Episode 232: Memoirs of a Neurodivergent Latina – with Lya Batlle-Rafferty

The episode transcript is below.

Carolyn Kiel: Welcome to Beyond 6 Seconds, the podcast that goes beyond the six second first impression to share the extraordinary stories of neurodivergent people. I’m your host, Carolyn Kiel.

Carolyn Kiel: On today’s episode, I’m speaking with Lya Batlle-Rafferty. Lya graduated from MIT with a degree in cognitive science. Her career since then focused mostly on technology, many times a trailblazer in the space as the only woman in a large company performing that work.

She currently leads a group of AI/ML experts, which is Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning experts, in cutting edge research. She’s also deeply involved in technology initiatives within her community. In Pittsburgh, she helped found the Data Jam, at the time a multi school district competition for high schoolers to introduce them to data science and Big Data.

She was the president of the Hispanic Employee Resource Group in her company, leading an initiative that introduced Microsoft translation into their ecosystem to support non English speaking workers. Today she runs her podcast, Memoirs of a Neurodivergent Latina, on her nights and weekends. Lya, welcome to the podcast.

Lya Batlle-Rafferty: Hey, thank you for having me.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, I’m really excited to learn more about your own story and experience and and your podcast as well.

So yeah, I guess just to get started how did you first realize that you’re neurodivergent?

Lya Batlle-Rafferty: Oh, my gosh. So unlike a lot of people my age, I think I learned very early on.

My mom is a supreme extrovert. And in third grade, she got very worried because I would sit in a corner with my books. Or, you know, as a Latina, we had like parties every weekend. And I would go hide in a tree with a book and disappear. And so I think she got worried about my antisocial tendencies and took me to see a psychiatrist.

Now, at the time, nobody was being diagnosed really with autism or ADD, but what the psychiatrist told her was, your daughter will be really, really good at the things that most people find hard and will have a difficult time with the things that most people find easy, which, you know, given autism, it was pretty accurate.

As I got older, I also, hey, I’m outing myself on your podcast. I also realized that I never felt attraction for other people the way other people did. So like, you know, those posters of like, handsome men, teenage girls do, you know, back in the day and things like that. Never happened. I never felt attraction from looking at people. You know, there’s a term for that now, which is Demi. So I do feel attraction once I get to know someone.

But, you know, so there was a lot of, there were a lot of things that together made me feel exceedingly different from everyone else. I don’t think I minded very much. I mean, I had my book, I had my couple of really good friends and as I got older and I had children, my oldest got diagnosed with Asperger’s. And every time he had difficulty, I realized that I was sort of in his head, like I knew exactly what he was going through at that moment. I’m not saying he’s a mini me, I’m just saying like, when he got stuck, when he got upset, I could see everything leading up to it. I knew what I would have in my head, I knew how I would react, and I was watching him react the same way. And so it became really clear that, that diagnosis I got, you know, as a kid was really about autism and Asperger’s.

Carolyn Kiel: That’s really interesting. Yeah I I think a lot of people don’t find out that they are neurodivergent or specifically autistic and or ADHD a lot of times until they have kids who have similar challenges and then they realize like oh okay, like I relate to this. I understand this and you know, perhaps this is not, like, the typical experience that many other people have and it’s something that kind of runs in the family. Oh, that’s really interesting.

So, I guess, what was it like growing up as, you know, being autistic, whether you knew it by that name or not, and Latina? Because I know you kind of alluded to your mother being a big extrovert and it being sort of something very different that you were off, like, In a tree with your books.

Lya Batlle-Rafferty: Yeah, it was really, really different. So, I am the oldest of 30 cousins. My mom is one of seven. My dad is one of five. And if you look at, you know, you’re talking about genetics. My mom’s family, a lot of people get diagnosed with ADHD. And my dad’s side, there’s a very clear autistic tendency. In fact, when my son got diagnosed and I told my dad, he called me back about an hour later and he’s like, I have this too, don’t I? You know, I was like, yes, dad, you absolutely are exactly like my son.

So I grew up with one side of my family being very closed off, very like introspective, very intellectual, and with my mom’s side of the family being like super outgoing, you know, the, the craziness of the seven aunts and uncles. You can imagine when I was a kid, and I was the only kid out of those seven aunts and uncles, how insane it was.

