Allie Mason – Fun and Adventure!

[Music] Welcome to the Middleton Podcast. I'm Kat Hughes, I'm our searcher at Middleton and I'm also autistic. In this episode I chat to Ali Basin. Ali is an autistic adventure who's written a book that is a guide for young people who might want to get involved in active hobbies. We know that autistic young people are less likely to be involved in sports and active hobbies, so I wanted to chat to Ali about why that might be and how we can make activities more inclusive and autism affirming. I hope you enjoy our chat. Well Ali, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. I so they wanted to start by asking you to tell us a little bit of age yourself. Thank you so much for having me. I'm absolutely thrilled to be here. So yes, my name is Ali Ali Mason. I am a full-time copywriter and I'm also an author. I wrote the autistic guide to adventure which came out in 2023 and I'm currently writing my second book, so watch this space for that one. And I was diagnosed as autistic when I was 23, so like diagnosed but very much dived headfirst into the community once I had that. Brilliant. Well, your book I have in front of me is absolutely gorgeous. I really love us. And what made you want to write us? So for me, I grew up in a really outdoorsy family, and I'd always struggled to fit in. With that, I'd always felt like I'd missed out on the outdoorsy gene somehow. So when I was diagnosed and I finally understood right okay, so I've got sensory issues. I struggle with social and communication issues and things like that. I immediately thought this is going to help me to understand why getting active and being outdoors was always so difficult. And as I was doing more research into that, I realised that there wasn't really a lot of information out there. There wasn't a lot of information that was easily accessible to the public, let's say. I've done a master's degree in research design, so I'm used to having to dig really deeply into different sources and things to find out what I was looking for, but not everybody has the time or the understanding or the literacy to do that. So when I was doing that research to educate myself, I realised there was such a gap in the resources that were available, and I decided to fill it with my own writing. I'm very glad that you do. Thank you. There are so few years away, so there's a way to do those active hobbies or artistic folk. I've moulded this over quite a lot, and I think to be honest, because there's so much good stuff happening on the ground, and I certainly didn't realise that before I wrote the book, it's something that I've come to know from meeting people at conferences and events, often people reaching out and saying that they've read the book, they really enjoyed it. There's actually so much happening in local communities, clubs and activity providers and that kind of thing that try to cater for the autistic community and the wider neurodivergent community. I don't think there's a lot of spare time there to be creating the resources and to be writing the resources, so I think for me, I was really fortunate because I'm not involved in that practical way. I'm not trained as a coach or anything like that, so I had that capacity to take what people were already doing and doing really well and to put it in a format that could be widely shared like the book is. I think that's what I've landed on. I think it's not the fact that this information isn't out there because it definitely is. It's just localised and it's not kind of shared at that higher level at the moment. That makes a lot of sense. And you mentioned that you got your diagnosis when you were 23, so did that kind of change how you felt about yourself? Oh, 100%. Like I think it's really interesting because some people, when they get their diagnosis, it can be really difficult and really challenging for them. Whereas for me, when I opened the email and I read that, you know, they were saying, yes, you are autistic. I did have a massive cry because I think I had to let all of those emotions out. But at the end of the day, it was just liberating because I finally understood myself. I finally understood why I felt so different from everybody else, why my experience of the world was so different from everybody else's. And I finally had the language to be able to explain that to people who didn't have the same worldview as me, who don't have that autistic neurotype. It's so challenging when you're experiencing things that A, you thought everybody did and then you learn they don't, to be able to put that into words in a way that they can understand. And so I think for me, getting that diagnosis was really important and really positive because it meant that I had a way to better connect not only with myself, but with the people around me as well. Yeah, that makes sense. And yeah, I always think that's, you know, knowledge is my hair, it's a cliche, but it's simply and like for myself, it absolutely changed how I felt about myself. But as you say, it gave me that language to be able to describe and understand because I always felt able to put something like, okay, and I know, it makes sense. Yeah, all the pieces all into place. Yeah, absolutely. And are there activities then that you really love and what do you love about them? I am a big, big roller skating fan. So when I was a kid, I really loved to roller skate. And I think that one of the things after I got my diagnosis that I was really keen to revisit were those kind of childhood hobbies and before kind of everything else got, because I'm thinking, I don't know, you know, how it's phrased in Ireland, but like primary school age, so you kind of, you know, five to 10, something like that. And how the hobbies that I had then are probably the things that truly like spoke to me, to be very cliche about it, but yeah, that kind of spoke to my soul and what really resonated with me. And roller skating was one of those things. And I did it a lot during primary school and then didn't do it during secondary school, during college, during university. And it was only something that I really came back to as an adult once I had that diagnosis. And being able to go back to it with the knowledge that I had meant that I was just able to embrace it on a different level and don't get me wrong. I'm not a great roller skater. Like, you're never going to see me showing up on TikTok or Instagram Reels doing fancy trips or anything like that. But it just, yeah, it just brings me so much joy and it's also so soothing. The feedback that I get while some roller skating, I've got a friend, Stu, who they're featured in the book for the mountain biking section and they're obsessed with mountain biking. And they say that part of that obsession is the feedback from the bike and going down the hills and the lumps and the bumps and all the rest of it. And I think you get