Andee Joyce: Unveiling the Beauty and Strength in Autism Through Music

What if you had a unique way of seeing the world, but didn't know why you were different until you were 44? 
That's what happened to our extraordinary guest today, Andee Joyce. Diagnosed with autism later in life, Andee shares her compelling journey of self-discovery and acceptance with us. 
Struggling to maintain relationships and jobs became a part of life for her, as she grappled with her unique mind. 
Instead of letting these challenges hold her back, Andee found strength in her difference and began to find her place in the world.

Music and spoken word became a solace for Andee, a way for her to express her experiences and navigate through her unique mind. 
She reveals how her one-woman show, 'Rhythm and Autism', was born and the stories that inspired her touching song, 'Tracy's Tambourine'. 
Not just that, we also get an exclusive sneak peek into her upcoming sensory-friendly performance at the Walters Center next April. 
Andee's art is a testament to her resilience, showing the world that autism is not a condition to be fixed, but a different way of experiencing life.

Venturing into Andee's past, we explore how her sensory sensitivity during her childhood paved her way to the creative arts. 
From being a hyperlexic student in an era where neurodivergence was a misunderstood concept, to her choice of attending an alternative school, Andee's early life experiences have shaped her into the inspiring individual she is today. 
As we wrap up this emotionally charged episode, one thing is clear - Andee's story isn't just about understanding autism, it's about recognizing the beauty and strength in everyone's unique journey. 
So, tune in and let Andee's compelling story inspire you to embrace your own differences and turn them into your strengths.

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intro/outro music bed written by T. Wild
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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

Welcome to why Not Me, the World podcast, hosted by Tony Mantor, broadcasting from Music City, usa, nashville, tennessee. Join us as our guests tell us their stories. Some will make you laugh, some will make you cry. Show life people who will inspire and show that you are not alone in this world. Hopefully, you gain more awareness, acceptance and a better understanding for autism around the world. Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to why Not Me, the World. Today's guest was diagnosed autistic later in life. She was in her 40s and she's a singer-songwriter. Let's welcome Andee Joyce to the show. Welcome,Andie. Thanks for coming on.

Speaker 2: 1:11

Oh, I appreciate you having me.

Speaker 1: 1:14

Oh, my pleasure. So I believe you was diagnosed autistic later in life.

Speaker 2: 1:18

I was diagnosed almost 16 years ago.

Speaker 1: 1:21

Wow, and what age was that at? I was 44. So what led you to get a diagnosis at that age?

Speaker 2: 1:30

Well, I actually wasn't shopping for a diagnosis. What I was trying to do is figure out why my brain was doing what it was doing. I had all these perseverative thought patterns that I'd never been able to really break them. It was always really, really difficult for me to hold a job, find friends, find a relationship, sustain a relationship. It was just like this phantasmagorical nightmare, and so my partner suggested that I see a therapist who specialized in neurolinguistic programming to try to break that cycle. So I found one that took the insurance I had at the time and I went to see them and about 10 minutes into our session they said I think you might have Asperger's syndrome, because that's what they were calling it then.

Speaker 1: 2:28

And when they had autistic people who could talk, so what was your response when the therapist brought that up to you?

Speaker 2: 2:35

I was like, oh, but no, that's not me. I mean, I'm not Rain man. You know it's like I like being touched and you know it's like you said no, no, no, no. That's one possible presentation. That's not that that's the stereotype, but that's only one possible presentation. You know, you got to look at the diagnostic criteria. You have to think about what you were like when you were like three years old and what people in your life said you were like at that age. And after talking to my parents about that period of my life and remembering what I remembered about my childhood, I like, my God, they're right. How did? Why did I not know this? It's like, why didn't anybody tell me? Because I had been seeing therapists forever? It's like I actually sought out a therapist myself at the age of 14. This is this would have been in the 70s. No kids did that then. So you know what a weirdo I was.

Speaker 1: 3:31

Well, you know, not necessarily a weirdo, just trying to find yourself, and I compliment you for at least trying.

Speaker 2: 3:40

Nobody had ever mentioned this as a possibility. I had a friend that kind of dropped that into a conversation once but I had waved it off and yeah, I was like why didn't anybody tell me this? And the therapist said well, they don't know what to look for in a woman your age.

