Congrats to our 2019 Lily Seal Artists

Crystal at the 2024 Policy and Partnership Forum. Easterseals Photo by Rohanna Mertens

Crystal Odom-McKinney is the National Director for the Easterseals Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP). SCSEP is the largest federally-funded program for low-income, unemployed adults, ages 55 and older, who seek employment and training assistance as well as civic engagement. 

Through this transitional employment program, Easterseals partners with community-based nonprofit organizations and government agencies to provide participants with training opportunities to update their skills. During time in SCSEP, job seekers work with Easterseals staff to target and achieve personal employment goals. Some SCSEP participants are veterans in need of support.

As a veteran, Crystal knows how hard it can be for veterans to transition from military service back into civilian life. Finding employment can be difficult and stressful, and for disabled veterans, or older veterans, these barriers to employment and reintegration can be even more prominent. Easterseals and its Affiliates work hard to provide much needed-support to veterans during and after this period of transition. Crystal takes pride in providing confidence to veterans as they make this next step in their journey. 

This interview has been edited for clarity.

[Q] Easterseals just worked with Voya Cares on a new set of research looking at financial security for veterans and caregivers and interviews with employers. How is Easterseals responding to some of the challenges on those subjects? 

[A]  Easterseals is responding through training and support of employment within our networks. We work directly with partners in communities and with job seekers across the country to give them the tools that they need to be successful in the workplace.

[Q] What are some of the services that Easterseals provides to veterans and military families? 

[A] We provide training to job seekers in the communities that we serve. We also connect them with employment opportunities, and those employment opportunities can vary based on your skill set. And lastly, we connect with businesses and employer champions so that they understand the value of  job seekers and our communities.

[Q] What are some of the impacts that these programs have for the individuals and families involved? And is there a story from your experience that you’d like to share? 

[A] Sure, I’ll start with the impact. The impact that our services provide to veterans and their families is definitely around a sense of confidence and pride. Many people come to our programs without hope.

And when they leave, they leave with lots of hope due to the various supports that are provided through skill building for employment, through training, training supports, through resources — because there is a huge need of resources for job seekers in all of our programs. There’s also connection, which builds confidence. It’s very difficult for someone to look for employment opportunities when you don’t have the proper resources in place.

You have to minimize those bumps in the road, and that’s very important. If you cannot get up and have a place of shelter, if you don’t have the economic means to transfer back and forth to work, if you don’t have education or enough of it, if you don’t have skills or need skills to become more employable …  We work with  people to minimize those barriers … to help make them stronger and make them better. In return, this allows their confidence to be uplifted a lot. 

[Q] I was curious. Is there a story or experience you’ve had that relates to this?

[A] Sure. I would like to share a recent story. We had a job seeker in Ohio who had been out of work for some time and really needed some support in getting back into the workplace. The job seeker was roughly in their mid seventies. And they found out about our Easterseals training programs and through those training supports, they were able to get computer training.

They were also able to connect with other job seekers, which again, goes back to the confidence building. That’s often really important. And then ultimately, you know, get employed and get reemployed into the workplace. So that’s one of many stories that we see out here. And that’s why we really encourage the whole confidence builder in what we do every day.

Easterseals Photo by Rohanna Mertens

[Q] That’s fantastic. The Voya survey included interviews with employers. I’m just curious, can you tell me what Easterseals does when working with employers who are interested in hiring veterans? 

[A] Easterseals connects employers with interested job seekers through connections across our national Affiliate network. One thing that’s very important is for employers to understand the value veterans bring to the workforce. So we share lots of stories of how job seekers are impacted by this work.

We also share how a job seeker may transition into employment at that particular company. We have what we call, “employer champions,” and they are amazing employers that get it. They love the work that we do at Easterseals and are very aligned with the mission and the vision.

They also are willing to go above and beyond — through their training, through their workshops — and that translates into essential resources for people looking for employment. 

So, employers not only open up job opportunities and say, “Well, we’ll hire veterans,” or “We’ll hire people with disabilities.”

These employers actually get it, and they can come in and walk side by side with us. They’re willing to interview people and they’re willing to create programs at their companies that will connect job seekers directly into employment opportunities at their organization. They are our champions.

