18th June 2026, Autistic Pride Day
Today is Autistic Pride Day!
I am collaborating with NeuroHub Community and Stimpunks Foundation because pride grows stronger when we are together.
You are invited to join our free Stim and Glim Party to celebrate Autistic Pride with your community.
18th June 2026
4pm BST
Online in Neurohub Community
Access here
What Is Autistic Pride Day?
Autistic Pride Day is a celebration first held in 2005, by Aspies For Freedom (AFF), an Autistic-led advocacy group founded the previous year by Amy and Gwen Nelson. AFF modelled the day on the Gay Pride movement, joining a wider tradition of advocacy-led pride days that use visibility and celebration, rather than charity-led awareness campaigns, to challenge stigma and assert dignity for marginalised communities.
At the time, autism was almost always spoken about through deficit-focused, cure-seeking narratives led by parents, professionals, and charities rather than Autistic people ourselves. Autistic Pride Day was created to change that: a day run by and for Autistic people, centring our own voices rather than giving space to organisations that speak on our behalf. Autistic self-advocacy organisations are a key force in the movement for Autistic acceptance and Autistic Pride. As Kabie Brook, co-founder of Autism Rights Group Highland, put it, “it originated from and is still led by autistic people ourselves”.
The rainbow infinity symbol serves as a powerful representation of diversity, highlighting the beauty in differences rather than focusing on deficits. It represents “diversity with infinite variations and infinite possibilities“
Autistic Pride is about embracing your own identity and recognising that being Autistic is a valid and valuable way of being.
Autistic Pride isn’t about overcoming Autism, it’s about refusing the idea that we need to be overcome at all. We don’t need to be fixed, cured, or shaped to fit a world that wasn’t built with us in mind. We deserve to be valued and supported exactly as we are, in our own ways of moving, sensing, communicating, and connecting.
This year, our celebration centres on three connected things: stimming, bodymind affirmation, and glimmers.
Stimming
Stimming has long been pathologised, treated as something to extinguish, mask, or train away through “quiet hands” approaches. But Autistic adults consistently describe stimming very differently: as an adaptive way of self-regulating, processing sensory input, and expressing emotion, one they actively object to having taken away from them (Kapp et al., 2019).
Glimmers
Glimmers are the small, often overlooked moments that spark Autistic joy: a favourite texture, a familiar tune, a deep dive into an interest, the comfort of a repeated pattern. The term was first used by Deb Dana to describe micro-moments of regulation that foster wellbeing, the opposite of a trigger.
For many Autistic people, glimmers and monotropic attention go hand in hand. Monotropism describes how attention can flow deeply into one interest or sensory experience at a time, rather than spreading thinly across many things at once (Murray et al., 2005), and this kind of deep immersion is closely related to what Csikszentmihalyi (1990) called flow.
Glimmers aren’t small in the sense of unimportant; as Wassell (2025) writes, they can bring great moments of Autistic joy. Naming and noticing glimmers is a way of honouring Autistic joy on its own terms, and sharing them with others who get it can turn an isolated moment of joy into something that strengthens a whole community.
Autistic Pride is an ongoing journey, woven into our daily lives.
Carry the glimmers of today with you and embrace Autistic Pride every day in your own way.
Join us!
Today I am hosting a free online Autistic Pride Stim & Glim Party with NeuroHub Community and Stimpunks Foundation.
4pm (BST),
We’re gathering to explore what Autistic Pride means for us. You are welcome to stim, share our glimmers, and connect with others in ways that feel right for you.
Community collaboration matters. Re-Storying Autism and our narratives happen best in connection with others. We need community, and we need the relationships we build with each other.
Whatever way you’re marking Autistic Pride today, whether that’s joining us online, stimming alone at home, engaging in your own interests, infodumping with a friend, or anything else – we are all here for each other.
Happy Autistic Pride Day!
References
Autistic Pride Day https://autisticprideday.org/
Autistic Empire. Autistic pride. https://www.autisticempire.com/autistic-pride/
Boren, R. (2022). Stimming. Stimpunks Foundation. https://stimpunks.org/glossary/stimming/
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. Harper & Row.
Edgar, H. (2025). Autistic pride: Restorying and unknowing autism. Autistic Realms. https://autisticrealms.com/autistic-pride-restorying-unknowing-autism/
Edgar, H. (2025). Glimmers: Autistic joy and monotropism. Autistic Realms. https://autisticrealms.com/glimmers-autistic-joy-and-monotropism/
Kapp, S. K., Steward, R., Crane, L., Elliott, D., Elphick, C., Pellicano, E., & Russell, G. (2019). ‘People should be allowed to do what they like’: Autistic adults’ views and experiences of stimming. Autism, 23(7), 1782-1792. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361319829628
Murray, D., Lesser, M., & Lawson, W. (2005). Attention, monotropism and the diagnostic criteria for autism. Autism, 9(2), 139-156. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361305051398
Wassell, E. (2025). Experiences of autistic joy. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 55(4), 1234-1249. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2025.2498417
Wikipedia. Aspies for Freedom. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspies_for_Freedom
