My daughter has had her autism assessment, the only thing left is for her to fill in a form called the MIGDAS. Despite being only 16 the assessor wants her to do the adult version as she’s clever and shows good levels of self-awareness. But it’s 28 pages long and we’ve been away and her…

No, not mine. My daughter’s. The date for my daughter’s autism assessment has finally come through and it’s next week. I’m dreading it. What if it’s not autism? What if it’s just bad parenting? What if I’m really a refrigerator mother? My daughter’s first CAMHS clinician seemed to think her problems were “family of origin”…

It’s now been 18 months since I realised that I was probably autistic and only a little less time since my GP agreed with me that in all likelihood that was the reason for my emotional difficulties and referred me for an NHS diagnosis. The wheels turn slowly with the UK’s over-stretched health service and…

**This post comes with a trigger warning for suicidal ideation.** I could have made this gender non-specific and blogged about friendship in general. However, the issue is that being a woman who, in the words of Elle Woods “is not completely unfortunate looking” male-female friendship is sometimes complicated. Let’s put it this way – I…

I’m reading through Devon Price’s Unmasking Autism: The Power of Embracing Our Hidden Neurodiversity. I haven’t got very far. I’m stuck on page 14, which is the last page of the introduction. There’s this table, right. And you have to fill in five moments from your life when you felt you were FULLY ALIVE (all…

I was always the last to be picked in PE class. No one wanted me on their netball team. Not if they could help it. Kate can’t catch a ball. I also fall over. A lot. I have new glasses. The last ones had to be replaced after a literal faceplant while out for a…

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…