley went to the University of Florida for college, where she studied criminology and law as well a psychology, and it was here that she learned more about the challenges facing the disability community at large...When did you first realize that society is not designed for people with, you know, various forms of disabilities?  

Haley Moss:   11:54
I'm not really sure when that realization truly came about, because I always knew that I didn't always 100% fit in, but I did- I did minor in disability studies and disability in society when I was in college, so I think that's when I really got exposure to this whole, like theory of disability and disability 101 in terms of like employment disparities and all the- the social model of disability, like all these things that I didn't know the names for. And I think college is when I really got the names for all these things and really made sense of what was going on that I didn't know beyond my own experience, so I think that's the first time I really had that exposure to 'Oh my God, there's a name for this.'

Lexi Read:   12:35
These realizations helped shape the direction and the work that Haley would take up after her college career. Everything from practicing law to pushing for neurodiversity, and we're going to get back into all of that and more...after the break.  

Zach Read:   12:56
Hi guys, it's Zach. Thanks for tuning into proximity. If you're enjoying today's episode, we invite you to listen to the other episodes we have available. And if you know anyone who might enjoy our show, please spread the word. At this point, the only reason we're making this thing is because we can. So it means a lot to know it's getting out there. And if you have any recommendations for stories or people to talk to, don't hesitate to reach out. Now back to Haley's story.

Lexi Read:   13:31
After Haley Moss finished her undergraduate education, she went to law school, passed the bar exam and became Florida's first openly autistic lawyer. She's since transitioned to full-time advocacy work... With you, like dedicating your life to this. Like, what is the biggest change that you want to see?  

Haley Moss:   13:48
I really want to see more accessibility and inclusion in the workplace. So people with disabilities are largely unemployed or underemployed and autism, especially, is really abysmal. So I've seen statistics as high as 85% for college grads. I've seen higher rates and other disabilities, so fighting all the workplace stuff is probably one of the things that's really high on my list, and it's a pet project because I realized even when I was working in the law firm, how much privilege I had to be employed, to be an attorney and to be able to do the things that I do, too. So I'm hoping to use my background as well for better public policy. I am a huge nerd about the Americans Disabilities Act, and I think, even getting to kind of blend the law and policy with personal perspective when it comes to employment and also autism at work is probably my favorite thing I get to do.

Lexi Read:   14:39
As someone who is raising awareness about the disparity in the workplace for people with disabilities. I wanted to know what Haley saw as some of the reasons behind those abysmal numbers.  

Haley Moss:   14:50
I think that is because...One: it is such a spectrum. Two: people have so many preconceived stereotypes and ideas and a lot of them permeate or are outdated. So even just I joke about Rain Man a lot. So, Rain Man is one of those movies that was the first exposure a lot of people had to autism and for cultural reference I like to remind people Rain Man is older than me. 

Lexi Read:   15:13
For those unfamiliar, Rain Man is a 1988 film about an autistic man played by Dustin Hoffman, who is a savant with an exceptional recall ability. It won the Oscar for best picture that year.  

Haley Moss:   15:28
...and I am still telling people that know I'm not rain man. I'm not rain girl, not rain Woman. I'm sorry, but it's not super, super accurate. So, whenever we do get those portrayals that have an effect on pop culture, they last a long time too so breaking down those barriers at work, especially with people who did grow up or might have been young adults seeing Rain Man in movie theaters, you're still having to say, 'That's not me and you're not getting right man in your workplace'... but you're getting so much more and to actually accept this concept of neurodiversity and that we do better when we work with people who are different than us, and when we have teams with neurodiverse people on them that it helps the public opinion, it helps companies make more money, that it is indeed innovation.

Lexi Read:   16:19
And that innovation is so often being stifled by a society that isn't built with it in mind... So, piggybacking off of something that you just said, people with disabilities are forced to live in the world that's like very ableist in nature in its not- it's not..  

Haley Moss:   16:34
It's just not accessible all the time.  