Speaker 1: 3:57

Well, that totally makes sense actually the diagnosis basically did not exist.

Speaker 2: 4:02

For kids who could talk back when I was a little kid, it didn't exist. Autism was only ever diagnosed. Rarely and in conjunction with childhood schizophrenia, the combination of which would almost inevitably get you institutionalized.

Speaker 1: 4:18

So how did you cope with all this? What was your coping mechanisms? I mean, you was having a pretty rough, by the sounds of it.

Speaker 2: 4:26

Oh yes, oh yeah. I mean I bounced around cities, I bounced around therapists, psychiatrists, it's like, and there's, yes, depression, yes, anxiety, yes, well, of course I have depression and anxiety. Look at how I've been treated. And then the next thing was the ADD, because it's very common for late diagnosed adults to get the ADD or ADHD diagnosis before they get the autism diagnosis. Because, especially then, because at that time you couldn't co-diagnose somebody with ADHD and ASD. So like, okay, we're getting warmer here, getting warmer here, but we're still not quite there. There's still some. There's still some key. I don't have to unlocking the door to relate to other people. I just my senses taken, things that people make people look at me like what?

Speaker 1: 5:24

Yeah, that's. That's real rough. I talked with a lady that said she thought she'd lost a whole decade because of misdiagnosis.

Speaker 2: 5:31

I had a lost four decades Wow. But yeah, even after I was diagnosed I got. At first I was like, really wow, and then I got angry and then I got depressed because I spent so much of my life I'd spent 44 years trying to be something I could never be and you know, feeling like I was just failing everybody. That feeling still resurfaces sometimes. But I have, I have more ways to deal with it.

Speaker 1: 6:02

So how do you deal with it and what were your feelings that you were going through at that point in time?

Speaker 2: 6:07

Well, I was. I was trying not to hate myself really, yeah, and it's like I'd sing well, maybe if I had the therapist move in with me and say things to me all the time. But yeah, it just seemed like nothing really took. I just couldn't find what I thought of. Is that magic bullet that would Leave me to have, very you know, the relationships and the acceptance that I crave?

Speaker 1: 6:31

Wow, that's tough to go through. I'm sure so. Did you have any sliver of hopes that kept you going? What, what, what did you do to dig yourself out of this?

Speaker 2: 6:41

Yeah, I mean it took a long time. I mean it's like 40. I began my loads Long, slow climb out of the hole when I was in my 40s. My 50s have been a bottle rocket. I'm gonna be six. I'm gonna be 60 next month, just so you know.

Speaker 1: 6:55

That's great.

Speaker 2: 6:56

Yeah, and you know my fit at, creatively and in every other way, my 50s have been a bottle rocket. It's like whoa. It's like this is what a real life is like.

Speaker 1: 7:05

Well, I'm glad that you found it, because you deserve it. So what changed? Did your music come, become more prevalent? What you do to keep digging out of that so that you could keep your life the way that you liked it.

Speaker 2: 7:21

It's like when, when I started doing music again, it kind of took me completely by surprise, because I was I was working on a young adult novel and I was trying to cut it down because I wrote too long and because you know, details, details, detail, and so I would cut like a hundred pages and then add a hundred and fifty. So it was like the, the literary equivalent of yo-yo dieting, which I I like that.

Speaker 2: 7:46

In my research I had this instinct that if I listen to some old Casey Casem's American Top 40 episodes from the 1970s which is what I used to love to listen to and, you know, write all the write all the songs down and study the charts and everything Like that, which is a very, very weird thing for a teenage girl to be doing it was back then. I mean, it's just like you're what? So it's like I didn't tell there. I mean, there really wasn't anybody I could tell these things too. I listened to these old American Top 40 episodes because I wanted to kind of connect with that Absolutism that I felt about music when I was in. You know, my teens and tweens listen to an American Top 40 episode, and the third song in was Brian Highland's cover of Gypsy Woman and I don't know what it is. I guess I was listening with my my 15 year old self's ears, but that man's voice got to me. It's like that's great when he was done, when the song was done, I mean I was, I'm I love Curtis may feel I've heard me a mate. Yeah, I've heard the impressions version of the song many times and I love it there. There was something about how he sang it and you know the sound he had and everything, and it just it just got to me and when I was done I kind of sat there and went what just happened here? Something just changed. At first I didn't really know what it was.

