Until this month (July 2026), I was very hesitant to claim the term “disability pride”, as I don’t see autism or any other form of disability as something to be proud of. However, especially with the recent government attacks on disability access and programs, I can’t skimp on embracing whatever helps anymore.
I didn’t get diagnosed until nine and, before that, the only special ed help that I received was a program mostly for kids in broken homes in a retired principal’s house. But since that went only to the first grade, my mother homeschooled me for second, and the beginning of third, grade. However, just sitting doing a bunch of book- and paperwork lessons all day has never connected with my way of learning. That’s always been more my mother’s way of learning, and I think she assumed that just because I’m her daughter, I would automatically learn in the same way. She also couldn’t accept that I’m not the straight-A student that she was.
Special projects, art, and special demonstrations have always been more my way of learning. I can remember my mother doing exactly one project with me, and that was after I finished reading Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie. We made a replica of the house in Kansas out of a bunch of paper towel rolls with the roof and family out of cardboard cutouts—the latter, which my mother copied from illustrations in the book. My mother then insisted on putting all of the family cut-outs inside of the house replica and sealing it with the roof. She also wouldn’t cut out a door in it as she didn’t want me to reach back in to take them out.
I didn’t receive any special education at Shirley Elementary, my school in Arkansas. Since it was in a rural town, I’m not sure that Shirley even had much of a special education program. The only thing I remember closest to that was when *Mrs. Blanken, the counselor who tested me to make sure I was ready to be placed in a third-grade classroom. I believe that I was earning mostly C’s, so I wasn’t doing super badly. But, also considering the abuse that I was still enduring at home plus my parents’ separation and subsequent divorce, I never felt as if I really learned much from there. I also hadn’t been diagnosed just yet.
It wasn’t until after my grandparents got me diagnosed at nine that I was able to receive the learning center assistance in subjects that I was the weakest in: math and reading comprehension. I didn’t connect with either one at all back then. Today, my reading comprehension and critical thinking skills are no contest to what they used to be. Although if you were to make me do a reading comprehension assignment now, I would still have to look back at the text to make sure I’m getting all of the important information and that I’m remembering everything right.
I was also in speech therapy through my school for almost three years, which I found very helpful, at least in the short term. Unfortunately, though, it didn’t help with my stress stammering in the long run. Though I sometimes also stammer when I haven’t verbalized in a little while. I hate it when that happens, too! Though I’ve found that warming up my old choir voice to my car music really helps me keep that in check. I didn’t realize until very recently that music is also a sensory seeking thing for me.
However, the special education class that helped me the most was my Job Club class in high school. It prepared me for basic interview, and on-the-job etiquette, for considering the entirety of a job description before deciding whether to apply. And then, wearing our “uniform” of black pants and a white shirt, we would go out on mini unpaid internship-like fieldtrips to practice working. Usually with minimum-wage jobs like stocking, cleaning/busing tables, and helping out in food court restaurants. Though they “promoted” me to assisting a local elementary school art teacher when I told them that I was hoping to do that after college.
I believe that it’s partly thanks to my Job Club class that I’m the dedicated employee that I am today. That and I come from a family with a very strong work ethic.
It scares me that, without all of the special education assistance and therapies that I did have, I probably would’ve been thrown in an institution. It scares me that that could be the future for kids with disabilities again. That they will grow up being deprived of those rights, deprived of their sense of humanity, and deprived of their sense of individuality, not knowing the freedoms that my generation has been very fortunate to have. Which is what JFK and others, like Judith Heumann, worked so hard, even put their very lives on the line, to ensure wouldn’t happen again.
This is why disability advocacy is needed now more than ever. And why I consider myself to be one now.
Lacy Pierce