Riley Learns Something New - Often

This post is about Autism Acceptance Month. It might not seem like it at first but hang in there...

Jerrol’s uses Google Calendar and I’m a fan of it. Really I just like calendars and time-management tools in general because I commit my time to a lot of various things, and a good calendar makes the internal chaos of constantly switching tasks less overwhelming. I have three wall calendars at home (each for different things) and I check my phone calendars every morning. In January earlier this year I was beginning to plug things into my 2025 Google Calendar and I noticed something interesting in April: a reminder on the Jerrol’s marketing calendar that April was “Autism Acceptance Month.”

Something else about me is I get way-too-easily-bothered by type-o’s, so I “fixed” it to instead say “Autism Awareness Month.” That sounded right. But after staring at the screen for a minute I started feeling anxious that I was wrong - is it Awareness Month or Acceptance Month? I Googled it.

Gemini pointed me toward AutismSociety.org, which stated that “Autism Acceptance Month celebrates and honors the experiences and identities of Autistic individuals. It emphasizes understanding, inclusion, and support, moving beyond awareness towards meaningful acceptance.”

I changed the “type-o” back and reflected that I learned something new about the topic. This happens often. Not the type-o thing, but the “learn something new about Autism” thing. This wasn’t always the case. I lived the majority of my life only having a loose understanding of the complexity of Autism. I had friends growing up that behaved differently than me, and the adults in my life used the word “Asperger’s” back then as a catch-all term that didn’t really help my understanding.

Not until I started working at Jerrol’s did I come to have more of an appreciation of what the Autism Spectrum looks like and how the world would be a better place with more accommodations for those who experience it differently than others. The word “spectrum” is used pretty perfectly in this context, because as the saying goes: “If you’ve met one person with Autism... You’ve met one person with Autism.” It’s different for everyone.

So this month I suggested that several Jerrol’s team members each share a bit on the topic. As you may know, a significant number of our team members have first-person perspectives and first-hand experiences with Autism, and April seemed like the perfect time to highlight each. I’m the outsider looking in and learning something new each day, but later this month you’ll get to hear from someone living with ASD and parents of children and adults with ASD. I’m very much looking forward to learning something new from them as well.

-Riley Schmit