Tag: late-diagnosed

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Disability

Knowing Why Is Everything: An Interview With Editor Elizabeth Bartmess on Adult-Diagnosed Autistic Perspectives

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Sarah Kurchak www.riskyfuel.com The Knowing Why book cover [image: Book cover with a black background, with silhouettes of people of all sizes and a dog, in a rainbow of colors. Rainbow-colored text  at the top reads, “Knowing Why: Adult-Diagnosed Autistic People on Life and Autism.] There are many problems with the ways in which autism is currently seen and represented in the media and public discussion. When the face of autism is still predominantly white, cisgender, heterosexual, middle or upper class boys, it erases autistic people of color, LGBTQA autistic people, and poor autistic people from the conversation and denies them vital supports and resources. It also ignores the fact that there’s an entire segment of the autistic population that spends their entire childhoods and adolescences not knowing that they’re autistic at all. As someone who wasn’t diagnosed until I was 27, I grew up knowing that I was different…

Disability

The DSM-V Changes From a Late-Diagnosed Adult’s Perspective

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Charli Devnet Charli writes: In view of the firestorm surrounding the proposed changes to the DSM-V criteria for the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, an open debate on the nature and scope of autism and what it means to be autistic might be in order. —-  I’m not an expert, but I am autistic. All my life I searched for the answer to a seemingly inexplicable riddle, “Just what is wrong with me?” At the age of 54, I was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. The diagnosis, when I finally acquired one, was not a surprise, not to me nor to anyone who had known me for any significant time. I’m far from a borderline case. No one came up to me and said, “You? We just cannot believe it!” Instead, a number of people greeted my disclosure with the response, “We thought so all along.” Not content to simply have…

Disability

What I Want People to Know

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Corina Lynn Becker nostereotypeshere.blogspot.com In my time browsing the online community, I often get asked about my story, what it’s like to be a late-diagnosed autistic and what I want people to know. This is rather odd, because I’m not in the habit of showing off my scars, but there are some things that I think that I can talk about. I want to be very honest with you. I am an adult living on social assistance, in a shared accommodation run by a non-profit housing organization. Despite being highly educated, I find it difficult to find and maintain a job on my own, and I’m not even sure that I ever will. I struggle to survive with few to no supports, mostly my family and the little that some organizations have been able to provide. It is, at times, very and extremely hard. There is a lot to remember,…