Speaker 2: 9:07

I started working on another young adult novel. This one is. This one was about a, an autistic girl who becomes obsessed with a, with an obscure teenage girl singer from the 1960s, and that kind of leads her to her discovery of her own musicianship. So and I thought, well, maybe this is what I'm, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm being led on this path to write this other book from from having this experience. Two of my, my characters would talk to me when I would create a character and they kind of talked to me and then say I'm this and this and this and this and this.

Speaker 2: 9:42

So, like I'm interviewing Sayan Mike, I hadn't, you know, as I came up with the name of say and for my lead character. So I asked him this. It was say and your birth team, or did you make that up? She was like yeah, right, like my parents would ever have thought of something like that for me. Yeah, and, and then she said you know, if you really want to understand what me and Amy the, the singer who she's obsessed with, are like, then you're going to have to start writing and performing songs again. And I was like, oh, because I? Because I tried to do this in my 20s, in my 30s, and it was just a Epic disaster, because I had no idea how to manage, how to have the social or the sensory environment or what that even meant well, that's a great story, and I've heard from many different writers that they're, when they're writing their characters, kind of take over.

Speaker 1: 10:36

So did you start in your music and how did that work?

Speaker 2: 10:40

Well, when I first started doing this, I was writing my own stuff and I was writing. I was writing these epic songs. They're like seven, eight minutes long, so. So it's like I had to kind of learn how to condense my thoughts into smaller bits.

Speaker 1: 10:54

Yeah, that's Happens a lot in the music business that old writers joke.

Speaker 2: 10:58

If I had more time I would have written a shorter book.

Speaker 1: 11:01

Yeah, somehow that seems to never work out. So how did your music progress from there?

Speaker 2: 11:06

I started having voice lessons because, yeah, I wanted to find out what kind of voice I had. Now I Discovered that. Part of the reason I guess my part of my fascination with Brian Highland is that his Is that his voice would become raspy when it got soft, and I discovered that my voice did the same thing too, and I wanted to make sure that if I sang that way, I wasn't going to injure my vocal cords sure so I went to a voice teacher and she put me through a bunch of range exercises and and Squeak.

Speaker 2: 11:39

I squeaked out a bunch of high notes and and she said, sounds like you're a soprano. And I was like, yeah, right, which one, tony? I?

Speaker 1: 11:49

Like that, that's good.

Speaker 2: 11:53

And yeah, I didn't say that, but I thought it and I was like really he said, yeah, you've got like ten miles of head voice You're not using.

Speaker 1: 12:05

Yeah, and that's. That's good. So now that you've been doing your music and and you're recording and and Finding yourself, have you got it up on iTunes or any streaming so people can hear it?

Speaker 2: 12:19

I yeah, I did, I Did. I have put a couple of songs up on, up on yeah, up on the services. There's one called positive ID, one called make you want to dance and one called Brian Wilson is afraid of the ocean.

Speaker 1: 12:34

I like that great, great title. So what's the name you show that you're putting out there now?

Speaker 2: 12:40

Absolutely. I have a one-person show that I'm doing called rhythm and autism and and it's a combination of music and spoken word and it take it uses a lot of the songs that I've written and I've also written some special musical material and some spoken word for that and Do it. Yet doing that is just kind of felt like the complete right thing for me. It just made complete sense that I would go in this direction, but it didn't. It took a while, sure, I was like I was trying to do the singer-songwriter thing and then I, yeah, it's like I was getting really frustrated. Portland is teaming with with the brilliant young singer-songwriters and I was never going to to equal them.

Speaker 1: 13:20

Well, that's the beauty of music. You don't have to equal anyone. You just do what you do and hopefully people like what you're doing.

Speaker 2: 13:26

Yes, yes, that's exactly what I've been doing, and you know that there's a lot of there's a lot of humor in it. I have this song called how are you, and I do a little spoken word piece. I can even do it for you now if you wanted.

Speaker 1: 13:38

Oh, absolutely. I'd love to hear it, and I'm sure so with the listeners. So the stage is yours.

