It’s OK

It’s OK if I don’t want to go to the store today.

It’s OK if I don’t want to go anywhere today.

The world this time of year is a melting pot of sensory overload.

Everyday situations become more difficult to endure if you are autistic or neurodivergent.

Especially if everything is not going well for you throughout the day.

Many times, growing up, I was told by family to “get through it”.

What I or they did not see was the fact that there is more than a doing something.

There is the before and after or the circumstances that led up and after the even that determine how something will go.

It knowing alongside fitting in the ‘regular’ things that we have to endure in life, that having extra challenges makes it more complex and overloading.

When we as autistic people are validated for needing to sit out of something or that we can’t do something the way that it is being done, no word feels better by those helping than the words ‘It’s OK’

It’s OK means that we don’t have to worry about being prone to overload.

That we, for now, can be ourselves and do what we need to do to be well.

Two simple words “It’s OK” are just reassurances, but today, they meant a lot.