I’m Here for the Autistic Awakening
There are thousands, if not millions of articles about autism.
So why do I bother to write essays about autism?
Because most of the information out there about autism does not apply to me, other late-identified autistics, or the autistic clients that I work with.
I am a late-identified autistic woman. My intelligence helped me to slip under the radar and develop masking and camouflaging skills.
I work with clients who had similar experiences — not realizing they were autistic until they were in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s,+
We are the awakening generation. We are the generation for which there was not yet a full understanding of autism or accurate portraits of how it can present in all genders. We didn’t have the lens of neurodiversity. We didn’t understand that autism is more an internal experience than external behaviors.
As we learn more and more about how autism FEELS and impacts all genders, we are awakening to our autistic identities.
Every single autistic client I have ever worked with expresses how life-altering it was to learn they are autistic. Most drastically re-narrate conceptualizations of themselves. They see they are not broken, just differently designed.