Speaker 2: 13:45

This is called. How are you? I'm increasingly of the opinion that children should have acting lessons starting in kindergarten, because it was right around that age. One a friend of my parents asked me how are you? And I said I have a stomach ache. I Was told that that was the wrong answer. The answer was I'm fine, how are you? I said. But why would people ask? They already know the answer. They still haven't told me.

Speaker 2: 14:22

You've seen me around this place once or twice and you talk to me and you thought I seemed nice. So when you see me, you stop and you ask me how are you? Well, it's a question with no answer and we're all supposed to lie, but no one ever believes me, even though I try To see him doing great, but not so great. You can't relate. So from now on, if you ask me, this will be my reply. Since you asked, I sleep like Elvis and I sing like a Siamese cat, and I probably should be doing the opposite of that. And I never did fit in, not even in a loony bin. And now are you? How are you? How are you? Wow, and by the by I stunk up building self-esteem and I float serenity. So how are you with breathing next to someone like me? I don't want to be scared to talk to, just scary to abuse. And how are you? How are you? How are you?

Speaker 1: 15:35

Yeah, I love that. Phrasing is good, your vocals good man. That's just awesome. I really love it. Well thank you, I appreciate that oh yeah, yeah, and the message is just awesome. Mm-hmm. I love the line. Why do you ask me when you already know the answer? That is just really good.

Speaker 2: 15:53

Right? Well, there's a yeah. When I go into the second verse, I have this bit where I say Everything is theater, which is why the holistic world needs autistic people. We dissolve BS on contact.

Speaker 2: 16:06

Oh yeah but first I got to let us in the door. I went when I did that, I did that bit live that there was a local singer songwriter night at a performing arts center out here in Hillsboro Oregon and I, when I did that line, people just busted up laughing. It's like all these people I didn't know they were just in hysterics. I was just like, hmm, it's like, it's like even even the normies, you know, they don't understand why these silly social rules exist.

Speaker 1: 16:35

Right, right, I mean that's, that's really good. Thank you so you include light-heartedness. What else do you put in your show? To just round it out so that it fits everyone.

Speaker 2: 16:51

I have some material that I do with, with with backing tracks. Some of them are straight songs, some of them are spoken word interspersed with singing. Some of them are me playing a tambourine, which which resembles Tracy Partridge's tambourine. I have a song called Tracy's Tambourine, and so it's like I have this whole bit that I. It's 1971. You're a seven-year-old girl. How do you tell the world you have a crush on a percussion instrument? The answer is you don't, because before it got out your parents would have some explaining to do to the authorities. You think I'm kidding. So it kind of goes like that. And then I go, and then I go into the song where I'm. I have a backing track that I made. It's it's, it's kind of it's sort of in a Partridge family is style. You know, if it was like more of a driving rock thing, that's great.

Speaker 1: 18:02

I really like it sounds like you've really got a good show together, so let's tell everybody the name of your show again.

Speaker 2: 18:09

Rhythm and autism.

Speaker 1: 18:11

Okay, that's great. So if I go to your show, what am I going to expect to see and how long do I expect it to last?

Speaker 2: 18:18

Well, it's like I've been. I've been workshopping this thing for a while. I do shows of varying lengths. I've I've done shows anywhere from like 15 minutes to two hours. Right now I'm honing in on a one act that's gonna be at 75 minutes, and then I'm also gonna be doing a two act at the Walters Center next April. They actually book almost a year in advance, so I got but I got a booking there to do a special sensory friendly program where the first half would be 100% free of common sensory triggers and so it would be like flap claws instead of clapping, you know, or flapping in time, yes, like I have songs about flapping and and, yeah, and, and I leave the house lights up so I can see everybody flapping.

Speaker 1: 19:04

That's a great concept. I love it and it appears like it's going over, so I guess the next question is the show's done, people have loved it. Now they want the meat greed. They want their pictures with you autographs. How do you handle that Do? Does that bring on any anxiety? Or or, if you got that pretty much under control, can handle it pretty good so far has it.

Speaker 2: 19:25

It's been fine. I mean, I haven't had people be siege me or anything. They're not. They're probably not gonna do that.

Speaker 1: 19:30

Well, I asked that because I know some autistic people have their space that they like and they don't want anybody kind of invading that space.

Speaker 2: 19:39

Right, yeah, well, I try to build that into my, into my preparation and, yeah, I, after a performance I might need to take a couple of minutes to kind of pull myself together.

