I’m coming out (and letting you in)

Written and originally shared with the Kol Hai: Husdon Valley Jewish Renewal community on June 1, 2022, the first day of Pride Month.

Just before New Year’s Eve, a question arrived in my mind in an instant of electrical revelation: could I be on the autism spectrum? Silent fireworks of “YES” shuddered through me. It was both an ordinary and an extraordinary epiphany.

Quietly and intensely, I immersed myself in autistic culture. I read accounts and encountered lives profoundly consonant with mine. I discovered that — in light of rampant medical misogyny, systemic racism, and the all-pervasive pathology paradigm — self-diagnosis is wholly valid. But being highly educated and middle class, I wanted and could pursue a clinical diagnosis to put my analytical mind at rest. I leveraged the privileges of passing as both white and male to access neuropsychological evaluations. Spending months and thousands of dollars on diagnostic tests, confirmation of my autism arrived a few weeks ago.

Since I slowly and selectively started sharing this paradigm-shifting news with family and friends one common response has been “it’s only a label.” This well-meaning reply arises from the concern that a caption might become a cage. But let me underscore how important this label currently is to me! Language can liberate. Finding the right word at the right time is a key in a lock; a password. I have been passing as neurotypical. Experiences that have long made me feel marginalized are finally being recognized, leading me to spaces where they can be normalized, deepening a healing process. Autistic culture and conversation open me to an entirely new vocabulary of self-understanding and embodied lexicon of self-expression. Discovering the neurodiversity paradigm has injected me into a new experience of belonging.

It is hard to write from the middle of these depths. Confusion and exhaustion have made it difficult to speak before now. Understanding myself as autistic answers 10,000 questions about my personal history* while it also opens up countless questions about the future. I have been masking and camouflaging in specific, subtle, and subconscious ways for my entire conscious life. This unfurling and unmasking during my sabbatical, which will continue, is delicate, delicious, dizzying, and deeply disorienting.

I am profoundly grateful for the ways that the Kol Hai community and board, and in particular Kohenet Renée, have taken up space to give me time for this process. While I personally chose to take on the Zen Peacemaker tenet of Not Knowing, you may not have! I know this has been a period of uncomfortable uncertainty for many. You have worried about me and have been trying, consciously and unconsciously, to fill in the gaps that my absence has created. This is disquieting. And this is not the first time my inexplicable behavior has hurt or harmed, with and without my awareness. For these injuries, I am sorry and committed to repair.

I had never experienced total burnout before this winter. I learned you cannot water a dead flower back to life. I was humbled and had to examine my inner soil for new seeds, smaller signs of life. When I took off from work in February I requested indefinite leave. I have been tracking the question: what nourishes? Three months later, I still do not know if the role of being a congregational rabbi is a good fit for me; if or how I might return to Kol Hai remains unresolved. This is dynamic and discordant tension. I feel only a few sometimes shallow breaths in towards identifying what a more integrated, liberated, and sustainable way might be for me and my family.

🏳️‍🌈 Today — June 1st, 2022 / Rosh Chodesh Sivan 5782 — is the beginning of Pride Month. Shame and guilt are unsustainable for the body, mind, heart, and soul. Today, I am proudly coming out as autistic (and choosing identity-first rather than person-first language).

🏳️‍⚧️ Being autistic also informs my belonging to a community with a high incidence of gender non-conformity. While my process around gender and sexual identity is also transient and fluid, I also want to let you in (as opposed to coming out) with my preference for they/them pronouns.**

So, am I asking anything of you? I hope you can now better understand my withdrawal from the public eye. If you also identify as autistic I’d love to hear from you; feel free to respond to this letter [below].

As we approach Shavuot, a celebration of synesthetic revelation, I find myself yearning to align and advocate for a world that embraces neurodiversity, implements expansive accessibility, and expresses creative reverence for All Life.

~shir

* I am highly sensitive to certain sensory stimuli while insensitive to others; I accommodate considerable social anxiety at huge energetic costs; throughout school and work I significantly struggled with social dynamics, hierarchies, and interpersonal conflict; I experience synesthesia, alexithymia, etc., etc. And I’m learning more and more as I actively embrace neuroqueering.

** Being “he, him, and his’ed” has struck me as awkward for several years now. A good part of that discomfort isn’t gendered; it’s a sensitivity to being spoken about in the Third Person rather than spoken with. I am interested in someday exploring the linkage between these constructs and the traditional Jewish customs around gossip and right speech known as Lashon Hara. Being called Sir or Mister in public also irks me partly because of gender assumptions and in part because of the feudal dynamics and hierarchical implications. I know this whole pronoun thing is new to lots of us but even the dictionary publishers Merriam-Webster are hep to the game and made “singular they” the word of the year in 2019. Old habits die hard and I’m not trying to mess with your neurolinguistic programming (or maybe I am?) so mistakes will arise. Let’s be compassionate. I hope I’ll get your pronoun preferences right too. I also currently prefer being called shir and not Shir Yaakov.