Removing the Mask: A Flutist’s Journey on the Spectrum

In our society, being neurodivergent is sort of frowned upon because the classical music world at large expects us to fit into the status quo. When someone is different, people are afraid and they may be more likely to mistreat a person for being different. While there are many conditions that fall under the neurodivergent umbrella such as ADHD, Dyslexia, and OCD, I can only speak about my experience of being a professional flutist and teacher on the autism spectrum.

Before I continue and tell you my story about being a flutist on the autism spectrum, I want to preface it with this—if you know one person with autism, then you know one person with autism.  What I mean is that my symptoms are not the same as someone else’s. It becomes exhausting for many of us in the autism community to hear people say that they think we’re all math geniuses or that we have the mentality of a 7 year old; we are more than that.

All my life, I always knew that I was different.  As a little kid and the youngest of four siblings, I did not understand why I was being treated differently from my sisters. My immediate family never made me feel like I was othered — they were all always rooting for me. I was fortunate to have both my identical twin and my Irish twin (a sibling born less than one year away from me) who guided me through this neurotypical world. My eldest sister, who is 15 years my senior, always taught me basic proper etiquette. My mom fought all my life so that I could have the same opportunities as my sisters did. My dad was a bit of a skeptic at first, but in his own way he encouraged me to accept my quirks, which I’m still working on. My dad sadly passed away five years ago, but he was instrumental in my life and my musical journey. 

I received my initial diagnosis when I was barely 2 years old by a well-respected child neurologist at Nickalus Children’s Hospital (formerly known as Miami Children’s Hospital). I was initially diagnosed with severe autism, speech delay, and severe mental retardation or intellectual disability as it is called in modern times. “Retardation” and “retarded” are terms that are very offensive to the neurodivergent community and are thankfully falling out of use because of it.  My mother was told by this neurologist that I would never graduate high school, I would never go to college, and I would never lead a normal life. 

Back in the 90’s, there was hardly any research about autism and much of the research was done on boys. It is very common practice for women to have a delayed diagnosis, but this was not my case. According to the UCLA Health article Understanding Undiagnosed Autism in Adult Females, research shows that unless an autistic female has cognitive or behavioral problems, they are usually diagnosed later in life. Females on the spectrum (myself included) are more motivated to fit in than males. Women and girls on the autism spectrum tend to mask in order to conform to societal norms. According to The Brain Charity, masking is the act of suppressing or concealing neurodivergent traits in schools and the workplace in order to appear neurotypical.

Fast forward to age almost 11, when I started my musical journey by taking my first piano lessons at my local music store. Before this, I had been an avid classical music listener from a very young age and there was always music playing in my house. In the autism community, depending on the person they will naturally gravitate towards a particular interest, also known as a special interest or interests. Those special interests are something that brings a lot of us on the spectrum immense joy. Not all of us are into trains (another generalization of people on the spectrum); some people love to bake, some people love to paint, and some people really love science. For me, I was always very drawn to classical music. I remember being as young as 8-9 years old and really loving Peter and the Wolf  by Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953). Something else that sparked my interest is my love for history; as I progressed more on the flute, my fascination for flute history also grew.  

Coming from a Cuban household, there was always music playing in my house. My parents had a great appreciation for all kinds of music, but I grew up hearing Salsa and traditional Cuban music which uses the flute extensively. This was the norm, being from Miami where a great majority of the population are Spanish speaking, are Cuban or Latinx immigrants, or are descendants of Cuban or Latinx immigrants. I was a terrible piano student at that age and part of it had to do with the fact that it was difficult for me to read two clefs at the same time. In my elementary music class, I always had an easier time grasping the concepts that my music teacher taught me than my peers did. I later found out in high school, going into my senior year, that I have perfect pitch.

