Teresa is in her early 20s and looking forward to blogging about her journey with newly diagnosed autism. Within the past few years, she’s had to rebuild her entire life from scratch and navigate everything very differently. She recently had the opportunity to job shadow at different locations and has been inspired to attend college and one day work with children. Teresa is eager for this new chapter in her life and wants to inspire others with autism to never give up, despite whatever obstacles life may throw their way.
View all postsWhere I've Been: My Journey Through Self-Healing
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Hello, everyone! I know it’s been a while since my last blog and I want to apologize but I had some personal issues I had to deal with. However, I’m feeling a lot better now and I’m ready to return to my blog. So, I thought I should start out this blog post by explaining how I’ve been and what I’ve been up to. I won’t lie, the eight months have been pretty challenging. I spent these past eight months working on my mental health and while there were some obstacles I had to overcome, overall, I’m grateful for all the life lessons I learned along the way.
Number one, I’m grateful for all the connections I’ve made and all of the people I’ve come across within these past couple of months. It can be hard to open up about what you’re going through at times, but when you finally do and you find someone who might be going through something similar it helps you feel like you’re not so alone in your struggles. Unfortunately, there were also times when I had to set boundaries with people who weren’t so kind about what I was going through. Sometimes people respected those boundaries, other times I had people who couldn’t accept them, which was obviously not fun.
Other than that, I’ve done a lot of work on myself as well. In the past, I’ve never had really good self-esteem and while I admit it’s still not fully perfect quite yet, it’s a lot better than it has been. I’ve also been working on how to love myself more and put myself and my happiness first instead of people-pleasing. Therapy has been the one thing that has been helping me these past eight months and it’s something that I continue doing.
Before I end this blog, I want to mention that if you relate to any of this, just know that there’s nothing wrong with receiving help if you need it. Talk to a family member, close friend, or someone you trust. And finally, never ever give up.
Teresa Cardona