Lexi Read:   16:36
...can you talk a little bit more about like that challenge I guess?  

Haley Moss:   16:42
So I could go disability studies at 101 all over this, but the easiest way to describe it, I think, is that sometimes society can be more disabling than an actual diagnosis or label can be. So there are things engendered, just built into our environments that are very difficult to overcome structurally, unless we all work at it together. When we remove the barriers that affect the most marginalized, it ends up benefiting everybody. So think about even when you watch TV and sometimes you put on the captions- is captions and close captioning originally existed for deaf viewers who can't hear. But at the same time you or me might be using those captions because we might be like, 'Wait, I missed something that that that person said, or what did they say?' And we don't want to rewind it five times, or someone who might not originally speak English might have those captions on trying to learn language at the same time. So even if it was meant for someone who couldn't hear, we all kind of benefit from having captions on TV if we choose to put them there. So we see that even with how our sidewalks are designed all sorts of different things, that when we do help and remove some of those barriers, it doesn't just benefit people disabilities, it ultimately benefits everybody. But that doesn't go to say that if you remove every single barrier, that disability is not a thing. There are things that will be hard no matter what, even if you remove a lot of these societal barriers like that.  

Lexi Read:   18:04
Despite the changes that still need to happen in our society and culture to include everyone with a disability, Haley is optimistic about the trajectory things are heading in.  

Haley Moss:   18:16
People often say progress moves so slow or like nothing's happened in the last year or two years. And I'm like 'Look how far we've come.' We're celebrating 30 years of the ADA. We received equal rights in the 70's as well. We had so much change and even look at how the rhetoric around autism has changed in the last 10 years, even. 10 years ago, we were having commercials saying that we affect more children than lethal diseases, and now we're saying, 'OK, great neurodiversity, let's get people accepted.' And now we're getting rid of barriers for students of color and all these other things as well and exploring identity. And so much has changed for the better. And you realize that 'Yeah, change is slow, but it's also look how far we've come.' Look how much better we've done, and look how much more we can continue to do.

Lexi Read:   19:10
Haley, how do you see your role as an advocate for the disability community, like what does that all entail?  

Haley Moss:   19:17
I love to talk to other people disabilities, and I love talking to people in the autistic community because I realized that we all kind of want the same thing and whether it's we just want to be accepted at the university we attend, or whether it's that we want to get a better job or to even have full-time employment, that you realize you have to know your people because otherwise you're just kind of doing it for yourself, or that's what it sounds like. But you have to know what your community is going through to be able to be more effective advocate yourself. And also you kind of have to know what's going on beyond your bubble of whatever- and your biases and your privilege. So I know sometimes when it's time to pass the mic, when it's time to listen, cause I feel like even as someone who also podcasts my job sometimes is still to sit down and shut up and let the guest do all the talking. And if that guest has experiences that I know I will never have experiences with, such as whenever we have someone who's autistic, but they're also a person of color or their LGBQ, or they're nonbinary or transgender, I know nothing about that stuff. That is not my wheelhouse. I will sit down and shut up and listen to how those extra things affect you in your experience in people who also have those experiences, because I don't know, and I can't claim to speak for you because I don't speak for you. I speak mostly for myself, and I try to do the best I can cause I'm not the one voice of autism. I never wanted to be that and a lot of self advocates kind of get thrust into this role. But it kind of gets thrust on a lot of self advocates, especially adults, because the neuro typical population doesn't know that many of us. So they think we're the authority on everything and every little nuance of autism, and that's just not true. We can't speak beyond our own experiences, really. But there are certain things that we all have in common, and I know the societal barriers that I usually like to speak to are things that effect all of us. So when you're- I think in activism and advocacy, you can't push an agenda that's just about you, that it really is about uplifting an entire community as best you can, but not saying that you speak on behalf of the entire community, so it's a very delicate balance.  

