The Ladybird Way

So, you’re here. Welcome, and I’m sorry, and it is really hard, and it’s also you’re not alone.

From my perspective, as a 45-year old autistic woman not quite 5 years into my diagnosis, looking both back and ahead and at today, my autism is both a strength and a disability.

When I say my autism is a strength, I mean that I love being supersmart, and hyper-focusing on things I love, and basically being a genius at pattern recognition, and being able to learn anything (like about my own autism) from reading books, and having lots of hobbies, and being independent, and having a home that’s been carefully decorated to represent me.

When I say my autism is a disability, I mean that I always feel like I’m on the outside looking in at get-togethers, can’t make friends to save my life even though I want to, am exhausted by the pace of work (meetings and emails and so much task-switching between clients and projects), always have a medical or mental health issue to deal with, can’t sleep, and wind up shacking up with abusive partners because no matter how many times I do it I’m still naive to being manipulated.

During the work week, I’m busily holding down my job, shuttling my son to and from school and activities, and trying to stay on top of house chores. Every other weekend when my son is at his dad’s is when I catch up, meaning that I climb into my “nest” (imagine an L-shaped sofa that’s been disconnected at the corner so that the two halves can be pushed together to create an enclosed super-cushion) and watch Deadloch.

I’d love to make friends, but I just can’t (shrug). I go to events where there are other moms, and hover on the edge trying not to look at any one person for too long (my son says I stare), and smile and say “Hi, how are you?” when people make eye contact with me, but nothing ever happens. I make friends with kids, grannies and men more easily, but none of those are socially appropriate friendships. So I have my hobbies to keep me company, and art and writing classes when I have extra money.

It was my therapist who first told me I was autistic, about four years ago. It was during the last 2 minutes of our weekly session when she blurted out, “Oh by the way, I think you’re autistic.” And then she told me to read the book “Unmasking Autism,” by Devon Price. She left me shell-shocked, honestly. I had asked year several times over the years if I was autistic and she’d always say No Way! You’re not autistic. Because, until she read Unmasking Autism, she’d had the classical presentation of autism in her mind. In her defense, most mental health and medical professionals still think of the classical presentation of autism if they think of autism at all, which is unfortunate because it means that all the rest of us get missed.

I’ll tell you something about being diagnosed as an autistic woman in my 40’s—I felt/feel heartbroken. Yes, finding out I was autistic gave me an explanation for why (why did my life go the way it did) that wasn’t “I’m just a failure”, and that was validating and a relief—for about a month. Then the depression set in, and it hasn’t left. The biggest problem with being autistic in my opinion, is that there’s nothing I can do to be non-autistic. I can’t take a pill, take a class, grow out of it, or even learn my way out of it. It’s like this—I could tell that my coworkers were misunderstanding me before I knew I was autistic. Just because I now know I’m chronically understood because I’m autistic (because I provide the wrong amount of context, don’t pick up “social breadcrumbs”, don’t “grease the wheels” with chit-chat) doesn’t make me understood. It means I’ll forever be chronically understood. There has been at times a sense of hopelessness about my autism diagnosis, particularly around friends.

The classical outdated understanding of autism is of the minimally verbal, socially awkward, emotionally volatile child who requires full time care. While autistic individuals can be impacted this way, this is only one of the spectrum of ways that an individual can be impacted. You might say that there are as many unique presentations of autism as there are autistic individuals.

The updated understanding of autism reflects our knowledge that autism is a nervous system disorder that makes navigating things that require “sensing” (existing in a loud and bright world with lots of other people) difficult. Autism includes a spectrum of traits, most of which have to do with how our brains process the world around us, which means that our symptoms—and our autistic diagnosis—are invisible. In that respect, autism is for many of us a hidden disability.

So…how do you know if you’re autistic? You must have an inkling that you’re different in some way, or you wouldn’t be here. And the experience of being different, but not knowing why, is a big clue in and of itself. A “perk” of being autistic is that we’re smart and can learn anything from reading, which means we can become amateur autistic experts and diagnose ourselves.

I’ll walk you through it—ready? I’m going to present my favorite books on autism (in women) along with autistic traits that are mentioned by the authors.

The two books that most clearly describe autistic traits as they manifest in women are Aspergirls written by Rudy Simone and Is This Autism? A Guide for Clinicians and Everyone Else by Donna Henderson and Sarah Wayland. In the back of Aspergirls, Rudy Simone includes a self-diagnosis guide specifically geared towards women, and when I read it I was like—”OMG, that’s MEEEEEEEE!”