I didn’t sit down to be changed by a Disney movie.

The first time I watched the live-action Aladdin, I honestly dismissed the song Speechless. Not because I didn’t understand what it was trying to do because I could see its intent. I could recognize the feminist power behind Jasmine finally being given a voice and agency she never had in the original. But I still dismissed it. And yes, I realize the irony in this.

Aladdin was my favorite Disney movie as a kid. I knew every line. I could recite the songs in my sleep. It wasn’t just a movie, it was comfort, rhythm, memory. It was a soft security blanket for my autistic self. So when the remake veered away from that familiar structure, adding scenes, shifting tone, and introducing a brand-new ballad, I couldn’t quite get past the feeling that something sacred had been changed.

But recently, I gave it another watch. This time, I didn’t approach it as a remake. I approached it as its own story, a film that stands in its own era, speaking to its own audience, with a heroine who deserved to be seen on her own terms. And with that lens, something shifted.

When Jasmine opened her mouth and sang Speechless, I didn’t resist it. I let it hit me. And when I did, I wasn’t just watching a woman fight back against oppression, I was watching my own experience reflected back at me.

I knew the song wasn’t written for me. And yet, it felt like a mirror.

It caught me off guard, how deeply those words resonated not as a man, and not as someone who had ever experienced gender-based oppression, but as a neurodivergent person who had been told time and again that my way of being was “too much.”

I remembered being that kid who felt everything, who noticed what others missed, who asked “why” until it wore adults out. I remembered the constant stream of small corrections, soften your voice, calm your reactions, smile more, sit still, don’t interrupt, don’t be dramatic. I learned to rehearse every conversation, to monitor my tone, to double-check my emotions before speaking. It wasn’t about fitting in, it was about minimizing the friction my presence seemed to cause.

Over time, I didn’t lose my voice. I buried it.

So when Jasmine sang, “I won’t be silenced / You can’t keep me quiet,” it hit me not as a line in a script, but as something cellular. I had lived those lines. Not in a palace. Not in chains. But in schools. In workplaces. In family dynamics. In friend groups. In moments when I wanted to be myself but knew I wouldn’t be accepted unless I edited the edges off.

The pressure to shrink is so deeply embedded in the neurodivergent experience that many of us forget we’re even doing it. We contort ourselves into versions we think will be accepted, and then praise ourselves for getting through the day without a meltdown or an awkward silence. We think regulation is success, when in fact it’s often just exhaustion!!! That is the mask we wear.

Watching Jasmine reclaim her voice reminded me that my own voice had always been there, just buried beneath years of trying to earn belonging through assimilation.

It would be disingenuous to claim these experiences are the same. Misogyny and ableism operate in different ways, and I do not pretend to know the embodied reality of growing up as a woman. But there is something deeply resonant in the emotional landscape of being silenced, something that connects us even across different identities, different marginalized communities.

And maybe that’s the power of a song like Speechless. It was written for one story. But it ripples outward, catching others in its current. Stories like Jasmine’s help us see our own.

The first time I watched this film, I couldn’t hear that. I was clinging to nostalgia, to the version of Aladdin that raised me. But the second time, I allowed myself to see the newness of it. Not as a replacement, but as a reflection of now. A movie made not for the child I was, but for the person I’ve become, someone who is no longer interested in shrinking just to fit.

And so I speak.

I speak in the words I once held back. I speak with emotion that doesn’t always stay tidy. I speak for the version of myself who believed that being silent would make everything easier.

And every time I do, I hope to hear that line again “I will not go speechless.”


And I believe it a little more.

​If you’re reading this and feeling that familiar tug in your chest, the one that whispers: maybe I’ve gone speechless too, I want you to know that your voice isn’t lost. It’s just waiting. Coaching is one of the safest places I’ve ever found to begin unburying it. If you’re ready to stop shrinking, to speak in your own language, and to feel heard without translation, I’d be honored to help you reconnect with your voice. You don’t have to roar, you just have to begin. Try coaching with me and let’s find it together.