Book Announcement - ‘Girl Unmasked: How Uncovering My Autism Saved My Life’

I can’t believe I am FINALLY able to share this (believe me, it’s been a secret for a long time!!!). My book ‘Girl Unmasked: How Uncovering My Autism Saved My Life’ is out 28th March 2024 and is available NOW to pre-order!! Link here.

I feel like I’m dreaming. I spent most of my childhood with my head buried in books and writing my own, day-dreaming of becoming an author when I grew up. That dream faded for a while, as life got harder and harder.

Six years ago, after years of anxiety that had become intolerable, I was sectioned on a children’s mental health unit. I believed that I was broken, like I wasn’t made for this world, and thought that things could never change. I thought I knew that I didn’t have a future. I couldn’t envision any alternative future to the one I had made up in my head filled with misery and anxiety.

Seven months after I was discharged, I was diagnosed with autism. And that sentence - “We think that there is one explanation for everything you have gone through…autism” - changed everything for me. Not straight away. But it was the first time I believed that maybe not everything was my fault and maybe I was not completely broken.

‘Girl Unmasked’ is the story of how I got there - and how I very nearly didn’t. Of how OCD and anxiety almost destroyed me, how a system which did not understand autism let me down, and how what I learned along the way helped me to turn my life around.

I have spent the past five years learning as much about autism (and now, ADHD!) as possible. I have learned about why things have felt so hard for me and now know there are names for many of these things - like alexithymia, autistic burnout, interoceptive difficulties, autistic meltdowns, shutdowns, and rejection sensitive dysphoria.

But during this time, I have also felt a lot of anger. And sadness. For all of the autistic people failed by our system in so many different ways - those who end up sectioned and traumatised, those who die by suicide or of an illness that could have a different outcome if reasonable adjustments are made, those who are harmed by people supposed to look after them, those taken advantage of because they think differently, and those missing out on education because the system isn’t fit for purpose. The more I read, the angrier I became.

So, I did what I have always done when emotions start to build up inside of me. I started to write.

Girl Unmasked: How Uncovering My Autism Saved My Life is out on March 28th 2024, and is available now to pre-order from Amazon, Waterstones, WHSmith and other retailers!