But You Don't Look Autistic

Amanda is a lived experience, neurodiversity-affirming community practitioner based in Meanjin/Brisbane. She believes that bringing imagination and colour into everyday life is essential for wellbeing, recovery, and discovery. 

Immersion in creative practices helps Amanda make sense of her neurodivergent experience of the world as a sensory-rich, often overwhelming, and sometimes anxiety-provoking place. She values gentleness, compassion, understanding, and curiosity in navigating both her own and other people’s mental health challenges. 

A passionate advocate for the neurodiversity and recovery paradigms, Amanda is committed to deeply honouring and holding space for the wisdom of lived experience. She enjoys exploring a variety of art forms, including writing, photography, drawing, painting, and collage.

Identified later in life as a neurodivergent woman, I'm in an evolving process - unpacking and understanding my experiences with sensory processing, emotions, and communication. I've always felt strange and different from other people but never knew the reason until my mid-forties. Awareness is the first step towards understanding and appreciation; things begin to make a lot more sense when we can name them. This piece symbolically explores concepts of autistic masking, sensory processing differences, and divergent ways of being in the world.