Speaker 1: 19:49

Sure, that only makes sense. I guess the next question is now that you've started your music. It seems to be going well. Where do you see it going in the next three to five years?

Speaker 2: 19:58

Well, like I said, I'm doing this, this show at the Walter Center, which I hope will be a prototype for future shows, where the the first. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna have a program that details the sensory elements that people can expect from each scene and, you know, I'll give them earplugs if they, if they want to use them, they can move around the room if they need to, or even step out if there's an element that's that's hard for them to deal with. And, like I said, first half will be, you know, you know I'll minimize the high notes and you know the percussion and all that kind of stuff. And and then the second half, I'll bring in some of those noises that I love, the clapping and the tambourines and stuff like that. But people will have well, people will have fair warning about what's coming.

Speaker 1: 20:38

Well, that's great. So now we know that your music is doing good, you've kind of given us the path you took to get there. You mentioned that you'd had some low points during your earlier years. So what was your high school like before you got out and started really working on getting to know yourself and developing your music?

Speaker 2: 20:59

I was fortunate in that I was able to go to an alternative high school, because I went like one semester to the regular high school and it was such a social and sensory nightmare that I was just like I just can't with this. And you know, for Fortunately there was another alternative where there was a lot more looseness and you know, we could get up and walk around and yeah, and sitting whatever position we wanted and and that kind of stuff, and I could leave campus and go to the library if I wanted.

Speaker 1: 21:27

Well, it's a good thing that you had the other school to go to oh yeah, definitely.

Speaker 2: 21:32

But if I had to, if I had to stick with that, you know, with that regular high school, I don't know what would have happened to me, because it was just horrible from the teacher's standpoint or from from the other students, or both both. I'm well, yeah, both. But I mean a lot of it was sensory stuff too. It's like okay and yet I having to get up really, really, really, really early yeah.

Speaker 1: 21:53

I can get that. I remember those days right that brings up another question Did your parents completely understand that you was going through some trying times and you had to figure yourself out at all?

Speaker 2: 22:05

My parents were not very much in favor of my going into the alternative school, but they'd split up and and they couldn't really stop me.

Speaker 1: 22:13

So it sounds like it was a very good move that you went to the alternative school instead of the other one, because it allowed you to grow and learn and do what you need to do.

Speaker 2: 22:23

Oh God, it was such a different world then. Oh God it was so different. It's like in those days it was commonly thought that if your kid was having mental health problems it was your fault. You did something bad, you know. There wasn't this theory of neurodivergence, like we were born with certain things in our DNA. No, no, no, we're all like blank slates to write on. So that was really difficult, because I was trying to follow what I knew were their expectations for me, which were that I'd be beautiful and I'd be well-liked and I'd have great grades and, you know, I'd just kind of breathe through school. The other thing is that I was hyperlexic that's another term they didn't know about then, but I spontaneously mastered reading before I was three.

Speaker 1: 23:19

Wow, that's awesome.

Speaker 2: 23:21

Yeah, I don't even remember learning how to read, I just did it. That happens to like in the regular population, the full population, it's maybe one in 10,000 kids, and with the autism spectrum I don't know what the exact percentage is, but I know it's more than 1% at least, maybe 2% or 3% of us. So that's a much, much higher percentage than with the holistic kids.

Speaker 1: 23:45

Yeah, that's for sure. So did you have any type of support system at all from coming from any parts of your life?

Speaker 2: 23:54

Once in a while I mean once in a while I would make friends, but we would talk about stuff. There was just so much that I needed that I didn't get.

Speaker 1: 24:02

So, basically, it left you to work on yourself, by yourself.

Speaker 2: 24:06

Yep, that was pretty much it.

Speaker 1: 24:08

I've got to say, though, you've done really well.

Speaker 2: 24:12

Oh, thank you.

Speaker 1: 24:13

Considering everything that you've been through and gone through and, like you say, it took you so many years to get it figured out. But once you did get it figured out, you've grasped a hole and this music thing is just awesome.

Speaker 2: 24:25

Oh, thank you.

Speaker 1: 24:26

Oh yeah, I just really love your concept. There's nothing better than a song that tells a story. Okay, so let's change gears a little bit. You've written a couple of books that you mentioned. Did you get them published?