Um, And. It was I, I have to admit that I think I had a much higher tolerance for that kind of thing than a lot of people with my diagnosis do, simply because I was constantly steeped in it, constantly surrounded by people. You know, your cousins are your best friends when you’re in, in Central America, or at least In El Salvador. We would go out as a mob, though I was a lot older than some of the other ones.

And when I moved here, you know, I was six, seven, so I didn’t get to grow up further in the middle of all of them. Right? So I have this really in between sort of experience where part of me is very, very Latina. Very, very, you know, I go back to El Salvador and I feel like I’m coming home. And then part of me is very U. S. and, you know, the, the the kind of, give me space, give me my bubble, right? And it’s a, it’s a second way that you feel different. And a lot of people who are either first generation or come young have similar experiences where they kind of don’t feel a part of either culture. So I have that going. And then I also have the neurodivergence, so it’s, you know, it’s fun, it’s a, it’s a crazy mix.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, that really is an interesting dichotomy between your experience in El Salvador where you’re surrounded by family and cousins, you know, people your age and adults and then coming here and I’m assuming having less of a, you know, there’s, there’s less people around. And it’s interesting to see sort of how your comfort levels may shift depending on your environment as, as an autistic person.

Lya Batlle-Rafferty: Yeah. And, you know, here, because it’s all about trust for me, I think. I tend to be less rigid with my, my sensory issues and all of that when I’m fully comfortable in the environment. Right. And then I, the moment stress sets in, then all of that, those sensory things become a lot bigger.

So when I’m in El Salvador, I, I think I was a lot looser. You know, it’s, it’s like people just walk in and out of your house. Like my grandmother, my grandmother’s house was the place where we all had lunch. So in the middle of the day, you had an hour and a half for lunch instead of like here. And everybody would leave school, everybody would leave work and then everybody would have lunch at my grandmother’s house. Right? And then you’d go back to school and back to work. And here, it’s like, you have to coordinate for hours to have someone come visit you. Right? And there isn’t this kind of organic, just comfort with being in each other’s spaces.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, that is, it is a big difference between the two. Yeah. And I can see how that’s really different. And it’s interesting because it sounds like you kind of have a much higher comfort level, almost like surrounded by all of these people, which one might think, oh, well, there’s a lot of chaos that might be really stressful from a sensory level or just like, you know, wanting to be more of an introvert.

But but it seems like maybe the comfort level, the fact that you were around people that you were really comfortable with and you know, really just enjoyed their company that that really helped sort of you feel a sense of belonging in that community.

Lya Batlle-Rafferty: Yes, I would say so.

Carolyn Kiel: That’s interesting. And you mentioned being someone who preferred to sort of be off by yourself and and reading and some sensory issues. I guess, what other challenges or differences did you experience growing up as an autistic person?

Lya Batlle-Rafferty: Well, so one of the things, you know, my, my podcast has forced me to be really introspective. Very, very introspective. One of the things I’ve realized is I always felt, oh my gosh, it’s a, it’s very hard to explain. I’ve always felt less complex than other people. So like I was, you know, in the gifted program, let’s say when I was in elementary school and people just had this level of, I don’t know if it’s, if it’s thinking like about different things, I, I guess you would call it like I seemed naive, but I wasn’t really naive in that sense. I just didn’t, I didn’t worry as much about as many things as other people did. So it was even in groups of my peers, technically, right? The gifted kids and all of that, I was not somebody who fully fit in there either.

I think the first time I ever felt like I fit in is I was in seventh grade, maybe eighth grade. And I went to the talent identification program at Duke University. It’s like a two, three week program. And for the first time in my life, I felt like I had people around me who fully accepted me, but I only got two to three weeks of that. But it was, it was eye opening because it was like, okay, it exists, right? There is a place, there are people with whom I can actually fit.

Other things that were hard, I guess, growing up is I had very different focuses than other people. And I think this goes back to kind of that naive thing. Like, I didn’t like dolls when I was little. I didn’t like baby dolls. I didn’t like, like, I, the idea of wanting to be an adult bothered me. I could see how much my parents struggled. And I was like, why do all these people want to grow up when clearly growing up is hard? It’s difficult. And everyone wants to play at it, you know.

