Meet Allison
Allison Bruning is a Texas-based artist, author, and special needs tutor. Through her studios, her books, and her teaching, she works at the intersection of creativity and advocacy supporting neurodivergent students while building a life rooted in art, education, and faith.
Allison Bruning’s life does not move in straight lines. It moves in layers stories told and retold, sketches revisited years later, classrooms entered and left, grief endured and carried forward. Creativity has never been a career choice for her so much as a constant companion. Even when circumstances forced her to pause one path, another waited patiently beneath the surface, ready to be claimed.
She does not speak about success in terms of recognition or numbers. Instead, she talks about students who return years later, parents who still reach out, and stories that needed to be written whether or not anyone was watching. Her work is personal because her life has required it to be. Art, writing, and education are not separate identities for Allison they are how she survives, connects, and gives back.
Where It Started: Paper, Crayons, and a Listening Grandmother
Allison’s earliest memories are shaped by encouragement rather than limitation. Long before diagnoses or labels, there was a grandmother who noticed something rare in a young child an instinct for story. When Allison came home from kindergarten, her grandmother would already be waiting with construction paper, pencils, and crayons laid out on the table. The ritual was simple: tell me a story, and we’ll write it together.
Those afternoons became formative. Writing wasn’t framed as an assignment or achievement; it was shared time, attention, and care. Her grandmother didn’t correct her imagination she honored it. That early permission to create stayed with Allison, even as life grew more complicated.
Education followed naturally. She loved learning, loved books, loved the rhythm of teaching. In 2012, she became a certified teacher and stepped into classrooms with a sense of purpose shaped by her own experience growing up neurodivergent. Diagnosed with dyscalculia, later navigating epilepsy and high-functioning autism, Allison understood what it meant to feel capable yet misunderstood. Teaching wasn’t just a profession it was a way to make space for students who, like her, needed someone to see their potential before they could articulate it themselves.
An Unplanned Detour That Opened a Door
For years, Allison taught and built a stable educational career. Writing remained something she carried privately, always present but not fully pursued. That changed in 2014, when a move to Kentucky disrupted everything she had built. Her teaching certification wasn’t recognized, and suddenly the path she knew was no longer available.
It was her husband who asked the question that shifted her life: what had she always wanted to do? The answer came quickly write. What followed was not a leap but a steady commitment. She began writing seriously, publishing books that reflected the stories she had carried since childhood. Over time, that work grew into more than twenty published books on Amazon, spanning fiction and nonfiction.
Writing didn’t replace education; it expanded it. Through stories, Allison found another way to reach people who needed to feel seen.
Loss, Grief, and a World That Kept Moving
The most defining rupture in Allison’s life came in 2021, when her husband of twenty years died from COVID. Grief did not arrive neatly it paused everything. Together, they had built an online school serving autistic, gifted, and special needs students. After his death, Allison closed it. The work felt impossible without him. The future she had imagined no longer existed.
She returned briefly to public school teaching, but grief followed her into the classroom. Eventually, she chose something radical: distance. Allison became an international teacher, working in Bahrain, Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand. The change of place offered movement when stillness felt unbearable. Teaching abroad gave her structure while she learned how to live inside loss.
What surprised her most was what happened when she returned home. Former students and families reached out, asking her to come back not just to teaching, but to special education. They told her she was needed. The message was clear: her work mattered more than she realized.
She joined Tutor Me, an online tutoring company based in Los Angeles, returning to the students who had always felt like home.
Art That Had Been Waiting Its Turn
Art had always been present in Allison’s life, quietly accumulating in sketchbooks and margins. She drew nature, history, moments that felt too big to explain with words. For years, people told her she should be an artist. She didn’t believe them not because she lacked talent, but because survival had required her to focus elsewhere.
That changed after she met Jeff, her current partner. He saw her drawings not as hobbies, but as work worth sharing. Where Allison hesitated, he encouraged. Together, they built Allison Bruning Studios, turning decades of private creativity into a public offering.
Art became another language one that allowed her to process grief, memory, and identity. It wasn’t about reinvention; it was about permission.
The Reality of Working While Neurodivergent
Allison is open about the realities of living and working with multiple disabilities. Dyscalculia affects her ability to manage finances and math-based tasks. Epilepsy requires her to work from home. Autism shapes how she communicates, organizes, and navigates social spaces. None of these realities are abstract they affect her daily life.
She does not frame this as a story of overcoming, but of support. Her husband once helped her manage business logistics; today, her partner does the same. Independence, for Allison, has never meant isolation. It means building systems that allow her to do meaningful work without pretending to be someone else.
As she explains,
“As a special needs tutor, I love helping the special needs students. It fills me with joy to help these kids because I was one of them growing up.”
That understanding shapes everything she does. She teaches from lived experience, modeling what a full, creative life can look like even when it doesn’t fit conventional expectations.
Work That Circles Back to Community
Today, Allison’s work exists across three interconnected spaces: education, writing, and art. As a tutor, she supports students who are often told they are limited. As an author, she tells stories that insist on complexity and humanity. As an artist, she gives form to memory, nature, and history.
The impact of that work shows up in unexpected ways. Former students still reach out years later. Families remember her not just as a teacher, but as someone who stayed. After her husband’s death, one Navajo student asked her mother to invite Allison onto their reservation so she could grieve and heal. Another message arrived recently from the sister of a former student in Laos, simply asking if she was okay.
These moments humble her. They remind her that teaching is not transactional it’s relational.
Faith, Mentorship, and Staying Grounded
Faith is a quiet throughline in Allison’s life. She credits her Christian beliefs with helping her survive profound loss and ongoing challenges. Faith, for her, is not about certainty it’s about endurance.
Mentorship has also played a crucial role. Her grandmother remains her earliest influence, remembered for loving every child she met. Nate Orlowek has known Allison since she was 14, and he has been a mentor to her ever since. It wasn’t until adulthood that she joined his research team and co-authored a book with him, but he remains her mentor to this day.
Looking Ahead: Building What Was Once Unimaginable
Allison’s vision for the future is expansive but grounded. She wants to continue growing Allison Bruning Studios and Crimson Studios. She plans to write more books, develop art therapy programs, and teach both art and writing to children, creating safe, encouraging spaces for expression especially for neurodivergent students.
Her advocacy is central. She wants employers, educators, and communities to rethink how they see disability not as a deficit, but as difference. Her life stands as evidence that creativity, intelligence, and contribution do not require conformity.
As she puts it,
“Success to me is when people read my books, see my art, or attend one of my classes and it changes their lives for the better.”
Closing Reflection: A Life That Refuses to Be Reduced
Allison Bruning does not ask to be admired. She asks to be understood. Her story is not about inspiration in the abstract it’s about persistence, support, faith, and the quiet courage of continuing after loss.
She builds her life the same way she teaches and creates: patiently, honestly, and with deep respect for those who feel unseen. In doing so, she offers something rare a reminder that success can be measured not by ease or perfection, but by the lives we touch while being fully ourselves.
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