Throughout my life, as far back as I can remember, I was a weird kid who happened to be lucky enough to have been born into a weird family. I love my family and loved my life as a child. We lived in very small towns with lots of forest nearby and I spent a lot of time outdoors in nature. We never had a lot of money or stuff that money could buy, but it never mattered because there weren’t a lot of people around to point that out.
I wasn’t what anyone would have called a “girlie girl,” but I wasn’t really a tomboy either. I was more like a contradictory mish-mash of traits that changed from day to day. Sometimes, all I would want to do was stay inside my room and read an entire book or three. I was reading several years above my grade level throughout my childhood. Other days I would put on a skirt or dress that flared out so I could spin around and feel the air on my legs, only to get distracted by my friends heading to a dirt bike track or my siblings playing in mud in the garden. Mostly, if someone outside my immediate circle of people put any kind of label on me, I would immediately do the opposite to prove them wrong. I may not have known who I was then, but they absolutely did not know me either.
I was identified as gifted in 1st grade and skipped 2nd grade. Then I was in accelerated or self-paced classes whenever they were available at the small school district we were in at the time. When my parents decided to move to a bigger town for me to go to high school and have more opportunities for music and advanced math and science classes, the whole gifted thing was not recognized and I was effectively mainstreamed, doing mostly busy-work for much of my remaining 5 years until graduation. That was my first taste of being personally underserved by the public institutions that I believed so strongly in.
It was during high school that I pretty much came to understand that I was very different than most other people. I had a couple friends, and we did really random, creative, and fun things that no one else was doing, but I never felt understood by any of them. If I didn’t get too deeply philosophical or down some other “special interest” rabbit hole, at least they would hang out with me. I spent much of my teenage years being both deeply afraid that I would be truly seen and then rejected for who I naturally was and pretending to be normal enough to hang out with the band kids, the theater kids, the stoners, and the nerds.
Being able to play the saxophone, which is also kind of a weird instrument, and being naturally musical gave me an anchor to hold onto. I loved to listen to music on the radio, and on New Year’s Eve every year I wouldn’t leave the house or my room because I would be busy with an ear flex to the radio, documenting that year’s countdown of the best songs of the year. I recall being particularly distressed one year when I had to go out for something, and I left my little sister to listen and document for me the songs that I missed and she did not care at all about this project of mine. I guess my offer of candy or whatever I was going to pay her with wasn’t enticing enough. It wasn’t like I could just look it up later; the internet didn’t exist yet.
As an adult, I think much of my life has been informed by my high school years. I never expected to be understood or accommodated and I take full responsibility for my own boundaries or lack thereof. I tolerated a lot of discomfort by choice because I couldn’t find a better situation for myself that didn’t come with what I saw was intolerable risk. I have never been entrepreneurial. My only experience with a family member running a business was my aunt and she didn’t have the kind of life I saw myself having. She worked too much, was isolated personally, and didn’t always have good relationships with her employees.
I have said about myself that “I could do anything if I only knew what it was,” and that still rings true for me. When my passion is ignited, I can do amazing things. My brain works exceptionally well at seeing patterns and connections in completely different realms of human systems, but most of the time, when I try to communicate these patterns to others, they either do not have the capacity to understand me or don’t want to. My best thinking is done with a strong second person who will challenge my assertions and question my theories and those people are elusive. I think it has taken me this long in life, along with the process of reframing that inevitably follows a late identification of autism, to understand that I’m not just some underperforming “normal” person. My path is supposed to be different, and that is really not supported or appreciated in a culture that reinforces and promotes hierarchical organizations based on neurotypical values.
This is especially true for women. Women are constantly being judged and evaluated, often subconsciously, by everyone. My close ties to my family and previously supportive workplace have given me support from which to draw inspiration and strength, but there are many times when I think life would be so much simpler if I could just follow the unwritten rules and follow through with the life milestones that others expect for women. I have been highly attuned to all those messages from early on, which gave me something to push against, but I have never really felt like I had the space to learn who I was or am outside of the frame of society’s expectations.
As I have come to embrace my identity as an autistic woman, I have found a sense of true community among other neurodivergent folks, across all ages, genders, races and ethnicities. The common thread we all have is a persistent sense of otherness for sometimes completely obscure or enigmatic reasons. And this sense of otherness is what brings us together now. By sharing our stories with the depth of soul and empathy that we have a tendency to be able to conjure with more ease, we create and hold space for one another in our ever-growing community. We also tend to be fiercely loyal, which can make us vulnerable to being taken advantage of by unknowing or unscrupulous folks around us. By surrounding myself with more autistic and neurodivergent people lately, I’ve started to feel capable of trusting others again, since this community is so earnest and will share very deeply when given a friendly shoulder to lean on.
Four and a half years into my autism journey, I wouldn’t trade this life experience for anything, though I do wish I had this bit of self-knowledge earlier in life. Ideally, I think in one’s 20s would be a great time to be identified because you are already at the age where you are trying things out and defining who you are in the world. I feel like quite the late bloomer going through this process again (or perhaps finally?) in my 40s. I do feel like this is a magical time to be alive because we are building a whole new set of knowledge building blocks and criteria for the next generation. With any luck, in my lifetime I will see significant progress made toward systemic inclusion in organizations and more autistic leaders creating space for everyone to work together more effectively to solve the world’s problems. I believe the human race will not endure if we do not make these changes as soon as possible and I look forward to being part of that change.
Jessica Jahns is a 40-something woman living in Portland, Oregon. She works full time as an automotive data analyst for a well-known company and part time for the non-profit, Umbrella US, that she co-founded in 2023. She was identified autistic 6 months before the start of the pandemic and both events changed her life thoroughly. In her spare time, she likes to write, read, watch the news or a basketball game, cuddle with her dogs, kayak or tent camp with her husband and family or just enjoy her backyard from her hammock.
The post Reflection on Being a Late-Identified Autistic Female first appeared on Organization for Autism Research.
