Welcome to the Late Discovered Club!
Rediscovered is a compassionate and courageous guide for late discovered autistic women (and their allies), written by Catherine Asta of the Late Discovered Club podcast.
In this blog, we’ve taken an edited selection of sections from the book, starting with asking why Catherine wrote the book…
Why this book and why now?
Late discovery at the point of motherhood was my anchor point, and it’s a recurrent feature in the autistic women’s stories that I’ve heard. Many people realize they are autistic later in life when their children or their grandchildren, nieces, nephews or wider family members go through the diagnostic process.
There’s something about seeing yourself in the house of mirrors that your child or family member holds up to you which enables you to see yourself in a way and from a perspective you never have before. As you learn more about your child or family member, you begin to understand more about yourself in the process. There’s nothing like going through the process of an autism assessment with your child or grandchild for the penny to drop that their challenges and struggles are the same challenges and struggles that you experienced, except now you have a narrative and frame of reference to put to that experience.
And then there are the women in our community who describe menopause and perimenopause as the point when ‘the wheels start to fall off’; for many women, menopause is the point of their autistic discovery.
There are also late discovered women in our community who struggle at those transition points of university, work and motherhood, many of whom have collected several (mis) diagnoses of mental health conditions along the way, or have experienced a mental health crisis, suffered breakdowns, or have crashed out of jobs, education and work due to burnout before stumbling across their autism discovery.
We hear so much from health professionals, within our communities, in the media and amongst our families and friends about how late discovery can’t be a thing, that if we’ve got this far then we really can’t have struggled that much, or that we must be ‘high functioning’ and have little to no support needs.
Then there’s the people who say that self-identifying isn’t valid, that you can only be autistic if and when a doctor ‘diagnoses’ you. Yet many in our community can’t access an assessment pathway – diagnosis is a privilege – and there are also many who choose to self-identify often after many years of self-exploration. We need to honour and embrace people’s deep and intrinsic self-knowing. Those who self-identify are a part of the autistic community too – acceptance and belonging matters.
Late discovery
During my own late discovery I was lucky and incredibly privileged both that my parents are still here for me to have the conversations I needed to have with them about how I was as a child, and that they were both open and engaged in the many conversations I’ve had with them to help me make sense of myself through this newfound autistic lens.
However, I recognize that many on their late discovery journey will not have this access because they have no contact with their parents, or their parents are not open to having this conversation, or because their parents are no longer here. There are also people who won’t feel comfortable having the conversation with their parents, perhaps because they do not want to upset or ‘burden’ their elderly parents with their discovery – especially given the generational gaps in knowledge, awareness and acceptance, and the cultural challenges that exist in some communities.
There is also the very real and understandable fear of outright rejection and invalidation, all of which create even more barriers to accessing a diagnosis when your developmental history is a key central part to that process.
A late 70s child, I originate from working class roots, and I’m one of seven girls in my family (the middle child of three from my parents’ first marriage). My mum described me as a highly sensitive child – sensitive to my environment, sensitive to pain, sensitive to illness, sensitive to people, and sensitive to the world around me. A ‘serious and deep’ child who often misinterpreted things that were said, who had a need for order and structure, who rarely misbehaved and was hypersensitive to getting things wrong.
The stereotype that all autistic girls and women love animals is not my experience. For me, the unpredictability of not knowing how an animal might behave puts me in a heightened state of fear. People, on the other hand, I’ve been studying my whole life and they are much more predictable and human behaviour more understandable.
Autistic enlightenment
What I needed was the space and time to explore myself and to be curious through this newfound autistic enlightenment. To offer myself the opportunity to be strengths- and compassion-focused, rather than deficit-led, and to understand my struggles and give them the acknowledgment and the acceptance they’ve always needed through a trauma-informed, experience-sensitive lens.
It felt like I’d already watched a film, and now I was going back to the beginning to rewatch it, to rediscover a different version, and this time I’d be noticing all the nuanced parts I never had the first time round. In the absence of a guide or someone to hold my hand through this, I took all my knowledge and insights and experience as a therapist, and what I already understood about myself, and guided myself through my own late discovery.
My beautiful autistic mind enabled me to imagine there was a rediscovered version of me, sitting with the late discovered me in the dark, guiding me and lighting up the way to ‘coming home’ unsure of what I would discover, but with a sense this was work I had to begin and that I was ready to start.
A manifesto for change
In writing this book, interviewing the late discovered contributors and drawing on the most up-to-date research and studies five clear themes have emerged and these are themes that I want people to listen to, and act on, both for this present generation of autistic women, and the generations that come after. Throughout the book I will explore all of these themes in more depth.
1. Closing the health inequality gap
2. Being seen and heard
3. Access to neuro-inclusive assessments
4. Workplace inclusion
5. Support through the lifespan
Call it a manifesto for change.
Catherine Asta is an autistic psychotherapist who specialises in working with Late Discovered autistic women. In 2022 she created ‘The Late Discovered Club’ to give late discovered autistic women a voice, the Club encompasses peer support circles and a podcast.
Rediscovered is available now in paperback, ebook and audiobook.