All things autism: Arveena Kaushal
This week, I was on womens radio station with Anna Kennedy and it was an experience that worth going for. We talked about my life as an autistic woman on all things autism, from my childhood to the Importance of mental health. But there was something that I forgot to bring up during the interview (sorry Anna). But before I get into it, I wanted to give you a brief story of my life.
During my childhood, the teachers in my special needs primary school started noticing that I couldn’t do basic maths sums and the head mistress saw this and recommended my parents to go and see a child psychologist. After being observed by Dr Smith, a mature woman in a navy skirt and a navy top informed my parents on how the examination went in her perspective and she told my parents that I got diagnosed with autism at 5 years old. At first my mum didn’t know what autism is, but she was educated by the teachers on what it is.
Now I’m on a journey as a motivational speaker and my mission is to motivate and inspire autistic people including autistic women of colour to no longer be held back by society and to start standing out in front of the crowd.
I’m also volunteer for an amazing charity called Look Good Feel Better. Look Good Feel Better is a charity that helps women, men and teens feel confident and uplifts them by providing workshops and teaching them to use skincare and beauty products that will help feel like themselves again while battling against cancer and when I first started volunteering for them, I didn’t know what I got myself and ended up observing on how the workshop works and the moment the ladies started going through with the workshop, their feelings changed from being nervous and sometimes excited to being happy and upbeat right in front of my eyes as well as getting myself involved on helping out setting up the workshop, helping the ladies out with their make up and skincare and even did some fundraising for them. Never the less volunteering changed me as a person.
The main aspect that I didn’t get the chance to bring up is my experience as a referee and what I’ve learned about being a referee is to stay focused while working on the area, especially when it comes to timekeeping and scorekeeping at the table as well as having a huge responsibility of control and the important parts of all times is learning to build a thick skin and being able to handle criticism. It’s also about learning to be patient and being ready on your feet, because we never know what’s going to happen within the competition.
Apart from that, we discussed on the importance of mental health and how to take care of negative things that people have said on social media. I had such a great time being on woman’s radio station and I would recommend this to anyone who’s autistic and wants to get their voice heard, this is the place that you need to be on.