In 6th grade, my school did not have a piano program nor an orchestra program. Around the second week of school, my first middle school band director was asking everyone what instrument each person wanted to play. At first, I wanted to continue playing piano but he said “Piano? No Piano! I will only let you play piano if you’ve been playing for at least a year and maybe I will move you up to concert band.” He had me play for another teacher, but I was awful. He asked me a second time what I wanted to play and I said percussion. In order to become a percussion student, my band director had students audition via rhythm test to see our aptitude for rhythm. If you passed this test, then you were allowed to be a percussion student. This, unfortunately, was not my case. He asked me a third time what I wanted to play. I thought back to when I was 10, which was the first time I saw a flute. My dad had gotten a flute from one of his friends who he had worked with in the bakery, and he showed us what he could do with his new flute. He had an album of Nestor Torres that he put in his little boombox. I know I am dating myself a bit, but as a Millennial, we were still listening to everything on CDs in the early 2000s. After a while, my band director started to become impatient with me because I was taking a long time to answer. After a while, I finally told him, “I’ll stick with the flute.” Looking back, I realize that one of my many quirks is delayed processing. For me, sometimes that means that it takes me a bit to process information or I can take longer to make a decision. 

The early years of my flute journey were hard because when I first started, it was easier for me to make a sound than it was for me to learn the fingerings. To make things even more challenging, I did not have my own flute. I had to borrow a flute from the school and for whatever reason, my band director did not allow me to take the instrument home so that I could practice. The school flute was a very old instrument and had some mechanical issues.. At home, my twin sister and I shared my dad’s Gemeinhardt 2SP student flute. When I got my first flute on my 12th birthday, I started to progress rather quickly in comparison to my classmates. When I first began my journey with the flute, I was still in Special Ed classes. Eventually, I was taken out of Special Ed in 6th Grade and I continued speech therapy once a week for 30 minutes until I was in 8th grade. I was not placed fully in mainstream classes until high school.

In 7th grade, I was being bullied by my peers and people who I thought were my friends.  On the night before my 13th Birthday, my mom sat me down and told me the story of my diagnosis. Initially, I was shocked, confused, and devastated. I hid it from everyone and I carried so much shame, but I did not allow this news to keep me from doing well in school and playing my best.

When I got to high school, it was hard for me to make friends and I experienced situations that were downright vile and cruel. I often blamed myself for being a target for bullying and between ages 15-19, I often asked myself, “What’s wrong with me? Why am I being treated this way? All I want is a true friend.” During band camp before my junior year, I confided in my friend Mary (not her real name) about my diagnosis and I asked her not to tell anyone. One day, she told everyone in the color guard and they all laughed in my face. Many people who I thought were my friends during that time would speak badly about me either behind my back or sometimes in front of me. I was often described by those people as “weird, loud, and annoying.” Unfortunately, I lost a lot of friendships because those people didn’t get me.

In retrospect,  I realize that during my years in high school and part of undergrad, I spent much of my time masking. Between the ages of 17 and 21, the time period I refer to as my “dark years,”  was the time period when I masked the most. On one hand, I always got, “You know, you can be normal if you tried,” but on the other hand, I also always got, “You’re so smart and you’re so talented, there’s no way that you can be autistic.” This is something that I have struggled with my whole life: I always felt stuck in limbo—I was “too normal” to be autistic and “too weird” to be considered normal (meaning neurotypical). During my freshman year of high school, my high school band director initially thought that I was slow because at that age, my rhythm wasn’t very good and it used to take me longer to play certain things correctly.

One of the things that is very hard for me even now is keeping my focus on the conductor, and oftentimes, it seemed like my head was in the clouds when I was in high school. In October of my freshman year, the band director sat my mom down in a parent-teacher conference and told her that he didn’t think that I would have a career in music. I proved him wrong and he recommended me for the Young Musicians’ Camp at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and for the honor band festivals for both Miami-Dade College Kendall Campus and the University of Miami.

As I was graduating high school, I had a few people in my life who told me not to tell people about my autism. Those people said, “If you tell people about your autism, then you won’t get hired.” In hindsight, I know that those people nearest and dearest to me had good intentions; they were simply trying to protect me from scrutiny. This was back in 2011 and in those days, there was still a lack of resources for people like me.  During that time, I had two additional psychological evaluations where it was found that I was not a severe case like the first neurologist thought. My diagnosis, as of 2011, is Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS). It falls under the autism spectrum umbrella; but people with this condition are more likely to be verbal but have an impairment in social interactions according to Child Neurology: What is PDD and Asperger’s Disorder?

