Adventures for Autistic Adults

In 2017, this organization began with one autistic young woman, one worried mother, and a piece of poster board.

My daughter Austen was nearing the end of high school, and I was confronting a question familiar to far too many families of autistic young adults: What happens next?

The routines, programs, friendships, and built-in community that had helped structure Austen’s life were about to change dramatically. I wanted adulthood to mean more opportunities for my daughter, not fewer.

So I sat at my kitchen table with a piece of poster board and began writing down possibilities—places we could go, things we could do, experiences Austen might enjoy. Somewhere in that process, I realized I wasn’t simply planning activities for my daughter.

I was imagining a community.

That became Austen’s Autistic Adventures.

Lisa Christian first came to us as a parent volunteer in 2017 and eventually became my partner in building the organization. Together, with our board, volunteers, families, and an extraordinary community of autistic adults, we created something much larger than I could have imagined at that kitchen table.

Our members made art, developed job and life skills, volunteered, celebrated birthdays and milestones, explored North Texas, traveled, tried new things, and—most importantly—built genuine friendships. We eventually opened A3 Resale + Gallery, where autistic adults could develop vocational skills and artists could create, display, and sell their work.

Then, in February 2024, everything changed.

I became critically ill with acute respiratory failure. I spent weeks on ECMO and nearly two months in a coma, followed by rehabilitation and a long recovery. For the first time since I had founded the organization, I simply could not be there.

But the community was.

Lisa stepped forward when I could not. Something I had created because I was frightened about my daughter’s future proved that it had become much bigger than one mother, one daughter, or one founder.

My illness also forced change. We couldn’t simply return to exactly what we had been before. The shop chapter ended. Leadership changed. And after years of working alongside autistic adults and their families, we had an opportunity to ask ourselves where we could make the greatest difference now.

The answer brought us back to where we started:

Community. Friendship. Belonging. Adventure.

In the summer of 2024, we moved forward and became Adventures for Autistic Adults.

Our new name reflects both our history and our future. Austen will always be the reason this story began, but the community that grew around her now belongs to many autistic adults and families.

Our direction is clearer than ever: quality of life matters.

Employment and independence are important, but they are not the only measures of a meaningful adult life. Who are your friends? Where do you belong? What do you look forward to? Do you have somewhere to go and people who are excited to see you? Do you get to try new things, laugh with friends, travel, explore, and come home with stories to tell?

Those things matter, too.

Adventures for Autistic Adults creates opportunities for autistic adults to build genuine friendships, experience their communities, discover new interests, develop confidence, and have adventures alongside people who know and accept them.

We aren’t interested in simply filling time.

We want bigger lives.

And now we’re approaching a milestone that once seemed impossibly far away.

In 2027, the little program that began at my kitchen table will turn ten years old.

We intend to celebrate ten years of friendship, community, and adventure the best way we know how: with an adventure.

Our first goal is to take our members to Morgan’s Wonderland in San Antonio, a uniquely inclusive destination designed so people of all abilities can experience the fun together.

For some families, a trip may sound simple. For many autistic adults, it isn’t. Transportation, cost, sensory needs, changes in routine, unfamiliar environments, and the need for additional support can turn experiences other people take for granted into experiences that seem out of reach.

Too often, those barriers become reasons to say, “You can’t.”

For nearly ten years, we’ve preferred a different question:

How can we make it possible?

Every North Texas Giving Day gift moves our members closer to San Antonio—and helps us demonstrate what can happen when a community decides that barriers don’t have to be endings.

And Morgan’s Wonderland is only the beginning.

When we reach our first goal, we’ll reveal the next adventure.

Ten years ago, I sat at my kitchen table with a piece of poster board because I wanted a bigger life for Austen.

In 2024, when my own life nearly ended, I learned that the community we had built was strong enough to carry on without me at its center.

Today, Lisa and I are helping that community begin its next chapter.

The name has changed. The organization has changed. We have changed.

The adventure continues. Help us reach Morgan's Wonderland!