Before the glossary, before the field guide, before the research — there is a story.
This is where Stimpunks begins.
The Reframer’s Journey is the first stretch of our website: a scrollytelling journey through the rough terrain of lived experience, punctuated with spectacular art and music. Made with agony and joy, it is our story of surviving, reframing, and finding our people — the like-minded misfits scattered all amongst us.
It moves like a story, not a syllabus. You start with everything that was supposed to stay hidden brought proudly to the front. You walk in our shoes. You meet the chorus of voices that make up who we are. You learn why neurodiversity and disability justice belong together, and you take shelter under our umbrella. Then you reach the turn the whole journey is named for — you reframe — and you end in motion, flapping and dancing, carrying bodily survival knowledge forward.
That is the arc: from hidden to the front, from deficit to difference, from isolation to belonging.
We call it the Reframer’s Journey because reframing is the verb that changes everything. To reframe is to take the states of being that got labeled deficiencies and pathologies and name them, instead, as human differences. You don’t just read that claim here. You walk it, page by page, until it is yours.
Each page stands on its own. Taken in order, they are a passage — a “Continue” button at the foot of each one carries you to the next.
This is not an about page. It is an initiation.
Header art: “Memory Keepers” by Rainbow Mosho
The Series
1. Everything That Was Normally Supposed to Be Hidden Was Brought to the Front
The front door. We don’t tuck our stims away or soften our needs into something more palatable — we bring them to the front, open and unashamed. This page sets the whole ethos: human needs, not special needs; real help against the onslaught; mutual aid over charity. Start here.
2. Learning Pathways: Take a Walk in Our Shoes
The invitation. Guided pathways through our encyclopedia — autism, education, healthcare — built not merely to inform you but to move you. Step into unfamiliar stories, let your assumptions get uncomfortable, and grow in understanding at your own pace.
3. Our Story: Challenging the Norm and Changing the Narrative
The chorus. Who we are: a feisty group of neurodivergent and Disabled people who got tired of the narratives written about us and decided to rewrite them ourselves. Identity-first, interdependent, woven together. This website isn’t one voice. It is many.
4. Take Them Together: Neurodiversity and Disability Justice
The argument. Neurodiversity names the infinite variation of human minds. Disability justice refuses to let anyone be left behind for it. Held apart, each gets softened into something safe. Held together, they name the stakes plainly — and we get punk rock about it.
5. Our Umbrella: It Is Time to Celebrate Our Interdependence!
The shelter. The umbrella is our oldest symbol: shelter, sanctuary, respite. Underneath it live crip space — the electrified feeling of “this space is for us” — and access intimacy, the comfort of being with someone who simply gets your access needs.
6. Reframe Disability and Difference: We’re Going to Rewrite the Narratives
The turn. The verb the journey is named for. Ideology naturalizes itself like the air we breathe; new frames require new language. We reframe from the medical model to the biopsychosocial, from deficit ideology to structural, from quiet hands to loud ones.
7. Happy Flappy: Let’s Bolster Against Stress and Pass Down Bodily Survival Knowledge
The joy. The kinetic, joyful end of the journey. Stim dancing is bodily survival knowledge — movement that regulates the nervous system, bolsters against stress, and gets passed down. Movement is medicine. We end in motion.