something very similar with roller skates as well. So yeah, that's my, that's my O2 roller skating. If you haven't tried it, you definitely should. It's a long time since I've been skating, but I loved it. And for the same reasons, I think it's very, it's dimmy. Isn't that like it? Yeah, exactly. You know, quite a few autistic people who in adulthood have gotten into. Yeah, and what do you think the main barriers are for autistic folks who can get involved in active hobbies? I think going back to something you mentioned earlier about knowledge being power. I think the lack of knowledge is a massive barrier, understanding why our bodies work the way they do or why we feel the way we do and having the language to be able to describe that, but also, you know, we live in a world where we're connected 24/7 and we can hop on the internet and we can search for whatever we like. But if we don't know how to describe it, how are we going to search for it? You know, if you, if you want to participate in something and you're like, whenever I try to do X activity, my body feels like jelly. But how do you search for that on the internet? You know, you just can't. And so I think knowledge definitely number one. And then number two support. So having people around you in those organizations, you know, you might be a part of a team or you might be doing something where you have a coach like you need to have the people there who understand neurodiversity, who understand what it's like to be autistic, who've had, you know, they don't have to have done a degree in it, but have had a couple of hours of training into how to support autistic young people. It just makes all of the difference. So that's number two is the poor. And then number three, I would say, and I think the book really feeds into that is confidence. One of the reasons I wanted to write the book is to put the power back in young people's hands and say, look, you can use this as a tool to advocate for yourselves. Like you don't as much as it's incredibly important to have people advocating for us, to have allays who are there to support us. We also need to learn how to ask for help when we need it or to ask for certain supports to enable us to get involved with an activity. And I don't think necessarily that that confidence is very embedded in young people in the neurodivergent community at the moment. So it would be really nice to see that grow. And I think that as it does, there'll be much more empowered and, you know, ready to get involved in those active hobbies. Absolutely. And then you mentioned your difference to who's in the book. And yeah, lovely sort of stories from people who are involved in the different sorts of hobbies. And why did you want to sort of include those personal stories? I think it's so important to acknowledge that there are so many different experiences within the neurodivergent community. Because at the end of the day, I could have done lots and lots of research and I did do lots and lots of research, but I could have ended it there and just written a book based on my research and my lived experience. But the thing is there are a ton of different activities and active hobbies that either I don't do because I'm just not interested in them or I don't do because for me, personally, my autistic traits make that activity uncomfortable or something that I don't enjoy. And I did not want the book to be homogenous in the sense that it was only my perspective because I think that's very limiting. It's very ego-tistical. And it's just not helpful. So from the get-go, when I was planning it and I was thinking about what was going to be included, I knew that I wanted to have different voices from the community and their sharing, their own lived experiences. Because you know, adventure's not one-size-fits-all, autism's not one-size-fits-all. So yeah, it was just non-negotiable for me, I think. And you mentioned then, like, some of the things that you struggle with and that you don't find comfortable? What sort of things do they? I hate water with a passion, and when I say I hate it, I mean in the context of it touching me. So I am more than happy to go kayaking or to go rowing like I love those activities, but anything with swimming in it, or where I have to get kind of in and out of the water, is just not my cup of tea because the yeah, the sensations of going from wet skin to dry skin and back again, or it's all horrendous and awful. So you know, we've got swimming in the book. There's no way I could have written about that from a positive perspective because I do not have positive feelings towards swimming. But then I know that there are a lot of autistic people out there who are complete water babies and who love being in the water. And so, you know, you've got people like Sam Holness, the triathlete, who will literally go from running to swimming to biking all in the- Ah, I couldn't, I couldn't. I think it's incredible, and I'm in absolute awe of him and everything he does, but it's not for me. Well, I think it just captures the range of our community. Yes, it's beautiful, and that's that step. Exactly. And you kind of touched on this already, but I'd love to kind of dig a little bit deeper on it. You kind of within the book, you give sort of supports for each of the activities, which is incredibly useful, I think, for anyone who's sort of thinking of getting involved and I leave them, but then also it sort of speaks to that kind of advocacy side of things and sort of helping young people and supporting people to ask for the things that they might need. Was that something that was really kind about the heart of your thinking when you're putting it together? Definitely. I think I wanted the book to be a resource that almost acted like a springboard. I didn't want it to be something that autistic young people read and put down and didn't think about again. I wanted it to be something that spurred them on to enact change in their own lives. So, in the sense of, I hope that they might read some of these hobbies and activities that I've included, they might think, right, that one sounds great, you know, horse riding. I've always wanted to try horse riding, but I've always worried about X, Y and Z. Well, guess what? I've addressed X, Y and Z, I've given you ways that you can overcome it, and you can now go to your parent or your carer or whoever is going to be helping you to access that activity and say, I'd really like to do this. I'm worried about this, but here are the ways that I think we could make it better for me. And I also think as well that, you know, there are some young people who might not be ready to have those conversations themselves yet, but it means that if they can shed book with the parents and the carers and they can say, why don't you have a read of this and you can maybe get a better understanding of where I'm coming from and what I need to be