Speaker 2: 24:41

Well, the one that I was telling you about is called the Amy virus. Who knew right? It's like this came out and I finished it in 2016. It was actually on the Multnomah County Writers Project, which is the Portland Library system. It was on their e-book system and I was never able to get. I mean, I had some paper publishers who were vaguely some independent publishers that were interested, but they wanted me to cut like a third of my book out because they said it was going to be too expensive to publish. We'd have to charge $30 for a paper back at this length.

Speaker 2: 25:14

And it's like yeah, okay, and I couldn't get an agent to read it either because of the length. They would just leave word count and go no, no, no, no, no. So I was wrestling with how I would cut it down because it was like I mean, I couldn't see how I could get rid of more than maybe 20 pages of it if that. And then somebody actually read my book off the e-book system because it was on the overdrive system so any library system could access it, and it was on Smashwords too, and apparently somebody must have read it and they put up this page of it on TV tropes and I have no idea who did it, but it was just like this thing is like full of spoiler bars and it's really detailed and it's like obviously somebody really loves this book. So I said, hmm, since it's now been put on TV tropes at its length in detail, I don't think I can cut it.

Speaker 1: 26:17

Well, you probably could have if you'd wanted to, but it just doesn't make sense at that point.

Speaker 2: 26:22

Right, yeah, exactly Once it went on TV tropes at that length, it was going to be confusing. If I had Right, right, exactly. I'd have to call it something else, yeah.

Speaker 1: 26:31

Yeah, and edit or whatever you wanted to do with it. So what about the other one? Did you ever finish it or whatever happened to that?

Speaker 2: 26:38

I never finished the first one.

Speaker 1: 26:40

Okay.

Speaker 2: 26:41

I mean I finished it, but I didn't finish it. Finish it it was like I couldn't really get it's like I couldn't really get it into. I couldn't really get that into an acceptable length either.

Speaker 1: 26:52

Right.

Speaker 2: 26:53

I just wrote too long, sure.

Speaker 1: 26:56

So when you write and do things like that, it sounds to me like you really go into great detail. You're very defined and you explain so that everyone knows what's kind of going on.

Speaker 2: 27:08

Yeah, sometimes too much detail.

Speaker 1: 27:13

Well, you know that's all part of it, right, but so what are your hopes now? Now that you've got your show going, you seem to have a pretty good place in life. You know understanding and knowing yourself and what the autism allows you to do because of the way that you function. What's your hopes now that you can do with either your music or your writing, or both?

Speaker 2: 27:42

Well, I'm hoping I can take the show into as many places as we'll have it. I'm actually working with an organization that's helping me develop a school version of it.

Speaker 1: 27:51

Oh nice.

Speaker 2: 27:52

Nice yeah. And so some of the frames of reference are going to have to be different, Like with that song about Tracy Partridge's Tambourine. I would not even have not only have to explain to them what the Partridge family was, but I'd also have to show them what a 1970s lunchbox looked like, what a record album looked like, what a fan magazine looked like, because they would have no idea.

Speaker 1: 28:16

Well, you've definitely got an interesting life going. I mean, it's sad that it took you so long to find it, but I'm just glad that you did.

Speaker 2: 28:25

Yeah, thank you. It would have been nice if I could have gotten it together a little bit sooner than this, but this show wouldn't exist in its present form without everything that I've been through.

Speaker 1: 28:39

I feel like yeah, I don't know if you watched Star Trek or not. I don't know if you're a Trekkie. One movie they wanted to take and change Kirk. They told him they could take away his pain. He said you can't do that. If you take away my pain, then you've taken away my story.

Speaker 2: 28:57

Right, yeah, no, I just want to take this anywhere. Anywhere I can possibly go with it.

Speaker 1: 29:02

Right, yeah, sounds good. I've got to say this has been a great conversation. I've really enjoyed it and I'm just so happy you was able to come on.

Speaker 2: 29:11

Yeah, thank you. I really appreciate you having me on.

Speaker 1: 29:13

It's been absolutely my pleasure and everyone make sure you check out Rhythm and Autism. Even they can give us their information so one day they may be a guest on our show. One more thing we ask tell everyone everywhere about why not me, the world, the conversations we're having and the inspiration our guests give to everyone everywhere that you are not alone in this world.