Autism Awareness Speech

Nearly almost one year ago, I spoken at the inclusion fashion show in Birmingham, talking about my experience and my story with autism. When I look back at my speech, I inspired a room about my story, getting the audience involved with my story and give an impact on how it would feel if you were in the situation where someone told you you were not going anywhere in your life. Have a read below about my speech and how I written it to deliver to 20+ people in the room.

It all started when I was approached by someone for the show and asked me to do a speech about living with autism, without hesitation I said yes and then the writing begins. When I started writing about my story I thought to myself to rotate it on music and how the lyrics describe my story. Take the song “faded by Alan Walker” when I mentioned when I first mentioned about I got diagnosed with autism, I was faded, all the monsters were running around inside of me. I just didn’t know what to do.

I was continuing writing, taking inspiration from my MTV Voices article which you can find on my website. One thing I wanted to do was some audience participation, I wanted the audience to close their eyes and when I told them of what I experienced when someone said to me “you are not going to get job” “your not gonna do well in your qualifications” that’s where when I told the crowd to open your eyes, I want them to feel, this what I experienced when I was younger, someone telling me I can’t achieve anything whilst being autistic.

Telling everyone about my childhood was tough, that’s why I moved out of primary school mainstream education and moved over to the private education to get more support and have smaller classrooms for myself so I can understand better and even did something I really enjoyed which was drama class. I think I made a few people cried about my childhood tbh, it was tough, when secondary school about that’s where I came out of my shell i proved to the primary school, look I’ve done this!

Talking about autism awareness is hard where in the world sometimes people can’t cope with someone with autism, whether it’s in the workplace or even in general. I want to change that and open the world to everyone about autism and show people that autism people can do anything - like leaning off a building in New York City.

To round off the speech I finished off with a quote from another song, Galantis runaway (U&I) in the music video you’ll hear about finding love can be difficult, the quote the male actor touched me and it reminds me how I feel about autism “But it’s a lonely city, sometimes I walk all night without being seen” as people don’t see me as I’m today”

You can read the full speech and watch my full speech video here:

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/ab1d79_e99ca013c78243809016660f117d2e3a/720p/mp4/file.mp4

Hello! Thank you for all for having me tonight, my name is Adam Fowler, I’m a part time content creator on TikTok, autism awareness speaker, model and photographer.

Tonight I’m gonna tell you all an inspiration speech about my autism, how it all started and where I’m today. but before I tell you about my story, let me how I started writing my experiences with autism, I started writing these whilst on a sunbed whilst in Rhodes, I know I was ment to be relaxing but an opportunity came up and I didn’t want to waste it, by writing for the MTV, back in 2016 I written for a segment for MTV voices about living with autism which got me out there. One of the key points of the article was a selfie story, where I published a selfie & added a quote to my autism, the quote read “Growing Up With Autism & learning difficulties has been really challenging, but rather than let those things hold me back, I’ve learned to embrace what makes me, me. I love to travel and to take pictures - and I’m becoming more confident everyday” I written this when I was 23 & I still live by those principles.

I’m going to start my story tonight with a quote that often use to describe myself - “The Monster’s runnin’ wild inside of me, I’m faded,” you might know that song by Alan walker called faded, that is how I felt I was “so lost”, I was faded from the outside world - when I was younger, I come from a background in those days where my Autism wasn’t just heard of, it made me change my perspective on how I see things.

So, I’m gonna do a little bit of audience participation here, you can all stay in your seats for this, I want you all to close your eyes just for a few seconds as i read out the following and I want you all to imagine my experience at primary school. So, your eyes are closed and I want you all to imagine that you are sat in the classroom and your teachers come up, they explain to you before my autism diagnosis that you are not going to achieve in your life, your not going to get a job, you are not going to get any qualifications. You are worthless.

Please now open your eyes. That made you think didn’t it? That’s when I got diagnosed with autism, When a primary school puts you down and I remember my parents fought tooth and nail to get me into better education, I sometimes think why mainstream education can’t cope with someone with autism, the support I needed to help me flourish wasn’t there.

Autism awareness in those days was uncommon, I know now it’s getting more common today, but still needs improving. One of the big thing for autism  and for any other disability is communication, communication is a massive structure in our lives, Most people don’t understand when communicating with someone with a disability, I been there and done it. I currently work in retail and I don’t tell my customers I have a disability even though my employer has pushed me to show customers I have autism which is good way to spread the message but for me, it can be difficult as if you get someone who is angry they won’t understand my disability that’s why I keep it on the low or when you go to the hospital, you have one doctor saying something then another doctor comes in and says completely different that for me gives me anxiety as I’m in the unknown and I don’t know what is gonna happen to me. But thanks to my hard work and graft I put in, now I’m training to be a shift leader at my job.

Believe it or not, Autism is also linked to depression and even anxiety, sometimes I’m okay on the inside and sometimes on the outside I’m not, deep down I do get mixed emotions, but one thing I learned with myself is Embracing Stress and my emotions, It’s okay to be not okay. I’ve learned by doing some framework in spare time by a very inspirational person, Dr Jonathan Leary who is passionate about self care by using social self care techniques. With this, by being proactive with myself I can use my mental muscle to overcome it and I can work in harmony to be who I want to be and I’m also been training my body for any extreme situations in life - which can be useful in life.

It goes to show you can do anything when you put your mind to it, living with autism is a good thing, I honestly didn’t think to myself to be where I be standing right now, I’m standing to hundreds of people talking about my stories about living with autism and showing everyone about some of the positives about my conditions.

When I started doing these fashion shows as a model, it was awesome to hear some of the successful stories that others have achieved, there needs to be more people like this to spread the message hey I got a disability I was told I couldn’t do this but look at me now.

To sum up my speech tonight, I send out a message, “You got something inside of you, go and achieve it, show the haters in your life that put you down, don’t let them stop you for doing something that you want to do in your life” When I started out on this journey I had another quote that I used to describe myself “But it’s a lonely city, sometimes I walk all night without being seen” as people don’t see me as I’m today. But thanks to the lovely people in the room tonight, everyone surrounding me. I’m proud to say I’m now becoming the better version of myself.