When I was diagnosed as Autistic, almost 10 years ago now, it was a big awakening and the beginning of a journey. Continue reading The Cruelest Joke: When I Learned I Was Autistic and ADHD, I Realized That I Was Taught to Hate Myself for Being Exactly Who I Was Meant to Be.
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This empowering workbook has been designed to help Autistic adults, whether newly diagnosed or self-identifying, to develop a positive understanding of their unique Autistic identity. Continue reading Get Autism, Identity and Me: A Practical Workbook to Empower Adults – ORDER NOW!
Ten years ago, I walked out of my diagnostician’s office with a label and a list of memoirs about other people’s lives. No one told me how to figure out mine… Continue reading It took me 10 years to figure out my Autistic needs. We built a shortcut – Autism, Identity and Me: A Practical Workbook to Empower Adults, the Autism workbook I needed.
Growing up, I struggled a lot in school. Academics weren’t my strengths, with one exception – reading and writing.
From my earliest school days, and even before I started school, I was in love with books and dreamed one day I might write them. However, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever achieve this goal. Continue reading The Dream I Almost Gave Up On – Young Me Thought My Life Wasn’t Interesting Enough to Write About. I Was Wrong.
If you’ve never heard of Hyperlexia before, it is when a person can read words very, very well (often better than most people). We may also struggle more with understanding the full context of what we read. In addition, many of us who are Hyperlexic often understand what we read more easily than what is said to us out loud. Continue reading I Was A Word Hoarder: For me, hyperlexia wasn’t just “reading early.” It was (and is) a specific way my brain processes symbols.
Question for my late-identified Neurodivergent readers: Is there anything you wish you’d known or understood sooner?
If you could give one piece of advice to your younger, unidentified self, what would it be?
I am Neurodivergent, but I didn’t know it (or even what Neurodivergence or Neurodiversity was) for most of my life.
Being diagnosed Autistic, at the age of 29, a few months shy of my 30th birthday, during a mental health crisis, turned my world upside down. It also saved my life. Continue reading Growing Up Not Knowing About My Neurodivergent (Autistic and ADHD) Brain and What I Wish I Had Understood Sooner
For much of my life, I felt like a passenger in my own body, but a few years ago, after reaching my breaking point when my grandfather and then our oldest dog Rocky both passed away within a few short weeks of one another, something inside me started to change rapidly.
Before that point, I’d been managing. Yet, this moment, holding my grandfather’s hand as they pulled the plug, and then doing the same with Rocky, as his kidneys failed soon after (when we decided the kindest thing we could do for him was to let him go), ended up becoming a tipping point (one that sent all of my carefully balanced dominoes tumbling down). Continue reading Reaching My Breaking Point – I Used to Think My Detachment Was a Superpower. It Was Actually a Survival Skill.
Before I knew it was Autism, I didn’t have Autistic pride – only shame for my Autistic traits. Autistic pride is something I had to grow into. Here’s what changed. Continue reading I Had to Unlearn Shame to Find My Autistic Pride – They Told Me My Autistic Traits Were Flaws. I Know Better Now.
I really think we have something VERY special with the Autism, Identity and Me Adult Workbook (not that the children’s workbooks or my other projects weren’t also special), because I could only have dreamed of having a workbook LIKE THIS ten years ago (when I was newly diagnosed as Autistic). Continue reading Why I Dreaded This Task… and Why I’m Grateful I Did It – Over 13 Hours, 390 Pages, and One Very Stiff Back: A Copyediting Saga
We’re taught to compete and to measure our success against our peers. If we’re not “keeping up“ or falling “low in the ranks,” it is a failure. Continue reading I wasn’t lazy. The system was rigged. – Your ‘honor roll’ wasn’t hard work. It was privilege.
