So this next slide, blending in, on one side of the screen, we have someone who is trying very hard to blend in, they're standing against a black and white striped wall, and they have painted stripes on themselves to help themselves blend in and it's not really working. On the other side of the screen, we see a set of cartoon hands holding a cartoon phone could even be the same person perhaps there's some text messages that say some very mean things. Jerk loser freak, and there's a poop emoji. These are not very nice words that make you just want to disappear and blend in the text on the slide reads, discovery and masking. I often mentioned that I am late diagnosed, because not knowing I was autistic for almost 30 years has had a huge impact on me. I was living a life I thought I was supposed to have instead of living the life I wanted to live and it was costing me and making me sick. Before I was diagnosed, I had finally landed what I thought was my dream job working in a hip and trendy office and was just beginning to settle into that role and the new schedule, and we moved offices to a new physical location. And then the old office before the move, I had sat in this nice quiet corner with natural lighting. And the new office unfortunately came with a new seating chart, new lighting and some new responsibilities. A few months after the office move, my health had started to decline and I was constantly sick, I was nauseous, my weight was dropping, I went from about 120 to 95 pounds and a few months, I was having almost daily migraines anytime I was physically present in the office along with some other neurological symptoms. And throughout this time, I kept going back and forth with my my doctor. And I was desperately trying to get to the bottom of this mystery illness, that was actually something that I hadn't experienced off and on throughout my life more than once in times of stress and change. Eventually, after many missteps and wrong treatments, I was diagnosed autistic. And I started the work necessary to get my health back on track at the age of 29. And I was missed for such a long time, because autism can seem or can be invisible. Because for some of us, whether intentionally or unintentionally, we learn to mask or hide our autistic straight traits or when we are struggling with when autistic person is masking, I want to make sure I say this. It's not something that we do to be deceptive. Those words, you know, freak, weirdo. They are things we have been called throughout our lives when we do something that someone else thinks is strange. And so you know, people say like, oh, what's wrong with you? Are you okay? And that becomes this cue that whatever we were doing was weird or unacceptable. And so we hide because we just want to be invisible, we just want to be left alone, we just want to blend in, we don't want to be on display. And that masking is exhausting. And if you are masking, every now and then, you know, most people will probably be okay. But for some autistic people they are masking day after day without rest. And that extra energy is draining and it's adding up. For me You may have noticed if we were face to face today, you would definitely notice in a room, I walk back and forth I pace and I am constantly in motion. When I'm physically sitting to give a presentation, most of the motion stays in my hands, there's some toe tapping under the table that is hidden, but I am never still. In fact, being still makes it very hard for me to be present and engaged unless I am on the verge of falling asleep and then I'm not present and engaged anyway.