The Messy Middle
Autistic life rarely fits the clean categories offered by experts, advocates, or critics. Between the binaries of cure and celebration, control and chaos, safety and authenticity, there is a space most of us actually inhabit: the messy middle.
This series exists to name that terrain. It begins with the reality of masking — the impossible trade-offs between survival and selfhood. It continues with the debate over intervention — where the same action can land as protection or coercion depending on posture and intent. And it will keep moving into other tensions: belonging and burnout, agency and dependence, protection and freedom.
Here’s where the messy middle has taken us so far:
The Messy Middle, Part Two: Intervention, Protection, and the Slippery Line Between Care and Control
The messy middle is not compromise. It is the place where real lives unfold, where parents make choices without guarantees, where autistic people navigate survival without abandoning dignity. It is the space where binaries collapse, but responsibility does not.
This is not a guidebook with simple answers. It is an invitation to ask sharper questions, to sit in tension without erasing it, and to act with clarity even when the path is unclear.