Slow Living

The nice thing about having a chronic illness and being disabled is that you'll be so exhausted after an amazing adventure, that you get to relive it again and again when you finally have enough energy to post about it.

In a world where news cycles are shorter than ever, live streaming events is the norm and everything feels expected to happen instantly, disability has a way of slowing things down. Recovery means revisiting photos, videos, and memories days or even weeks later, giving you the chance to experience the joy all over again. This is actual slow living.

One of those moments was attending the opening of Disabled Women Make History (and Art) at the Toledo Museum of Art on June 20th, 2026. Seeing my photograph, Not Even If You Wanted To The Latest, on the gallery wall alongside the work of so many talented women artists was an incredible honor, and meeting fellow artists and visitors made the experience even more meaningful.

I'm grateful to the Toledo Museum of Art and Disability EmpowHer Network for creating such a magical space for disabled women artists to share our stories in our own voices.

The exhibition at the Toldeo Museum of Art is presented in partnership with Disability EmpowHer Network, is open from June 20th- July 31st, 2026, both in person at the Toledo Museum of Art and online, making it accessible to you wherever you are.

Disability EmpowHer Network exhibition:

 https://www.disabilityempowhernetwork.org/dwmha

Toledo Museum of Art exhibition page: 

https://toledomuseum.org/exhibitions/disabled-women-make-history-and-art

I've put together a couple short videos from the event and my journey to Ohio that captures a little of the day. I hope you enjoy experiencing a bit of the magic with me!

Not Even If You Wanted To

I'm honored to share that my photograph Not Even If You Wanted To is currently on view at the Toledo Museum of Art in Disabled Women Make History (and Art), a collaboration with Disability EmpowHer Network. Check out all the information on that here.

Not Even If You Wanted To is part of The Latest explores the spectrum of this artist’s experience being a late diagnosed autistic woman and the evolving process of creating order and expression. There is deep ritual in being neurodivergent, in processing the happiness at the future ahead and the grief of a life passed by and in accepting your unique traits, while releasing internal and external ableism.

For so much of my life, I felt like I didn’t understand the social customs of the society that socialized me. Minnesota and the midwest as a whole has a fairly passive agressive communication approach, but if that were all, eventually I’d find the right decoder ring or social cipher and crack the code. When you’re autistic its more than that. It’s more than learning the rules and simple misunderstandings. Communication differences between neurodivergent culture and neurotypical culture create external barriers, often misunderstood through a one-sided deficit-based lens. This is known as the “Double Empathy Problem,” identified by researcher Dr. Catherine Crompton in 2020. This is a study that found that the social disconnect between autistic and non-autistic people is mutual, rather than a one-sided deficit.

For so much of my life I felt that I had “missed that day”  when they went over all the things I was constantly missing, even though I rarely missed school. Or as if everyone is working from the same script and I didn’t get a copy.

When these differences go unrecognized, especially for late-diagnosed women like myself, it can create barriers, that are unseen and seemingly insurmountable. Being awarded my autistic diagnosis at 39 opened a world of understanding, an entry into a cultural community all its own, and new ways to approach communication. There’s no easy button that comes with diagnosis though. No one hands you the keys to the castle of understanding. I was given a list of books to read and sent on my way, but with time I am learning. And sometimes that learning comes with the acceptance.

The image I created reflects the invisible barriers many disabled people encounter, those moments when effort alone isn't enough because the obstacle isn't a lack of will or skill, but the reality of disability itself. A vintage telephone, historically built without dials to prevent outgoing calls symbolizes inherent systemic communication differences and the outstretched hand represents individuals searching for a cultural community that speaks their language. The use of purple symbolizes the luxury of communication and the seeming magic behind successful communication when you don’t understand you are autistic due to a late diagnosis.