kateblackham.space

Here’s a colour-wheel showing one way of representing the autistic spectrum as it refers to me: The further out the colours go the more problematic/severe those traits are. (Now it would be nice to see some positive things here, but no matter.) That is what my profile looks like. Note that this was formed using…

Before I realised I had high levels of autistic traits I used to read articles about women who didn’t know they had autism and never for one minute considered that the authors might be referring to me. As my husband said when I finally realised that I might be autistic and aced the AQ-50 test…

I’ve always had really, really poor executive functioning. My editorial clients don’t realise because I always get their work done by the deadline and (like most autistics) I’m really conscientious. So it looks like I have excellent time management skills and organisational skills. But I don’t. It’s an illusion I can maintain so I can…

Disclaimer: To the best of my knowledge none of the people discussed in the article described are autistic or neurodiverse. That said their impressive attention to detail, commitment to research and obsessiveness are commonly found in autistic people. Also trains! My husband said I *had* to read the Guardian’s article ‘I’m proud to be called…

Now you might assume that given that I’m married that dating obviously wasn’t a problem for me. You would be wrong. Autistics have three trajectories for relationships: Perpetual singledom – that would be like my (great-) Auntie Margaret and my (great-) Uncle Jim. Brother and sister who never married and lived all their lives in…

So I’m sat with my daughter during her initial assessment for autism and she doesn’t want to be there. She doesn’t like meeting new people, doesn’t like not knowing what they’re going to ask her, knowing what she’s supposed to say. Typical autistic nightmare stuff. Even post-pandemic they’re doing all this via Skype. My daughter…

OK I’ve had enough of talking about the negatives of having autistic traits, so I thought I’d start sharing some positives. I have awesome attention to detail. Something that was picked up on by my art teacher during sketching classes, my Latin teacher when covering the finer points of grammar, and my physics teachers when…

… and that’s actually not uncommon for autistics. As a teenager I would get up in the middle of the night, having been unable to sleep to find a full-on insomniac party taking place in the kitchen. And by party I don’t mean a literal one obviously (did you not get the memo), I mean…

When I was a child I used to laugh much more. Then my mother pointed out that much of the time my laugh sounded incredibly fake and was actually cringey (well it was the 80s so those weren’t her exact words as cringey wasn’t an expression people used much, but you get my meaning). So…