Champions who are willing to hire mature job seekers, champions who understand the value of a mature worker, champions who understand the reliability and the dependability and the experience that a mature worker brings to their workforce. 

From our champions, we share the good stuff that they do with other companies that may be interested. So it’s sort of like carrying courtship. We definitely want to court other businesses to be champions, and we also want to share the good things that are out there.

Sometimes we’re very successful; sometimes it just takes a little work. The end result is definitely in the impact for the people that we serve. And it’s a win-win-win. 

[Q] I’m curious, is there a particular success story about a job seeker and an employer that you’d like to share?— about job seekers with a disabilities or a veteran with a new position? 

[A] I’m thinking of someone who was recently employed at a school, and worked as a trainer connected at that school, and ultimately was hired there as a school aid. And I was there on site when they offered her the position. She was very excited and it was just a really wonderful memory. She started as a school clerk a little later in life, and she did well and ultimately got that job. 

Unrelated to veterans or disability, we had another job seeker who was incarcerated for two decades, and this individual came to our program with little to no hope. As a result of being retooled and retrained into the Easterseals SCSEP program, he was employed full time. And since that time, he’s been promoted to two additional positions and two additional roles at his company. 

[Q] So one of the things that came through in the recent study is that just half of disabled veterans feel comfortable in their ability to cover day to day expenses, which I think is sort of a jaw-dropping number for a lot of people. What programs does Easterseals provide to veterans and military families to help address this?

[A] We have lots of offerings, both in person throughout our Affiliate network and in virtual training.

We also provide resources related to the other wraparound services — such as housing, such as child care, such as financial planning. Of course, through lots of connections that we have out there, including Freddie Mac. And our other local partners also provide upskilling and training support.

If there’s someone who needs additional support in returning to work, we negotiate with employers to offer internship opportunities where they can learn as they earn. And we create those types of partnerships with employers as well as community colleges and other nonprofit organizations.

[Q] One of the things we’ve talked about is people who didn’t have a sense of confidence … you’ve really helped to bring them up, and made them feel seen and heard and understood at a time of their life when they needed that kind of support. There are a lot of services that Easterseals provides that are life-changing. Can you talk about the confidence piece some more?

[A] Yeah, you know, I have so many stories … as it relates to confidence. We talk about the psychology of feelings, and the psychology of how you feel, and we all know that when we’re confident, we’re confident. When we feel good, we thrive, we do better. 

And a lot of our mature job seekers, and a lot of job seekers in all of our programs really come to us with no hope. They’re at their darkest. They don’t have a lot of resources. They feel like they don’t have anything. I’ve traveled to some of our locations where we’ve had job seekers who are homeless and they sleep in their car, and they didn’t want to get an apartment because their dog couldn’t stay.

We sense a lot of this hopelessness in the work that we do. And we work with them, you know, day by day to instill better confidence in them …to let them know that they’re valued and to let them know that step by step, day by day, we can help them to minimize those bumps in the road.

Maybe they’ve been told “no” by so many people, but we want them to know and understand that we’re here to support them. We have them in that sense. So that’s where the confidence building comes in. And it’s sort of a domino effect, because if we were in a room full of people, and we have people who are feeling good about themselves, by the time we leave the room, everyone else will feel better.

This relates to our job [in SCSEP]. This might be around mental wellness. This could be around financial well-being — any of the topics. If we talk about these circles of support that we provide to people, we can help them move forward and they can get stronger. They’re more confident, and they can move mountains, and they can be better at what they do.

Stories like these put fires in [our teams’ bellies], and fires them up in a good way to keep being change agents in the communities that they serve.

By Christina Gann

I have been disabled since birth, both developmentally and physically — the source was a congenital disorder, a hole in my diaphragm, that most likely also led to my neurodivergent brain and my small intestines twisting inside my body. I had emergency surgery to remove all but 11 inches of my small intestines when I was nine years old after an excruciating two years of my resilient mother fighting to convince my doctors that I had a health problem at all. I was invisible to my doctors and so was my illness. 

I spent most of third grade in the hospital after my intestinal resection and when I returned, it was with a new set of hardware — a backpack full of nutritional life support and a Hickman heart catheter. I remember the crushing feeling of having to go to the community pool and having children run up and ask me what was sticking out of my chest. All I wanted was to hide, and I did. I did everything I could to not allow the world to “see” me as disabled or different. 

