_Odd Girl Out_ by Laura James
Sep. 25th, 2022 09:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutI was looking for a book, ideally fiction, with a(n explicitly) neurodivergent character for my daughter to read for school reasons. She’s reading _Queens of Geek_, which I’m also pretty excited about (fiction, and involves characters attending a con, which is, in fiction, in my limited experience _always_ a fun setting). Along the way, I ran across this memoir written by a British journalist about her experience learning in her mid-40s that she has autism.
I initially thought (because apparently, I failed to do publication date math) that James was a few years younger than me, however, I was wrong; we appear to be literally a few months apart in age. Obviously, there are many, many, many differences between our lives, but there was a lot that I found extremely relatable about James. She was adopted and raised Jewish. The Jewish subculture created an alternative explanation for her oddness when young, just as my JW childhood and young adulthood created an alternative explanation for mine. However, the adoption meant that while there was significant mental health struggles in her small family (her adoptive mom was hospitalized for “nerves” repeatedly), she did not see herself in the people around her, in the way that I clearly could, and in the way that she could see herself in her children when she had them. That turns out to be pretty salient!
My response to sensory overstimulation is quite different from hers, and she also has an Ehlers-Danlos syndrome diagnosis. I’ve been running across a lot of later-in-life EDS dx lately (TikTok and elsewhere), which got me wondering about that again. I’ve never really thought that could be me, in the more severe forms, altho it absolutely could explain things about a first cousin who has since passed. It also might go a long ways to explaining my mother and one of my sisters and possibly some other people in my family who have perplexing chronic pain and are prone to dislocation. There’s a lot of hypermobility in my family on that side as well. It’s interesting to think about whether it would be worth getting assessed for that, and what that might involve; there are sites now on the web that advertise whole genome testing and will do an EDS screen for all known variants. Seems risk free, because I’m quite _good_ at avoiding getting sucked into unnecessary medical care. But I’m not sure.
Because of the extensive medical interaction of my mother and some other family members, I got interested in diagnostic categories a really long time ago, and because I’m a asshole, I got really interested in how diagnostic categories evolve over time. However, as much as I learned by doing this, I never got to have the experience of combining a life review post-major diagnosis while having phone conversations with the experts in the field. I cannot really articulate how _happy_ I felt _for James_, because she could actually _talk to Tony Attwood_ as she was making sense of what she was going through in life. I am _so grateful_ that she shared that in this book. I hope everyone reads it.
I got a little worried at the point in the book where the boys were finally at college and out of the house; she had poured so much of her emotional self into them, and there was so much hostility depicted with her husband (man, whenever people say they don’t argue, I brace myself for _unending_ hostility diffused throughout the lives of the non-arguers. There are exceptions to this rule, but they are not super common, and this couple isn’t one of them). However, she took those months post-life-review as an opportunity to really think about how she could start to feel better. Her therapist M clearly was an amazing catalyst for this work. It was a joy to read about her decluttering, figuring out that meal plans and shopping lists actually could be useful, and taking a weekend evening each week to plan out the work of the next way. I did not notice her explicitly relating that to her Jewish upbringing, but I can definitely see and feel that connection. Best of all, finding ways to rest and restore herself, and establish systems / environments of control that _support_ her was also supportive of her husband and their relationship. There’s no guarantee it will work that way. I’m so glad it did for her and for them.
I’m looking forward to discussing this in book group. As with all people with autism, each book about a person with autism is _a_ book about _a_ person with autism. I’m so glad that this one exists.
I initially thought (because apparently, I failed to do publication date math) that James was a few years younger than me, however, I was wrong; we appear to be literally a few months apart in age. Obviously, there are many, many, many differences between our lives, but there was a lot that I found extremely relatable about James. She was adopted and raised Jewish. The Jewish subculture created an alternative explanation for her oddness when young, just as my JW childhood and young adulthood created an alternative explanation for mine. However, the adoption meant that while there was significant mental health struggles in her small family (her adoptive mom was hospitalized for “nerves” repeatedly), she did not see herself in the people around her, in the way that I clearly could, and in the way that she could see herself in her children when she had them. That turns out to be pretty salient!
My response to sensory overstimulation is quite different from hers, and she also has an Ehlers-Danlos syndrome diagnosis. I’ve been running across a lot of later-in-life EDS dx lately (TikTok and elsewhere), which got me wondering about that again. I’ve never really thought that could be me, in the more severe forms, altho it absolutely could explain things about a first cousin who has since passed. It also might go a long ways to explaining my mother and one of my sisters and possibly some other people in my family who have perplexing chronic pain and are prone to dislocation. There’s a lot of hypermobility in my family on that side as well. It’s interesting to think about whether it would be worth getting assessed for that, and what that might involve; there are sites now on the web that advertise whole genome testing and will do an EDS screen for all known variants. Seems risk free, because I’m quite _good_ at avoiding getting sucked into unnecessary medical care. But I’m not sure.
Because of the extensive medical interaction of my mother and some other family members, I got interested in diagnostic categories a really long time ago, and because I’m a asshole, I got really interested in how diagnostic categories evolve over time. However, as much as I learned by doing this, I never got to have the experience of combining a life review post-major diagnosis while having phone conversations with the experts in the field. I cannot really articulate how _happy_ I felt _for James_, because she could actually _talk to Tony Attwood_ as she was making sense of what she was going through in life. I am _so grateful_ that she shared that in this book. I hope everyone reads it.
I got a little worried at the point in the book where the boys were finally at college and out of the house; she had poured so much of her emotional self into them, and there was so much hostility depicted with her husband (man, whenever people say they don’t argue, I brace myself for _unending_ hostility diffused throughout the lives of the non-arguers. There are exceptions to this rule, but they are not super common, and this couple isn’t one of them). However, she took those months post-life-review as an opportunity to really think about how she could start to feel better. Her therapist M clearly was an amazing catalyst for this work. It was a joy to read about her decluttering, figuring out that meal plans and shopping lists actually could be useful, and taking a weekend evening each week to plan out the work of the next way. I did not notice her explicitly relating that to her Jewish upbringing, but I can definitely see and feel that connection. Best of all, finding ways to rest and restore herself, and establish systems / environments of control that _support_ her was also supportive of her husband and their relationship. There’s no guarantee it will work that way. I’m so glad it did for her and for them.
I’m looking forward to discussing this in book group. As with all people with autism, each book about a person with autism is _a_ book about _a_ person with autism. I’m so glad that this one exists.