And they say we have special interests. At the time, I didn’t know they were special interests. But I was like, I was obsessed with the water, with being a mermaid, with all of those things. And then I switched to being obsessed with like ghosts and vampires and all of these other things, right? So my interests like with the vampires and the ghosts and all of that were weird for a girl, but they weren’t so far outside the norm that people would really look at it that funny, if that makes sense. So I, I didn’t fit in with the girls at all, but the boys didn’t think it was too weird. Right, and so I, I, I did have that.

My interests were never quite aligned with what everyone else’s had. Right? When I went to high school, the idea of watching sports, watching football, watching all those things didn’t really appeal. You know, the, like I said, the boy crazy, girl crazy thing, completely outside my point of view, like I, I mean, I did end up having a boyfriend, but I think I was like 16 by then. And. I, I was my own little island. I had a few people I really, really trusted. Most of those were about two years older than me. I did not have anyone in my age group. Right.

So that was, that was my experience. I, the books were fine. They kept me company and I, I don’t think I noticed any heavy bullying and maybe it’s simply because I didn’t notice, right?

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. No, that’s interesting. A lot of times autistic girls, our interest tend to be around things that are maybe a little more common or quote unquote, socially acceptable, even if they’re for boys. Like you know, like where the stereotype for the autistic boy is being really super into trains, but an autistic girl might be into like ponies, but people just kind of assume that a lot of girls are into ponies anyway.

Lya Batlle-Rafferty: That was the mermaid thing. Yeah.

Carolyn Kiel: Exactly. Yeah, mermaids. And then I’m thinking, you know, these days, vampires and ghosts. It’s like, I have so many people, there are so many people because now it’s like part of popular culture here.

Lya Batlle-Rafferty: Yeah, back then in the 80s.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, not so much.

Lya Batlle-Rafferty: Yeah, it was like the era where D& D meant you were devil worshippers. You know, it was.

Carolyn Kiel: Right, the whole like, panic around that. Yep.

Lya Batlle-Rafferty: Yeah.

Carolyn Kiel: I remember that.

Yeah. So what inspired you to start a podcast about your experience, Memoirs of a Neurodivergent Latina?

Lya Batlle-Rafferty: This goes back a long, long ways. You know, I was brought up in a culture where you don’t speak up about the things that are hard, right? You kind of grit, you bear it, you get through it.

But when my kids were little, my youngest had, has ADHD and he was hard. He was like, I adore him, but he was a hard kid. I couldn’t figure out how to discipline him. I couldn’t figure out how to, how to get his attention the right way. And I was sort of at the end of my rope and at the time, I think it was LiveJournal, maybe. It might’ve been on LiveJournal. I started just kind of putting my thoughts down. Right? And not really for anyone else, more because I was just, I needed somewhere to get it out so that I could go back to thinking about it more rationally. And I started to get these responses from like friends and other moms saying oh my God, I can’t believe it, I thought I was the only one, or wow you know I had never heard this and I’ve been thinking it and I’ve been having so much trouble.

And as I started to write, I started to realize that people felt alone, right? And they felt like they they were struggling as a parent of a special education kid, of a special needs child, and there was no other parent with their difficulties. Because once again, this was like 2002, 2003, right? It wasn’t now. And so that, I think that put a bug in my brain that I realized that sometimes people are scared to be vulnerable and because so many people are scared to be vulnerable, other people don’t realize that they actually have like peers and, and people who are like them.

So fast forward to now, I got out of school committee. I had, I was in school committee during COVID and it was awful. Like I was happy to do it. I, you know, I, I do a lot of social justice sort of things. And I, I put in a process in place, a policy in place, sorry, that was about equity of results that I don’t have to dive into right now, but by the time it was over, I ended up with what’s called the vestibular migraine. So I ended up with a migraine that doesn’t hurt. It causes vertigo. I had vertigo for over six months. I could barely get out of bed. I realized that I couldn’t handle that amount of stress. I mean, obviously as an autistic person, it had already been a lot of pushing to be able to do something like that. And I think the stress with the addition of COVID and everything kind of caused physical difficulties. And I realized I can’t have really an elected position anymore, right?

At the same time, I, you know, I had just started being president of the Hola ERG, so I was using that as my, my external thing for a little while. You’ll notice that I have a tendency to do work and then I do something that I feel helps people if I can.

