When Dana Waters got an autism diagnosis as an adult, she was nervous that it might change how her friends and colleagues perceived her. At first, she didn’t share the diagnosis with her co-workers at the Doctor of Psychology program at Antioch Seattle where she is Associate Chair, because she wasn’t sure how it would be received. But over the years she worked through that initial fear, and she has since become an advocate and educator for the Autistic community. The whole experience led her to found the AWAKE Project—the acronym stands for Autism Women’s Advocacy, Activism, Knowledge, and Empowerment—and, last fall, to publish a book about adult autism, Bite-Sized Autism. Waters says that her offer to non-Autistic readers is, “Here, take our glasses, look around and see what it’s like.”