Throughout my whole college education,  I was trying to find ways to fit in and I internalized what was said to me at the end of high school: “Don’t tell people about your autism because if you do, then you won’t get hired.” I did that by trying to speak softer (one of the many things that I was bullied for was for being loud), working twice as hard as my neurotypical classmates, and keeping quiet about things that sparked my interest for fear that it would be seen as unacceptable to my peers.

Presently, I have been fortunate enough to find people who have accepted, understood, and have been compassionate towards me in spite of my autism.  I still encounter people from time to time who judge me for talking too loud, for being too dramatic, or for being too sensitive—another thing that was said about me even when I was very little is that I’m a crybaby. I have to keep reminding myself that some people look down on people like me because they don’t understand and when they don’t understand something, it scares them.

As a young flute student, I would often hesitate to tell people about my diagnosis with autism for fear of negative judgment. I wanted my character, my work ethic, and my results to speak for themselves.  Against all odds, I completed my Bachelor of Music in Flute Performance from the University of Florida (through the college division of New World School of the Arts) with honors (Cum Laude) and I finished my Master of Music in Flute Performance from Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, TN. I was featured as a guest on the Music Herstory Podcast and the Flute 360 Podcast with Heidi Kay Begay. Also, I played in masterclasses with Bart Feller, the late William Bennett, Lorna McGhee, and Brook Ferguson.

As I’ve gotten older, I have learned that people will look down on someone with a different background, let alone someone like me who identifies as being on the spectrum. I can’t allow the opinions of those people to stop me from living my life. In the classical music world (the flute world more specifically), I have had to learn that there are people out there who accept me for who I am and that authenticity is extremely important. 

Ultimately, my inspiration for this article was born out of many conversations with my colleagues and friends regarding mental health and neurodivergence. One conversation in particular that stood out to me happened after I had a panic attack, something that can happen when I’m under lot of pressure, earlier this year.  I had a stressful class and a colleague/friend who was with me that day said to me in Spanish, “No eres menos persona por los problemas que tienes.” (Translation: You are not less of a person because of your issues). Several of my friends and colleagues agree that there needs to be more inclusiveness, more compassion and above all, more kindness towards people who fall under the neurodivergent umbrella.

Kiara Eijo is a passionate flutist,educator, and collaborator who believes in helping
students get better. Kiara received a Bachelor of Music degree in Flute Performance
from New World School of the Arts/University of Florida Cum Laude in 2016 where she
performed in a variety of chamber music groups and was a flutist/piccoloist in the
NWSA Symphony Orchestra.

Kiara graduated in May 2020 with a Master of Music degree in Flute Performance from
Austin Peay State University where she held a graduate assistantship as the graduate
coordinator of the APSU Outreach Student Ambassador team. During her time at APSU,
Kiara performed in the APSU Wind Ensemble, the APSU Symphony Orchestra, the
APSU Symphonic Band and performed in chamber music settings.
She has performed at the Mid-South Flute Society Festival, performed as a member of
the Melanin Rhapsody Flute Choir at the 2024 National Flute Association Convention,
and has performed in Masterclasses with Bart Feller, William Bennett, Dr. Lisa Wolynec,
Lorna McGhee, and Brook Ferguson.

As a soloist, Kiara has performed Vivaldi’s Concerto in C Major, RV443 with the NWSA College
Chamber Orchestra for their inaugural concert under the direction of Alfred Gershfeld.
As an educator, Kiara is passionate about helping students regain condence in
themselves as musicians. She has previously served as a Flute instructor/Sectional
Coach at Northeast High School and Southwood Middle School and she was a
masterclass clinician for the Coe College Flute Studio. In addition, she was hired as a
Teaching Artist with Miami Music Project in Fall 2022 and completed the 2023 Teaching
Artists Training Institute (TATI) Lab Cohort. Most recently, she was hired to be the Flute
Clinician at Florida Christian School.

Kiara’s past teachers include Suzan Degooyer, Rene Miska, and Dr. Lisa Wolynec.