I came out to my parents as a lesbian, Christmas 2005 sitting at an IHOP after an intoxicated night out with my college friends. I was so terrified I couldn’t even bring myself to face them or call them to break the news gently. I texted my mom, “Hi mom, I need to tell you, I am a lesbian.  If you have any questions, you can call me in the morning.” As funny as it is when I talk about it now, I was riddled with internalized shame of myself, as who I am naturally attracted to was deemed unacceptable and sinful. I grew up in a small town in central Texas where the Bible was the word with no safe space for the queer experience. 

The fear of being rejected by your pack is an instinct that triggers a primal reaction to conform. The moment I sent that text, I remember feeling like a weight had been lifted off my chest so I could finally breathe, and within the same breath, fear consumed me. I was paralyzed with the thought of losing all that I came to know, those that are most important and close to me. I feared being rejected by the very people I was supposed to depend on and look to when I needed support, the people who love me unconditionally. Was this the condition that would break those bonds? I felt raw and exposed. I was no longer hidden, living outside my pack that sheltered and protected me all those years. Unknown to me at the time, but coming out is a revolving door and each time I had to make myself susceptible to the possibility of ridicule and hatred in order to exist authentically. Fear is always sitting at the back of my mind that I would be taken out of the conversation and only my sexuality and gender would exist instead of my character. That I would suddenly be deemed unworthy of personhood based on my sexuality and gender expression alone. 

As I matured into adulthood, I became hyper independent. I wouldn’t ask for help or accommodations and I certainly would not claim the identity of disabled. I was in a battle with my internalized ableism. I learned from societal views early on that accepting your disability meant giving up and limiting the possibilities. In media, literature, and marketing, this was the story that was told over and over again until it became the narrative I gave myself. I had to hide and deny my disability or I would never reach my fullest potential. When it’s the only story being told, it’s hard to see another perspective even if it’s your own. 

Though I lived much of my adult life as an out and proud lesbian, I struggled to be proud of my disabilities and how they shaped the way I walk through the world. Just like I hid my queerness, and twisted myself into a shape that looked like it might fit so that I might not be found out in my youth. I did the same thing with my disabilities. I fought accepting myself in order to fit the standard I was told was required to lead a peaceful existence. 

My disabilities excluded me from conversations about my life and the possibilities held there.

We believe what we see and this becomes our reality. I was taught at a very young age that being different meant danger. That being disabled meant that you were limited in what was possible. That accepting disability meant accepting defeat and a life less fulfilling. I grew up in a world that mistreated, misrepresented, and abandoned the disabled and cast a shadow on the queer and gender non-conforming existence. I struggled to unravel the false narrative of society from my own lived experience. 

I spent most of my life hiding pieces of my identity that are interwoven into the fabric of my existence. I was afraid to accept myself for who I am because that meant living a life out in the open, exposed, raw and vulnerable against a society that would rather have me not exist at all. My sexuality, gender expression and disability out in the open meant living outside the boundaries of what society deemed acceptable and that took a whole lot of love to fight the fear if I chose self acceptance over societal expectations. 

I am grateful today to know and understand that I can be proud of who I am every day. My disabilities, sexuality and gender expression do not dictate my capabilities or the possibilities of what I can achieve, but they do shape the way in which I exist. All the parts of myself I was afraid to show are a part of the beautiful tapestry that is me and are worthy of embracing, love and acceptance. I have finally found Pride in it all.

Christina Gann is a content creator, artist, and scientist based in Colorado. They love horror movies, gaming with friends, and their dog, Oreo. You can follow Christina on Twitch, TikTok, Instagram, and X.

By Megan Maverick

The girl in the poster looked like me. 

“DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONES,” screamed the top of the poster, and beside the girl, one of the milestones said, “Plays with gender appropriate toys.” 

In a sense, she looked like the children who walked by her every day, too. 

She hung in the hallway of a school for autistic children. She was made to look like us; that was her purpose. 

In 2002, autism researcher Simon Baron Cohen penned a new theory of autism. According to Baron Cohen, men’s and women’s brains generally specialize in one of two skill sets: empathizing for women and systemizing for men. There’s an exception, though. Autistic people of all genders, allegedly, are extreme systemizers. It’s called the extreme male brain theory. 

