I’m a 27-year-old and I’ve recently joined medium. Here are a few things about me:

• I’ve been writing since I was about 10 years old. I started writing diaries and then moved to write online.
• I love reading. Some of my favorite authors are Patti Smith, Deborah Levi, Shirley Jackson, and Elena Ferrante. My favorite genres are memoirs and fiction, mostly written by women.
• I’ve adored wildlife since I was a teenager and this leads me to Greece where I spent a couple of summers volunteering with sea turtles.
• I am a veterinarian (and I have mixed feelings about that).
• …

Animal Rights | News

The hashtag “ducklings” on Tik Tok has recently gathered over 276 million views. A new viral trend where people share a day in the life of a duckling seems to be fueling this.

In Dublin, this has lead to people going down to the canal, picking up ducklings, and then selling them on the street for 5 euros.

The Dublin Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (DSPCA) started getting phone calls from people saying they saw ducklings being sold on the streets. Animal charities were quickly inundated with ducklings that needed to be cared for.

First, people started…

I recently questioned someone on Instagram stories about how to do a Ph.D. part-time. The answer I got was partly useful and it partly made me want to hit unfollow. It was something along the lines of “we all have the same 24 hours in a day and what we do with them is totally up to us”.

I understand that people mean well when they’re trying to give others productivity advice. But it’s condescending and it lacks empathy. You’re assuming everyone has the same life as you, the same social support, the same mental and emotional predisposition to use…

When one researches the history of Autism Spectrum Disorder, two names show up. The Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger described “autistic psychopathy” in children in 1938. The American child psychiatrist Leo Kanner of Austrian-Hungarian origin described “early infantile autism” in eleven children in 1943.

However, a remarkable woman named Sukhareva Grunya Efimovna described autism as early as 1926. Until this day, she remains uncredited for her discoveries.

The story of Sukhareva

One year ago, the youtuber Myka Stauffer and her husband (James Stauffer) posted a video on one of their channels letting the world know they decided to disrupt the adoption of their four-year-old son.

The reaction was immediate and, unlike anything the Stauffers had imagined, backlashed on them. Their video was viewed by millions and it made news all over the world. The response from their fans was a mix of confusion and anger. For everyone else, the Stauffers will forever be the YouTubers who “re-homed” their child.

Myka and James had three youtube channels. James had (and still has)…

Think about this for a second: You go through life thinking you're somewhat normal (whatever that actually means to you). At some point, you come across Autism and you start thinking you might be Autistic yourself. You look back and realize that so many moments from your childhood, teenage years, and adulthood have Autism written all over them.

In the meantime, you have accumulated opinions and preconceptions on what Autism is. You’ve never met anyone who’s Autistic. You think it’s rare (not that rare actually, but hey, that depends on one’s perspective). You think only children can be diagnosed with…

On the 23rd of April, a 29-year-old man named Normunds Kindzulis who was a paramedic was burned. His clothes were soaked in fuel and lit on fire. He sustained burns to 85% of his body and died on the 28th of April.

Normunds had received death threats and ended up moving from the capital of Latvia (Riga) to Tukums, a small town. However, he was physically attacked at least four times due to homophobia. The police allegedly failed to investigate and they haven’t ruled out that he may have wanted to commit suicide due to the attacks.

Andrejs Grishins, the…

When I started realizing at 27 that I might be Autistic, I didn’t really know where to turn to. Being a long-time lover of books, I turned to them. Books have saved me from a lot of complicated moments in my life, surely, they could also provide me some comfort now.

These are the four memoirs I’ve read by women who were navigating being diagnosed with Autism in adulthood and one lovely exception. I also want to highlight that autistic women (and men) also write great fiction and children books, both of which I’m just starting to dive into.

1) Nerdy, Shy, and Socially Inappropriate by Cynthia Kim

This…