And when, when I was getting sort of halfway through it, I started to think about, well, you know, as a woman, even knowing that I probably had this thing, I beat myself up a ton. I, I did. I got out of college. I had this really bad semester during college. I, somebody called me irresponsible for a study that I did that was timing related. And I was really bad at timing related things because, you know, physical issues, whatever. But I didn’t know that at the time. And that became my inner monologue, right? You’re irresponsible. Every time something was hard, every time I spent, you know like I would stare at a task. Let me clarify. I have autism for sure. I’m pretty sure I have traits of ADD as well, so I am probably AuDHD, but I don’t want to self diagnose that way. But I do have these traits and one of them is when something seems really hard, I have a hard time starting it. Once I start it, it takes minutes to do, but I will spend hours dreading it.

And so, you know, you can imagine I’m sitting at work, I’ve got this internal monologue saying you’re irresponsible and I’m having this really hard time starting this task that I have to do for work. And I keep like putting it off and finally I, you know, I get it done and it takes just a few minutes and I’m like, so you’re, you’re beating yourself up in your head. You’re lazy, you’re irresponsible, you’re all these things. And I thought, well, I was lucky enough to at least know there was something up with me. How many women in their fifties don’t know, right? How many women in their fifties walk around with that mental dialogue that it’s taken me so long to get rid of.

And, you know, I still end up with it sometimes. Because they really do have a difficulty. They, they really do have it harder in certain things than other people. And especially when you’re like me and maybe you and maybe, you know, others like us, you look normal enough, normal, quote unquote, right? That, you know, people are like, Oh, but everyone goes through that.

So you’re, you’re starting to think about maybe, you know, maybe it is a little harder for me, or maybe, maybe there is something I should get a little bit of help with. And then your best friends trying to make you feel better will say “no, there’s nothing wrong with you. You know, we all go through that. It’ll be okay,” right? And so then they back off and they continue with that negative self dialogue.

So my thought was maybe if I create the podcast and I take, well the first season what I’m doing is, I’m taking a lot of this list of autism traits that look scary when you look at it in, in, in Chrome, like if I bring it up in my Chrome and I, I look at the list, I’m like, this is horrendous. This is not me. Right? Like if I didn’t know, this is not me. It makes me look like I am incapable of doing anything. It makes me look like I am, you know, going to need a caretaker. Like the way those lists look, they’re really scary. Right? And, everything feels big, and if you’re a person who manages to hold down a job, has a spouse, has children, has managed to get to a certain point, you’re looking at it going, this can’t be me, right?

So my thought was, let’s take that list and let’s talk about what it really looks like in a human being. What does it look like in a person who generally does well in life? So that maybe somebody can look at it and say, Oh, okay, if that’s how it presents, yeah, I’ve gone through that too. Maybe there is some truth to the fact that I could maybe need a little bit extra support. So that first season was all about that.

The second season, I’m actually about to close off my first season cause I’ve run out of symptoms, really. The second season is meant to be actual stories, so it’ll be taking together the symptoms and then just being like, Hey, you know, this is what my first week at college was like, and these are all the things that happened and this is how I interacted with people and here’s all the weird, like misunderstandings, that kind of thing, to once again, continue this trend of this is what it looks like in a person who, by all accounts, fits in semi well, right?

And doesn’t present in any extreme of that particular symptom, right? Like I, I can look people in the eyes for a few seconds, right? I look at their noses or I look at their foreheads if I’m not looking in their eyes, right? And so I’m not like turning my head away all the time, right? So like all these exaggerated things are exactly that, you know, there are some people that have them and, and I don’t want to minimize that. But for a lot of people, those symptoms are much harder to spot than the, you know, the shows and the websites and all of this make it sound like.

Carolyn Kiel: Wow, that’s really interesting that you structured your first season around those symptoms. Because you’re right, it, if you read about it, it’s, it can look scary because it’s, you know, so much of how we talk about autism is a deficit model.

So it’s all of these sort of very scary sounding things. And. I guess all our experiences depending on, you know, it varies from autistic person to autistic person. Some people really have really huge challenges around some or all of those and other people, you know, from your experience, you said you it doesn’t feel as disabling for you, at least some of those symptoms. But at the same time, you had a vestibular migraine for six months, which is not something that is like a normal thing for people to have. And I’ve had those before. Like, I didn’t really know what it was called, but I’ve had those migraines where they don’t hurt, but I’m just so dizzy that I literally can’t even get up. I think I’ve only had them for a day or two at a time, but yeah, but you’re, it’s yeah, it’s, it’s all ties together in terms of like response to, to stress.