able to access this activity, because I think advocacy is so powerful and certainly the difference once I have my diagnosis of being able to advocate for myself, because I finally could make sense of everything that was going on. If I can do anything to share that feeling with others, I want to. That's amazing. And I think as well, that's so powerful, because I think when you're younger, you don't necessarily even know what will be helpful and what support you might need. So to see lists of things that potentially could be helpful, it kind of gives you those building blocks to try things and go, oh, no, not that one, but this one works for me and sort of takes back the options, I think. It's just gorgeous for young people. Yeah, I think of it almost like a recipe, because at the end of the day, you know, if you think about making cookies, some people like chocolate chips, some people like raisins, some people like sprinkles, like you can choose whichever one works best for you. And if you're not sure, you can try the chocolate chip cookie and the raisin cookie and the sprinkle cookie and then you go, right, okay, I hate raisins and cookies, I won't be doing that again, but I know that I'll always choose the chocolate chip from now on. And it's that idea of once you know which supports are most helpful for you, you don't have to stress about all of the others, you don't have to worry about how are people going to react to me asking for nine million different things, because at the end of the day, it never really is nine million different things. It's always just one or two that work for you. That's exactly it. Oh, I always say it's little tweaks here and there. It's never sort of massive asks for people, yeah. And then I guess on the back of that, would you have any advice for parents or teachers you want to come try and support young people to find those actually other things that they might love? Yes, I think that, you know, it's going to be a recurring theme through this episode, but the knowledge is power idea, because I think learn as much as you can get involved in the communities of, you know, lived experience. Like if you can learn from people who are older than your child, or the child that you're working with, who have lived experience of what they also live with, then that is definitely the best route in my opinion to getting kind of clued up about what's going to help. And you having that knowledge means that you can share that knowledge with the young person in your life, which is always a good thing in my opinion. But also to listen to the feedback of that young person in your life as well, I think. And that sounds kind of really superficial and blasey, but what I mean is really listen so that you understand where that feedback is coming from. So, you know, we were saying earlier about how different activities are going to suit different people, but activities also exist in kind of groups. So in the sense of I know that I hate anything where I have to go from being wet to dry to wet to dry with my skin. So if I don't like swimming, don't suggest I try triathlon because it's not going to go well. But equally, if you have somebody who really enjoys the feedback from being on wheels, so I really love roller skating, I bet if I tried might in biking, I'd love that as well because it's the same sense of feedback. So yeah, kind of listen to what that what's behind what they're saying and understand the reasoning behind their feedback so that you can use that to help them narrow down what they're interested in doing. And again, just that that sense of of building confidence and empowering young people to advocate for themselves and not to be afraid to say this didn't work for me or I don't feel that I'm very good at this, but equally on the flip side of that, to encourage them to keep doing something if they enjoy it, but they're bad at it. Because like I said, I'm never going to be a world-class roller skater, but I love it so I'm going to keep doing it and I think for young people, they don't always have that confidence. They feel like they have to be great at something to spend time on it and the reality is you just don't, you just don't. I would very last question for you is would you have any advice and if you could go back and talk to your younger self? Oh, it's such a loaded question, votes such a good one. I think when I look at the book, so you might have noticed that when you read it yourself, that my dedication is to my younger self, so I dedicated the book for Alex, I promise, it gets better. And I think that that is the first and foremost the message I'd give her because when I was growing up and I didn't have my diagnosis outside of being outdoorsy and adventurous and active and not having access to those things because of barriers that I couldn't understand. I struggled in school, I struggled with friendships, like there was a lot going on that was really difficult for me and I just would love to go back and be like you don't need to worry, it's going to be okay because when you're in the midst of it, you definitely don't think it's going to be okay. So that would be one and then another, I was having a flick through the book earlier to see what words of wisdom all that Ali had left in there for me and I found a sentence where I'd written failing is just discovering a way to do something that doesn't work and I was like yes, actually that's exactly what it is and I really resonated with that and despite the fact that I wrote this book years ago, it's something that I still struggle with every day because we all have that kind of desire to be good at things, we have that desire to be all what's the word I'm looking for, to be kind of recognised by others for being good at things and so when we spend time on things that don't work out the way we thought it can be really easy to think well I won't do that again, I won't try that again, that's clearly not for me and I'm really trying very hard to get out with that mindset so I think again that's something I'd go back and tell my younger self I'd be like please just fail over and over and over again because it's just so good for building resilience, for building confidence and but also for opening you up to new opportunities because you're not going to try new things if you're constantly scared they're going to go wrong, whereas if you don't mind if they go wrong the whole world is your oyster. Thanks so much for listening to the podcast, this conversation based interview designed to stimulate thinking and hopefully support the development of practice, it's not intended to be medical or psychological advice, to use express from these chats may not always be the view of middle-hand Centre. If you'd like to know more about middle-hand you can find us on x at Autism Centre and Facebook and Instagram and middle-hand Centre for Autism, go easy until next time.