Ashley Dudley

My name is Ashley Dudley. I was diagnosed later in life with autism in my adult years. Growing up for me came with many challenges, and lots of unanswered questions as to why I behaved the way I did, etc. I grew up bullied in school, I had to be in special education classes due to extreme slow learning per what the teachers said. 

To rewind a little bit, I was born at 4 months premature, weighing less than one pound and had to stay in the NICU for 3 months to finish developing and to get better enough to go home. During my NICU stay, my left lung collapsed. That caused a huge scare for my parents. After some time had passed, I was well enough to go home to my parents. Fast forward, as I stated earlier, I had to be in special education and was often bullied because of it and called names such as the "R" word. As I approached adulthood, I decided to go out and seek a diagnosis to see what exactly was going on with me. It was in 2014, when i sought out a good psychologist, and she diagnosed with autism (Asperger's syndrome), I was so relieved to finally get an answer to my "why".  

Now, i did graduate from high school, and started working in the medical field as a Certified Nursing Assistant and now a Patient Care Tech (PCT) at various senior facilities and is currently at a local hospital. While I was able to mentally hold down several jobs in the medical field as well as the retail industry, I still had some struggles with certain life situations. 

The current struggle is driving, I'm still learning how to drive. I personally feel the autism that I have is what is making me have some minor delays with driving on the road. It's not that I can't drive, my brain just takes a bit longer to comprehend things than the average person does. Since my diagnosis, and continued research on autism, I now am a self advocate, and have been a self advocate ever since my diagnosis. I have been in magazines, and made an appearance on a local television station. 

My goal is to continue to let the world know that it's ok to be autistic, and that anybody can be autistic regardless of what gender or race they are!