Movies That Helped Me See Myself

There are two movies in my life that didn’t just entertain me — they found me.

The first came out in 1993.
I didn’t know it then, but it was already speaking my language.

Searching for Bobby Fischer.

A film about a boy who sees the world differently.
A boy who doesn’t learn chess — he recognizes it.
A boy whose mind moves in patterns and rhythms that the adults around him can’t quite decode.

I didn’t have the words for it at the time, but I was that boy.

I was a chess prodigy too.
Helping our team win back‑to‑back state championships.

And like Josh Waitzkin, I didn’t study the game.

Didn’t read chess books.
Didn’t grind openings.
Didn’t memorize theory.

I just saw the board.

The whole thing.
All at once.
Like it was speaking to me in a language only I could hear.

But I didn’t know why.
I didn’t know what that meant.

I didn’t know that my mind was wired differently — beautifully, but differently.

So I grew up carrying that difference quietly, the way so many gifted kids do.

No diagnosis.
No framework.
Just instinct, brilliance, confusion, and a world that didn’t quite fit.

And then, twenty years later — in 2013 — another movie found me.

Temple Grandin.

I watched it on HBO, not expecting anything.
But somewhere in the middle of that film, something cracked open inside me.

The way she saw the world.
The way she processed sound, emotion, pattern, overwhelm.

The way she built systems to survive a world not built for her.

For the first time in my life, I saw myself.

Not the child prodigy.
Not the strategist.
Not the performer.

The autistic man who had been living inside me all along.

That film didn’t just move me — it named me.

It gave me the language I had been missing for decades.
It explained the boy I was and the man I became.

And once I understood myself, I knew I had to help others understand themselves too.

That’s why I wrote this book.

It’s for the adults who grew up like I did — brilliant, different, misunderstood — and never knew why.

It’s for the people who lived the first half of their life without a map —and deserve to live the second half with clarity, compassion, and belonging.

And that’s why this story comes to you, Joe.

Because Searching for Bobby Fischer helped the world understand the child I once was.

And Temple Grandin helped me understand the adult I became.

Your film told the first chapter of my story.

Temple’s film revealed the second.

This book is the continuation — the part where the misunderstood child finally finds his name, his voice, and his purpose.

And now, this book reaches you — not as a fan offering a gift,

—but as a man closing a circle.

A circle that began in 1993, when a movie unknowingly held up a mirror to a boy who didn’t yet know who he was.

And ends here, with a book written by the man that boy grew to become.

For the role you played in my story’s unfolding,

Thank you, Joe.