It’s not the first time that autism was disassociated from femininity, and it won’t be the last, either. As early as 1944, when Hans Asperger first began to identify autism, he said he initially found it only in boys. To this day, some accounts of sex differences in autism report a 2:1 ratio of autistic men to autistic women. 

I was raised a girl, but I was bad at it. I didn’t shave, I sat with my legs open, and I wore dresses clumsily. When I interned at the DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONES school, the CEO pulled me aside into a hallway and invited me to her class for autistic girls to learn how to dress and act more femininely.  

Autistic people are more than 7 times more likely to be gender variant. I am one of them. 

(And, while I can’t speak to other experiences today, I can speak to the experiences of autistic people who are raised, willingly or unwillingly, as girls. A 2019 study showed that, of 21 autistic people all raised as girls, not a single one related to the “typical presentation and activities of the female gender.”) 

The route through which I realized I am transgender was a circuitous one. It started with one fact: autistic women are not treated as women. I was an autistic woman; I found that I was not treated as one.  

From this, I played with the pronouns I used. I slowly realized she/her felt less and less genuine. I tried a binder, eventually got surgery to remove my breasts, and briefly experimented with low-dose testosterone gel. And somewhere along this journey — I couldn’t tell you where — I began to identify as agender. 

I want to write an essay about growing up disconnected from femininity, the ways in which being autistic means you are alienated from womanhood, the ways it contributed to my current identity. At the same time, I am afraid. Theories like Baron Cohen’s offer a tempting out to explain away my identity, offer a tempting in to further denial of autistic women’s womanhood. I am afraid of my story being used as evidence. 

There’s another theory I want to address: rapid-onset gender dysphoria, or ROGD. Put simply, ROGD poses that trans identity is a kind of social contagion among people raised as girls, one which preys upon the vulnerability of young girls’ relationship to misogyny. In this theory, young women are so turned away from womanhood that they turn to masculinity instead as a kind of shelter from the world. 

Does my story not confirm it? 

Let’s take a break from theory. Pause for a moment. I’m going to ask my cisgender audience a question: 

What does your gender feel like to you? 

If you radically changed your gender presentation, would it still feel comfortable? And if the world decided to call you sir or ma’am, whichever you haven’t used until now, what then? What if your driver’s license said the opposite? What if your birth certificate lied? What if not a single soul called you by your name? 

Is your gender not complex, too?

Autistic people and transgender people alike are rarely given the space to be as messy as non-autistic and non-transgender people alike. Whereas neurotypical cisgender people are given a fuller range of gendered brain possibilities, autistic trans people are given only extremes — or are seen as woefully misled.  

In the study I shared with you earlier, not a single autistic person in the gender study related to the tropes of womanhood. What I failed to mention was the true diversity of the participant’s experiences. Nine identified with aspects of both binary genders or felt fluid, eight felt like tomboys, eight more had identities related to interests or company, seven wanted to be boys growing up, seven identified with neither gender. 

Only one was transgender. 

The truth is: I think I have a good guess as to why autistic people are more likely to be trans. And the truth is: It doesn’t matter. If autistic people are more likely to be gender-divergent, then what that means is autistic people are more likely to need care. We are more likely to be vulnerable. We are more likely to face harm at the hands of others. 

If I struggled with girlhood and decided it was no longer for me, what then? I fear any search for a cause is eventually a search for a cure. Like autism, the “problem” of trans identity is not one that is fixed by finding a cause and fixing it. Autistic people are clear on this issue; trans people are clear on it as well. Instead, I call for those who love autistic people and trans people — and autistic trans people — to put aside the question of why we are autistic and trans. It is time to move onto the question of how to support us. 

In both cases, the answer is clear: listen to us, hear us, and stand with our demands for agency over our own lives. 

It’s time enough for that. 

Megan Maverick was born and raised in San Diego, California. Early in their life, they dove into autistic and queer identity head-on, working with the Autistic Self Advocacy Network and the National Disability Rights Network to further disability rights. They now work as a proofreader in Kentucky and spend their free time heaping adoration on their cats.