And, and we just are stressed by different things. And your friends trying to help you like essentially feel better by saying, like, this happens to all of us and, you know, a lot of people feel the same way is, you know, I know they’re trying to help, but at the same time, it’s like, no, but it’s, it’s different and it’s hard to explain how it’s more intense or more frequent or just different. Yeah.

Lya Batlle-Rafferty: Exactly. Exactly. And, and so, according to research that I’ve read. Women are much better at chameleoning and masking than men tend to be. That doesn’t mean men can’t. So once again, I don’t want to generalize outside and say, no, it never happens, but percentage wise, I guess. So people don’t even talk about chameleoning really, unless you look for specific autistic women articles. And there’s few of those, right?

Carolyn Kiel: That’s true. I feel like probably a lot of it is social expectations and social pressures that are more intense on, on girls and women. And sometimes we get more practice, like we’re more, we’re forced to be socialized more and that’s the expectation. So sometimes we just get better at practicing.

Lya Batlle-Rafferty: Oh, I agree. Yeah. I totally agree. That’s why I was like, you know, I don’t, I don’t want to generalize and say it’s like something innate or anything like that. It’s, but I, I agree, you know. I, I was a girl, I was supposed to be out and about and you know, pleasant and know how to greet people.

And I was not allowed to be the absent minded professor, which I swear that’s who I was. Like if I, if I, if I, if I had a stereotype that I fit, it would have been the absent minded professor, but a woman can’t succeed that way. You know?

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah.

What kind of feedback have you received from your podcast listeners so far?

Lya Batlle-Rafferty: I’ve received some really good feedback. You know, my podcast isn’t that big yet, but I’ve had one person who I didn’t know, tell me, send me an email, tell me that they were really enjoying the show. It was specifically the masking episode and you know, they gave me advice on like, here, I’m reading this book or you should look at this book because during the masking episode I said, you know, I would love, you know, if somebody knows how to unmask, I would love to hear the experience, right? And so they pointed me at this unmasking book.

And then a former friend of mine, a friend of mine from college, so somebody I don’t talk to very regularly, who is in the C suite, so she’s a CTO, or she was for a while, sent me a long Christmas letter. And she was like, your podcast has opened my eyes completely. She’s like, my kids are special needs and my husband constantly sees himself in them. But until I started listening to you, I didn’t realize how much my experience was something that was reflected in them too. Like she hadn’t made the connection between some of the things she was seeing in herself.

And then, of course, Beth, my friend who I just did the interview with, she hadn’t listened to my podcast, which I was kind of like, gee, thanks. And then she started listening a few days before she did the interview. And she comes in and she’s like, it’s amazing. She’s like, I am resonating with so many of these things that you’re saying. And she like binged listened the entire weekend.

So, you know, I, I don’t think I’m out there a lot yet. The responses have been what I was hoping. Like, so it means I’m hitting the right tone with the podcast. So, like I said, I wanted it to resonate as like, oh, this, you know, maybe I have this. And that’s exactly what I’m hearing from other women is, oh, wow, I didn’t think until I heard your podcast that, you know, this could be an issue and now I’m realizing, wait, I have that, right? I have this, this thing and it’s always caused me difficulty. I just kind of work around it.

So I’m hoping it reaches more people, but if it changes one person’s life, that’s the definition of success, right? If one person ends up in a better place because of something you did, then that’s success.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. And I feel like that’s why it’s important to share so many different stories from people of different backgrounds and from different parts of the world is because people’s stories individually resonate with other people differently. So I think it really is helpful for people to hear stories and find them relatable and just kind of feel like they’re not alone anymore. They’re not the only one with the things that they may struggle with or not understand about themselves.

Lya Batlle-Rafferty: Yeah, agreed.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, and you mentioned one of your listeners was your friend who was in the C suite, who was finding it relatable for herself and her family, and you’ve had, like, a very impressive career in technology. And I’m interested because there’s, there’s a statistic out there that, that there’s like, it’s like a really high percentage of autistic people that are either unemployed or underemployed. I want to say 80%, it might be higher, I don’t know. But I, I’m kind of wondering if those of us who are employed maybe either aren’t officially diagnosed or we just don’t know we’re autistic or we somehow, you know, just present differently and navigate our lives differently.