Lexi Read:   21:19
The barriers that Haley likes to highlight in her advocacy work center on the discrimination and stigma that exists around disability as well as ease and access to employment and educational institutions for people with disabilities. But beyond all that, she says, her work really comes down to promoting human dignity.  

Haley Moss:   21:42
A lot of my job sometimes it's having a reconcile that autism doesn't just look like people who are speaking or able to go to college, that there are plenty of kids who are very profoundly disabled, too, but that doesn't mean that they don't deserve the best life possible, that they still deserve dignity. They still deserve options for supported decision making and to be independent, whatever that means.  

Lexi Read:   22:04
I asked Haley about how the media generally portrays people with disabilities and how they can do better.  

Haley Moss:   22:11
We're not a monolith so we're not all this, like perfect angel human being. And we're also not this poor, innocent soul to be pitied, that, you can still have people disabilities who are very flawed. You can have people who are great people. You can have people who are kind of terrible that you could still see a little bit of- just like everybody else. That there's no perfection or pity. That like everybody else, we fall somewhere in the middle probably.

Lexi Read:   22:36
What are like the issues that you see with, like common storytelling, like kind of reiterating what you said earlier but also expanding upon, like what, what issues do you see people fall into when like that are like ableist like tendencies that people have in helping, like, tell the stories of people who have disabilities?

Haley Moss:   22:54
It is told through somebody else's lens. And that's something that I notice a lot in disorders and disabilities that usually involve children or ones that also involve development and intellectual disabilities, or anything that makes you see someone as possibly less. So what happens is people are very quick to want to talk to the parents, the siblings, the everybody else but the person with the disability themselves because it does fit into that 'I want this person to make you feel inspired, or I want this person to teach someone else a lesson' type storytelling. I really see it usually at prom time or you see, even with the pandemic, sometimes you'll see a story about a person with a disability, sometimes they're in high school or they are a young adult, and they're not even getting a say in that story that is supposedly about them. So when I talk about prom usually, you think of like the high school quarterback who took the kid with the disability to prom and they interview the quarterback, talk about what a great human he is or she is. And then they talked to the families of both the students, but they don't talk to the person with a disability who might not have even wanted to go to problem in the first place or might not have wanted to go with that person or just is like, 'you know, I wanted to go, but I just wanted to dance with my friends and have a good time', that it's their story, that it was still there prom, and that might not have been what they wanted. You don't know.  

Lexi Read:   24:09
Yeah...What, what do you think is the biggest thing that people that say they're, ah, say they're people in the media are people who like, you know, for some reason, they're in a position of like helping be storytellers for their career, what is something that, like you want to see change in like how they're approaching all of this?  

Haley Moss:   24:30
I think first off it's important to see people with disabilities as people. I know that obviously language is something that gets talked about a lot. Always ask people how they feel, what they like to refer to themselves as, so you know that I call myself 'autistic', but I also say 'people disabilities' as well as 'disabled people' really depending on context or how I'm referring to a group. Because I know not all disabilities use identity language, for instance, which is why I'll say 'people disabilities' more broadly, just so I don't touch on any other communities like I know that Down Syndrome, for instance, will always use person first, while the autism community is a lot more divided, for instance. I think it's really important to talk to the people that the story is really about and see what they want to tell that is important to them. Because what happens, I notice a lot, especially in disability and marginalized groups storytelling is who is the story for? So who's the audience? Who is writing it? Who is reading it? And who was missing from the story? And often times in the stories of people with disabilities we're missing from our own stories.  

Lexi Read:   25:32
When Hayley became the first openly autistic lawyer practicing in the state of Florida, she attracted a lot of media attention that largely focused on her story as one of inspiration, about someone with autism who had been nonverbal at a young age and managed to succeed despite it.. I was curious when you were talking about like people like making people an inspiration. I know that, like people were like, 'Look at Hailey' and stuff like that. Did that ever make you feel uncomfortable?  

