Personal-Growth on Lanie: Faith, Tech, and Advocacy

Becoming

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On December 31, I had a telehealth appointment for a psychological evaluation I’d waited months to get. The psychologist read my old autism evaluation from TSBVI, the one from 2011 that had shaped how I understood myself for over a decade. And then she stopped. She told me they hadn’t really tested for autism. That there was likely neurological involvement. That she couldn’t tell me anything for sure without neuropsychological testing first. She said she didn’t want to do that to me, give me answers that might not even be right.

The Gap Nobody's Building For

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been sitting with something for months. Today I’m finally ready to talk about it.

I tried college five times. Each attempt ended the same way: a health crisis, a withdrawal, and the quiet message that I wasn’t built for this. Not because I couldn’t learn. I can learn. I learn constantly. I learned to build an NVDA add-on in two days. I learned to write well enough that 15,520 people visited my website last month. I learned to advocate for myself in a nursing home, in a disability system, in a family that was falling apart.