Sequins, Sob Stories, and No Manual: The Truth About Autistic Women in a World That Doesn’t See Them

There’s a moment in the Apple TV+ series Mythic Quest where the character Poppy, newly named Co-Creative Director, gives a speech at a women-in-gaming conference. She’s dressed in a too-tight sequined dress, sweating, cursing, crying, fumbling her way through a script written by a man who didn’t take her seriously.

And yet—by the end of the speech, the room erupts in a standing ovation.

Why? Because Poppy told the truth. And for the NeuroDiverse women in the room—who code like geniuses, mask like performers, and cry alone in their offices—it was a revelation. Someone had finally spoken their language.

That fictional moment inspired me to create a two-part podcast episode called “Sequins, Sob Stories & Silicon Valley: Poppy and the Myth of the ‘Proper’ Autistic Woman.” But it also opened the door to a more painful truth: I’ve lived this story.

I raised an autistic daughter. I was raised by an autistic mother. And I never got to talk to either of them about their autism.

My daughter Bianca was brilliant, quirky, gentle, and wildly creative. She pretended to shower because she didn’t want to interrupt her drawing or reading. She ate oranges one molecule at a time. She wrote me notes like “Can I scip veggies?” because she savored every detail of her world.

But she also suffered. Deeply. She was bullied. She was misunderstood. She graduated with a special ed diploma despite an IQ of 140. And eventually, her father convinced her that I was the enemy. I haven’t seen her in 18 years.

My mother passed before we could talk about her own autism—her forgetfulness, her quirky logic, her quiet suffering. Now, I find myself healing these relationships alone. But if my story can help one other mother, one other daughter, then the healing ripples outward.

You see, the myth isn’t just that autistic women can’t lead. The real myth is that they don’t exist in these spaces, or that their way of existing is somehow wrong.

But I’ve seen them. I’ve loved them. And I still do.