So. I’m, I’m interested in, and this is probably a big question, I’m just asking it impromptu, but do you feel like the type of career you chose for yourself, like just fit really well with your interests or mixed in really well with your neurodivergence? Or were there particular challenges that you realized you were facing at work or particular ways that you excelled that you kind of thought back and like, well, maybe it’s because of autism or something else?

Lya Batlle-Rafferty: That’s a, that’s a, I think that’s a multifaceted question.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, it’s really big. I’m like any, any portion of that you have thoughts on is great. I’m like, that’s probably a way too big of a question.

Lya Batlle-Rafferty: But I think the first thing is, I don’t have the typical presentation. So I am social, so even though I’m an introvert, I’m generally very positive, I’m generally very social, I’m generally smiling. So I don’t, I don’t have kind of the flat aspect or the the scientific, you know, scientist type speech, or the, the, once again, possibly because of the way I was brought up. I am not very brusque. I never have been. I’m like on the other end of the scale, like I’m, I’m almost too empathic. So I hate, I hate emotional confrontations of any kind. Like they, they cause me no end of frustration and problems.

So I have learned not to be brusque or anything like that because that causes emotional confrontations. And I think there are, there’s a certain set of autistic women and men who are at the other end who have maybe have flat affect, maybe have, you know, less visual emotions, which for a woman in a workplace might seem a little odd to somebody. And they are, they say what they mean without couching it, you know, in special terms, because they don’t have as much of that kind of, what people around me are feeling thing, it doesn’t weigh on them as much. And I think once again, it’s just the difference in presentation between us. So I have that.

One of my first jobs, I also had a very interesting boss who was willing to tell it to me like it was, and I think it helped a lot. Cause I’d go in and I’d be like, I, I don’t like this person. And he’d be like, well, why don’t you like this person? And I’d be like, cause he’s being a jerk to me. And then he would be like, okay, but this other person’s also a jerk. And I’m like, yeah, but he’s a jerk to everybody, so I know it’s not personal. And then he would be like, okay, just, you know, an FYI. At work, you probably shouldn’t be calling people jerks. You know, and so he appreciated what I did, but he was also willing to kind of coach me a little bit on the way you’re, you’re doing this or saying this is gonna shoot you in the foot at some point, right?

The other thing that I found is I’m a puzzle solver and I get bored. So if I’m doing the same job for too long, I get really bored, and I don’t know if maybe that’s an issue other autistic people have. But what I do is I transition really well, which I don’t know how many people do. Like when I worked at, at 3Com. Oh my God. I’m dating myself. I used to do modem support. So, so when I worked back at 3Com, I, I became a trainer. I used to train these like people who worked for AT& T and all of that on how to set up the head ends for the modems. So the end point where the modems would connect. And one of those things forced me to learn Unix in order to do the class. And I needed to make some extra money. So I started to teach Unix classes as an adjunct professor on the weekends. And the dot com bust happened. They laid off a ton of people, and I was able to transition into a Unix position because I had been doing all this side work in Unix.

So I, it has happened several times in my life where I kind of moved to a different career, usually still within technology because of my external interests or because I’m curious about one part of something and I’ve spent a lot of time doing it, right? And I think that keeps me from burning out in one situation and one position, which may also contribute to the fact that I’ve been able to hold down for long.

And then finally, I was the only woman, I, I’m not kidding. Like I was at Trac phone wireless. I was a Unix admin. There was not one other woman. I mean, maybe there was an executive assistant somewhere, but in general, there was no other woman. And so, when you’re already standing out and being different because of that, then all the other differences , they don’t seem as, as big as that one. If that makes sense.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah.

Lya Batlle-Rafferty: So I think I think that caused me to want to struggle harder because I was like, I belong in this room as much as all of you do. Right? And so a lot of my career was, let’s prove that I can do this! You know?

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah.

Lya Batlle-Rafferty: So maybe that added some extra to staying in a place.

I don’t know. It’s a very multifaceted question There’s so much to it.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. There’s a lot of things that go into our careers and jobs and how we fit in to different situations and different careers and jobs and things like that. So, yeah. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on that. I’m always fascinated with employment stuff and career stuff and how people kind of make their way and how they experience it. So that’s really cool.

