An empty bowl, a quiet room, a familiar routine interrupted,,,grief often meets us in ordinary moments. After losing Rosie, I explore how the brain learns the presence of those we love, why their absence can feel so profound, and how understanding grief can help us offer ourselves patience.

Could identifying as an empath relate to autism, masking, or trauma? Explore how emotional sensitivity and hypervigilance can overlap in women.

….Still, I think we have placed the word empathy over a much more complicated collection of behaviors, including monitoring, anticipating, accommodating, suppressing, and performing….

Harvard and Yale researchers are using brain organoids, genetics and AI to study how autism emerges during early brain development. For autistic women whose traits went unrecognized for years, the bigger question is intriguing: what might we learn when autism research looks beneath observable behavior?

…The federal government is launching an ambitious new autism research program using genetics, health data and AI to improve diagnosis and individualized care. For autistic women, who have historically been underrepresented in research and diagnosed later, there is real potential here. But previous federal rhetoric about autism, along with questions about privacy, representation and what “treatment” means, gives autistic people good reason to examine the details closely.

…This is where I think understanding the language becomes especially useful.

If someone tells you, “Scientists haven't found the autism gene, therefore autism isn't genetic,” you can immediately see the problem.

Modern autism research isn't looking for one universal autism gene.