Libby Banks

Updated pinned post! Leftist/elder millennial/autistic/chronically ill/practitioner-researcher/writer. Writing and other current projects: www.libbyiscomplex.com.

"The following is not a record of what I found." What do we destroy that we cannot see? Don't miss this tremendous new hermit crab #fiction from @libbyiscomplex.bsky.social | www.doesithavepockets.com/fiction/libb...

My piece RE: autistic grief is up at the @autisticadvocacy.org blog!

This is probably my favorite thing I have ever written, and I am SO happy it found a home at HAD.

RE: autistic pattern recognition, abuse, and narratives around that comfort, confuse, and distort. CW: Intimate partner violence/abuse, sexual assault (statistical mention, not depicted), coercive control, gaslighting, body dysmorphic disorder, trauma.

Piece up at @hfr.bsky.social! heavyfeatherreview.org/2026/03/12/u...

Powerful CNF by @libbyiscomplex.bsky.social on Venus de Milo, disability & recognising wholeness. "No limbs to perform emotional labor. No hands to comply. Just pure, uncompromising presence. Liberation looks like letting go of what the system demands you carry." wordgathering.com/vol19/issue2...

My student loans got forgiven through Public Service Loan Forgiveness today, and I'm beyond happy and in a little shock.

My piece "What Venus de Milo Taught Me About ‘Broken’ Bodies" is up at @wordgathering.bsky.social. Thrilled to be in this issue - go check out the whole Winter 2025-2026 edition!

Have a new piece that will be up tomorrow in the new issue of @wordgathering.bsky.social - truly honored and VERY excited!

A piece about dissociation, autistic masking, and their interplay.

Y'all, within two weeks I'm going to go from living in a house with eleven other people (and nine dogs) to one with one other person (my partner) and three dogs. The relief is PALPABLE.

www.libbyiscomplex.com/p/pacing-as-... - wrote about pacing and dynamic disabilities and scarcity mindsets.

That entire Halftime special was a celebration of community, love, music, diversity and Puerto Rico and very deliberate middle finger to colonization and white supremacy.

New for @teenvogue.com (!) The young immigrant women workers of Lawrence won the 1912 Bread and Roses strike because of solidarity—which is also exactly how the people of Minnesota built the durable and inspiring resistance network we all saw on January 23, 2026. www.teenvogue.com/story/from-m...

I attempted to go to an ICE patrol training here in LA this morning and they had to turn most of us away because of capacity issues and even as I was leaving I saw a ton more folks showing up so that’s how well their attempts to scare everyone away are going, even in the face of murder

ICE are Gestapo. ICE are domestic terrorists. ICE are criminals serving a criminal. ICE are empowered abusers. ICE are cold blooded murderers.

2 years ago today, I published this RE: how my haunting dog helps me ground.

I wrote about Piranesi and dissociative architecture.

I wrote about how my self-acceptance affected my marriage for the blog today.

Make it viral.

www.libbyiscomplex.com/p/still-i-be... - a piece about therapy, being a therapist, and the complexity of working in "helping professions" that are built on harm and care.

www.libbyiscomplex.com/p/when-self-... - wrote about self-fairness and self-compassion.

Watching It’s a Wonderful Life, everyone’s favorite holiday movie about a monopolist landlord’s Christmas being made worse by radical mutual aid. (Genuinely adore this film - one of my mildest takes.)

CW: parental loss. Tomorrow is the anniversary of my dad's death, and as sometimes happens with hard anniversaries, my body knew before my brain did. Resharing this piece about what he meant to me and how loss changed me in ways expected and unexpected. www.libbyiscomplex.com/p/the-timing...

www.libbyiscomplex.com/p/cinderella... New piece discussing power, tactical intelligence, and survival.

Very excited/honored/thrilled to have a piece up at Disappointed Housewife today - this is my first-ever lit mag publication.

This is hard to share. Relocated to New Mexico from Texas 6mo ago for Wyatt’s food truck/safety/need for more familial support, Houston house still unsold despite $50k price drop. Old mortgage + new business + medical costs = underwater. Raising $6k to sustain until house sells. gofund.me/6b47f89ff

Watching disabled people around the world mourn Alice is a reminder of the good aspect of the internet. 30 years ago, few people outside of SF would ever have known Alice existed. I never would have met her. The internet connected us all. Let’s honor Alice’s memory by using that power and community.

I think the Elyse Myers thing is a vivid example RE: norms that are about power differentials/preventing structural harm are not “arbitrary neurotypical etiquette.” Autism does not preclude responsibility and power.

The Disability Visibility Project taught me so much about disability as culture, community, and resistance and that although I have access needs that will exist in any society I am in, the violence against those needs is socially constructed. Grateful for Alice Wong's advocacy - it changed my life.

I’m heartsick to hear that the incomparable Alice Wong has passed. Her loss will be felt keenly, by many, and for a long time. She is a force, a generous leader and storyteller, and an oracle for disabled futures. Much love to Alice and to all our crip kin and comrades. ❤️‍🩹

Wrote about body dysmorphic disorder and its global impact on my visual processing (among other things). CWs: body dysmorphic disorder, visual processing dysfunction, mental health misdiagnosis.

New essay about pathological demand avoidance/pervasive drive for autonomy and friendship. www.libbyiscomplex.com/p/comet-frie...

Wrote about autistic masking as dissociation today. www.libbyiscomplex.com/p/thrown-und...

Wrote about disenfranchised grief, disability, and neurodivergence today.

3.5 months into writing essays/flash seriously, Smokelong Fitness gave me what I didn't know I needed: community that understands compression and takes craft seriously. Really grateful for this community workshop as someone who is geographically + professionally isolated.

I spent years labeling myself as "anxiously attached" until someone showed up consistently - then I ran. Turns out disorganized attachment can be a brilliant shape-shifter. www.libbyiscomplex.com/p/the-attach...

US farmers are saying they "just need temporary help, until things get better." Here's the thing. US farm exports- which are mostly soy- CANNOT get better. Other countries expanded their soy industries to fill China's demand. We've walled ourselves out of the global market, folks. This is it.

Here's the killer follow up question: Why?

New piece on autistic pattern recognition, demand avoidance, and why some of us loop through every moral angle before choosing because we understand the cost of getting it wrong. www.libbyiscomplex.com/p/its-not-in...

In Agatha All Along, Lilia lives out of temporal order. Wrote about temporal displacement, gestalt integration, and permission to exist non-linearly. (CW: dissociation. Spoilers for Agatha All Along.) www.libbyiscomplex.com/p/living-lif...

Queer and neurodivergent people are biological facts. We are stable parts of the human genome. “Human cognitive diversity exists for a reason; our differences are the genius – and the conscience – of our species.” —Carol Black, A Thousand Rivers stimpunks.org/philosophy/b...

RE: when chronic misattunement harms your internal scaffolding for connection/the double empathy problem and its aftermath. www.libbyiscomplex.com/p/the-cost-o...