Ashleigh's Blog

For today's post, I wanted to share a bit more of a personal perspective and talk about the ways in which autism presents itself for me. Obviously, autism is a spectrum and this means that it is very different for each individual, as is the case with everything in life. For example, I will not be the same as your 5 year-old nephew who has autism because I am a 22 year-old woman, so we will obviously be different in more ways than one. It seems obvious to explain but particularly autistic women and girls are often compared to how autism presents in men or boys and this is why they can fly under the radar for so long and miss out on the support that a diagnosis could bring.  This is certainly true in my case, as I've only just received my diagnosis but I still had many autistic traits throughout my childhood that weren't recognised as such and it meant that I, like many other late-diagnosed autistic women, had a pretty rough time at some points. It also meant that masking was...

Firstly, I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone who read my last post and thank you for all the lovely messages you sent. I was genuinely so nervous to post it but I was immediately comforted by the support that everyone gave me.  People I haven't even really talked to were messaging me and lots of people encouraged me to write more, so here I am. It brings me a lot of comfort to write about these topics because it's helping me to understand myself better after my diagnosis and also the thought that I may be helping other autistics, diagnosed or undiagnosed or giving neurotypicals a better understanding is so encouraging.  I'm especially grateful to the neurotypicals who read my last post and may be reading this one because it means so much that even by reading this blog, you're taking the time to try and understand us better and my hope is that this will lead to more acceptance from everyone. Thank you.  Today I'm starting with the topic of masking because...