Haley Moss:   26:00
Yes and no. I feel like how you handle it in the moment is really dependent on where you are, because there are times you will get to kind of make this choice between am I an advocate or on am I a person. And there are times you know that you don't want to get into the whole 'Well, I don't want to be your inspiration' because of this, or you just want to say, 'Why do you feel that way?' Because maybe 'inspiration' isn't necessarily the word they're looking for, but that's the easiest work to pick because that's what people use with disability for instance is this overcoming narrative and I'll be the first one to say when I speak, 'If all you get from me is that once I was nonverbal and now I'm a lawyer, I did something wrong... because that's not my whole story and that's not what I'm trying to push. And that's not the narrative that I want to define my life. It really glosses over everything in the middle, so it makes it seem like there was this magical yellow brick road when that's not how it is for anybody, really you know?,  

Haley Moss:   27:01
I always want people to feel that they have the ability to make change and that they're gently challenged. So it's OK that you might have come in with these preconceived notions or biases or whatever it might be. We all have them. I know, even people with disabilities and myself, we still wrestle with some form of internalized ableism too, and that's okay. I feel like as long as you're aware of it and you understand it, let it sit with you and then think, 'How can I use this to make change in my life or in my community?' So sometimes I ask people about organizations that they want to join, and I think who's on the board of the nonprofit that you're giving to or you want to get involved with? How can you help change that structure to make sure more people are included? How can you maybe hire someone new at work that has a disability? Or maybe you'll see someone in your life differently knowing 'Okay, I could do better or how can I make things more inclusive?' Because I feel like a swell so much of inclusion is we- like, job training on stuff we put so much pressure on people with disabilities to fit the standards, and then I think sometimes it's the non-disabled people who really need the training and understanding because we're told how to fit in in their environment. But they don't know where we're coming from the same time. So I think it really is kind of a very- we need to meet halfway, even though no one really knows what halfway means.

Haley Moss:   28:33
I think I want people to remember first and foremost that we're people, because so often I think it's so easy to reduce people to just a diagnosis or not understand that there is more than what you're being told. So I want you to see us as people and we're not that much different. Like we still have hopes and dreams and goals just like anybody else. Like, I find myself telling people when they asked, 'What do you want some day?' I'm like, 'I want what you want. I want to be happy. I want to maybe find love someday, have a family of my own, have a good career have, like all the same things that everybody else seems to want.' That having a disability doesn't mean that I don't want those things or I'm just gonna end up alone and have someone take care of me and live in a basement or need to hide. So, I think it's really important that I know that people know that we're people and also to be aware of their own bias and to also be more inclusive whenever they can too because how can we be expected to move up in the world and be seen and be part of it if people aren't working with us on that.

Haley Moss:   29:38
Even in, like, this conversation, like, 'Yeah, we need to do this and we go, uh huh' And it's an echo chamber, what's really gonna get done if you're just telling it to other people that have the same experience. So part of my job as well is not only did just be kind of more, hold the microphone sometimes, but to also be a bridge, and I feel like with being a bridge my job is to get people who have no vested interest or have no knowledge whatsoever of autism or disability to be like 'Oh my God, like yeah, of course we should be including more people.' Like that's a no brainer. So I think it's really important for me in- with all civil rights movements as well is that you have to get people that aren't connected to your cause to care about what you think about. So it's really important to me to get people who might not think of it through- even people that are in the field to think of it through this more accepting, neurodiverse lens. So even just how professionals are taught, they're taught about- the way that they're taught to work with us isn't the same as lived experiencing. Saying 'Hey, sometimes when you guys did this, it made me feel Y, or felt felt X, and this is how we could do better.' It's definitely something that continues to evolve, but I think I really want people to know that we're people and also please work with us because I think when we have inclusion of all people with disabilities that we have a better society.

Lexi Read:   30:59
That was our episode with Haley Moss.  We hope you enjoyed it. To keep up to date with Haley and her work, you can visit Haley Moss dot net, where you'll find links to follow her on all social media platforms. We'll also include a site link in the show description... Check back each week for new episodes of proximity and thanks for tuning in.