Chapter 13, "Finding Your Strengths."

I'm Danielle. I was diagnosed right after high school because we were trying to get me on a waiver list to get an aide who could help me. And you have to have an official diagnosis in order to get on that list. An aide would be wonderful for me because they can help me with my life decisions and some of the everyday things I can't do.

Besides ASD, I have some other physical limitations. I was told that I would never get a job, never get a home, never graduate from college. People didn't think that I could actually do those things, because they didn't think it was a possibility at all.

People thought that I was going to be at home all my life. I was so determined because I didn't want that for myself. I had goals, and I wanted to be able to reach them. I had ambitions, and I wanted to be able to accomplish them. So far, I have. I also have every plan to keep going and prove those who doubted me wrong.

Graduating college was a massive step for me. Getting my first apartment was another. Just recently, I accomplished another one. And that was becoming a cat mom. I don't have her here yet. But in about four weeks, I will have her. She's an orange tabby cat for my grandfather.

My key to success is that I've set it in my mind that I wanted to do certain things. And then I did it. I've managed to complete about half the goals on my list. I'm still working on it.

Living on my own. Living on my own can be irritating at times because the neighbors don't know how to be quiet at nighttime. One of my neighbors has friends that come over in the wee hours of the morning. And they stay up being noisy until 4:00 AM. They are extremely loud, and I can hear them from my front door. It's rather irritating because even when I tell them to be quiet because I'm trying to sleep, they don't listen at all.

There's so much that goes into being an adult that you have to deal with. You have to budget. And then you have to deal with buying groceries every week and paying your bills. I'm also constantly dealing with people coming over because I have so many clients who need help. So there's a lot of time management that goes into it.

I have a stay-at-home job, where I'm working with one of the biggest universities in my state. I'm a video technician. And I'm currently making cooking videos for people with disabilities and teaching them how to live on their own. I feel like I've really flipped the script with the people who doubted me, because not only am I living on my own, but I'm also teaching other people how to live on their own.

Lifting off from culinary school. One of the places where I really got my start and built a lot of confidence in myself was in culinary school. We learned a lot of things in a hands-on method, including knife skills and everything. There was also a lot of learning about baking skills, how to work in the kitchen, and things like that.

We had professional chefs come into our school. And we even had a Food Network star come in. And I built a relationship with him. We actually still see each other every few months. And we talk on the phone regularly. He checks in with me just about every week, just to see how I'm doing, even though I graduated from the program.

In that program, we learned a lot more about meat and seafood than anything else. One day, they actually brought in this cow that didn't have a head or any skin. It was extremely bloody and stunk like crazy. It made me extremely squeamish. I didn't want to go near it and ended up having an episode in the classroom.

Luckily, the head person knew what was going on. And it turned out to be a food sensitivity disorder. She had a son on the spectrum, who actually had the same issue. And she guessed that might happen to me. So thankfully, she knew what it was all about.

Despite that, I was still determined to finish the culinary school. So I went and focused in the baking area instead of in meat and seafood. I enjoyed the baking a lot more than I did the meat and seafood. But I did have a few mishaps in that department too. They had walk-in freezers. And I actually got myself stuck in one of those. I would highly recommend not getting locked inside of a freezer.

Overall, the program was a great experience. And it was my very first academic achievement. I graduated number four in my class. I still go back to the program every now and again and help those who need assistance. I'm really proud that I went there. It was a great experience.

Since culinary school, I've actually gone through a lot of different programs. One of them is through the university that I now work for and an associated hospital. There are three of us there who have a disability. And we work with the doctors and nurses, teaching them about our disabilities and how to work with other patients.

We also learn about other disabilities and different cases that come through. From there, we help them take the next step. And while we don't diagnose them or anything, we give them resources to help them help their child.

There are a lot of other projects that I'm excited about too. I'm working on a new series, where I'm going to be speaking with legislators about people with disabilities and how the stereotypes of autism are often different from reality. I want to emphasize to them the importance of visualization and that sensory-wise, things are often very different for autistic people.

I also did this project where I got to lecture a class of 400 college students about anti-Semitism. I have a friend who is a Holocaust survivor, who I have been writing to. What makes her so significant is that she was Anne Frank's best friend during World War II. I would love to do more work like that in the future.

Advice for others.

My advice for others would be to always be ambitious. But more importantly, show your strengths. Look around, find your strengths, and then work with those. I say this because if you show what you're good at, it can not only bring out more of who you are, but people can also see that you're trying to aim for a particular goal and that you are determined to accomplish it.

People look at determination and see if someone is actually determined enough to get a job done. That plays a big factor in advancing positions and getting what you want in life. Having a high level of determination and doing work on my resume has really gotten me to the places I want to go. You just need to believe in yourself and then go get it.