Meet Luke

Meet

Luke Aughenbaugh

I'm Luke, the creator behind Life on the Margins. I'm an autistic, disabled creator, educator, musician, and longtime community advocate who has spent a lot of my life learning how to turn lived experience into something useful. My work covers autism and disability, harm reduction and recovery, mental health, identity, family and religion, and sometimes just the weird, funny, ordinary parts of being alive. I love research, asking uncomfortable questions, breaking complicated subjects into language people can actually understand, and creating spaces where we don't have to pretend life is simpler than it really is.

Life on the Margins is also where I get to be a person, not just an educator. You'll see me building my independence through Higher Ground, talking with people on LIVE, writing about things I'm trying to understand, sharing pieces of my own story, and probably getting distracted by something completely unrelated along the way. I've spent years doing advocacy and community education, but I don't believe helping people requires having every answer. Sometimes it means researching together, sharing what we've learned, laughing at ourselves, and making room for people whose lives don't fit neatly inside the boxes the world made for us. That's what I want this little corner of the internet to be.

Trusted Advocate, Harm Reductionist, and Recovery coach.

Over 10 Years working with At Risk and Youth Populations.

What I Create

Most of my content lives somewhere between education, lived experience, research, and conversation. I talk a lot about autism, disability and chronic illness, mental health, harm reduction, substance use and recovery, LGBTQ+ identity, family dynamics, religion, trauma, and the systems that affect people living on the margins. I also make room for regular life. Higher Ground follows me building more independence and figuring out what life looks like in my own space, while my LIVEs give us somewhere to learn, laugh, tell stories, ask questions, and occasionally get completely sidetracked together. Not everything I make needs to be serious or educational. Sometimes existing as a disabled autistic person and having a good time on the internet is enough.

I also want Life on the Margins to be somewhere we can dig deeper than a 60 second video allows. I research the questions that come up in my life and community, look at what the evidence actually says, and write essays or create longer videos when a subject deserves more than a quick answer. That includes topics like religious and family dysfunction, disability and accessibility, autism and neurodivergence, sexuality and identity, harm reduction and drug policy, recovery, healthcare, social systems, and the ways these subjects overlap. I don't expect myself to know everything, and I don't want to pretend that I do. Part of this project is being willing to ask better questions, check the research, correct myself when I get something wrong, and bring you along while I learn..

Contact Me

Reach out to Luke for support and guidance.