So, you know, you’ve got your career and you’ve got your podcast you know, it, it sounds like you’re going into your second season soon. Like, what goals do you have for your podcast if you have, like, overarching goals for it?

Lya Batlle-Rafferty: Well, I, I mean, I think I’ve stated my goal. My goal is simply to help women to understand, A, if they’re struggling, they’re not alone. And B, that there could be a real reason for their struggles, that it’s not all in their heads necessarily. And I, I always end the podcast, which it’s, I didn’t start off with it, but I always end the podcast with something like, “and it’s okay,” or “and we’re okay.” You know, it’s not “everything is great” because that’s not the truth. Right? And it’s not “things are, you know, depressing and horrible” because that’s not the truth, right? But, but it’s, we can make our way, right? And things can be pretty good and and I, I do want to give people that message. I don’t want to over inflate the good in autism, right? But I also want to make sure that people understand that it’s not, you know, this earth shattering horrible thing either. Like it’s, it’s, it’s a new normal that, that has been your normal forever, right? Like, but, but when they give you that diagnosis, it’s like, okay, now, now I have to internalize it and now I have to kind of sit and, and understand how this is normal for me.

So, I, I just, I don’t know, I want people to end the episode with a feeling that things can be difficult, things can be good, but in general, you know, you can, you take it one step at a time and you’ll get there, right?

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That’s, that’s a really powerful message because so much, so much of the information or media out there about autism or neurodivergence in general is either like, you know, the inspirational story or like the tragedy. And practically in real life, it’s just, you know, it’s, it’s life, like, you know, there are challenges, there are good things and bad things. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s important messaging. Sure.

So yeah, Lya, how do people get in touch with you if they want to learn more about your podcast?

Lya Batlle-Rafferty: So we do have a website, though I have to admit that I write very minimal kinda captions for this episodes. But it’s MOANL.com. So it’s moanl.com.

And then the the email is moanl@labratsolutions.com. And Lab Rat, it’s really funny. It’s my initials and my husband’s initials backwards. So I’m Lya Anna Batlle is was my like maiden name and then my husband is Todd Andrew Rafferty, but his older brother, I guess, had the same initials, so he would put them backwards. So R A T. So we were like, Lab Rat!

Carolyn Kiel: Oh, that’s so cool. Oh, that’s, that’s, that’s really cool.

Lya Batlle-Rafferty: It’s ridiculous, but it’s fun.

Carolyn Kiel: I think it’s neat. And if it’s not obvious to people listening, M O A N L stands for Memoirs of a Neurodivergent Latina. So that’s where that comes from.

Lya Batlle-Rafferty: Yes. Yes. Thank you. I should have stated that.

Carolyn Kiel: No problem. So yeah. So Lya, as we close out, is there anything else that you’d like our listeners to know or anything that they can help or support you with?

Lya Batlle-Rafferty: Yeah. So, I mean, listen to the podcast, let me know if it’s good, if it’s hitting the right spot. And like I listen to podcasts all the time and I hate it when they’re like a hundred times over, you know, give us five stars on Spotify or, but really, you know, if you like it, please do something to just say you like it so that other people maybe can find it and listen to it. Right now there’s no ads on it. I think eventually I might put a couple just to pay for some of the monthly costs. But I, you know, I have a good career. I’m not looking to do this to make money, right? So my care is more, if more people listen, will it help more people?

Carolyn Kiel: That’s awesome. Yeah. And as an indie podcaster, I can totally relate to having to always ask people and remind people how to, how to support the show. Because you’re right, it’s a, you know, for a lot of us, it’s not, it’s not our main career. And a lot of times it’s a passion project or just something that we care about a lot. So yeah, absolutely. You know, if you’re listening, absolutely check out Memoirs of a Neurodivergent Latina. I will put a link in the show notes so that people can get there easily from there. And yeah, thank you so much, Lya. I really enjoyed talking with you today.

Lya Batlle-Rafferty: Thank you so much, Carolyn.

Carolyn Kiel: Thanks for listening to Beyond 6 Seconds. Please help me spread the word about this podcast. Share it with a friend, give it a shout out on your social media, or write a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast player. You can find all of my episodes and sign up for my free newsletter at Beyond6seconds.net. Until next time.