I became a BCBA in 2005 and spent over two decades working with diverse populations: children in foster care, adults with disabilities, individuals in brain injury rehabilitation, and families navigating some of the hardest periods of their lives. I was good at it. I was also privately exhausted in ways I couldn't fully explain.

When my mum died in 2022, I hit a wall I couldn't work my way through. I tried. I gave myself three months to grieve and expected to bounce back. Instead I kept digging deeper into burnout, until a diagnosis finally gave me a language for what had been happening my whole life.

The relief was real. And then, a few months later, nothing had actually changed. Knowing I was autistic didn't tell me what to do on a Tuesday when everything was too much. That's when I started building the structure and support I actually needed, and when things genuinely began to shift.

I realised I could take everything I'd spent my career doing, helping people live healthier, more sustainable lives, and bring it to a population I now understood from the inside. Late-identified autistic adults in the middle of burnout, trying to figure out what comes next.