My Name is Grace, and I am Autistic

Dear Readers,

If the title to this blog post threw you, welcome to the club :)

The structure for this blog post will pull from a series of journal entries written over the course of the last week ish. As I'll explain in it, I felt this was the best way to be the most authentic without spending hours agonizing over some sterilized PSA that probably wouldn't even get my point across.

I don't have much more of a preface I can add except to say that I hope that you'll still want to make a fresh cuppa and pull up a chair and read, like always.

---

12/18/2025

On December 17, 2025 (yesterday) I was diagnosed/discovered to be autistic by my Neuropsychologist that I'd been seeing since mid September. She did rule out ADHD, and confirmed that my previously diagnosed (March 2022) Generalized Anxiety Disorder was a misdiagnosis, but it still feels so odd to realize that I am autistic and have been my whole life.

I guess, in some ways, it changes nothing. But still in others, it changes EVERYTHING. I think knowing I am autistic helps me to truly understand myself so much more. I finally get WHY I am the way that I am.

I wonder how long it will take me to adjust to this knowledge about myself.

I've gotten distracted from writing because I've been in my head with all these different ideas, about how to tell people or if I should tell them. I feel like being vocal with others is going to ultimately make my experiences less painful in the long run.

I deserve to be wholly represented for who I am, and in my case, being autistic does impact my presentation of myself to the world ---- sometimes in ways that I cannot control or understand (aka masking... but that's a long story).

Being autistic provides concrete evidence to the suffering I'd come to believe everyone else was carrying quietly, pretending it didn't exist.

I am autistic.

322 PM

I'm starting to get a bit tired/bored, but I think that's just a delayed response to everything that's happened recently.

516 PM

It has been a day. A somewhat good one, but a day all the same, and I am quite tired.

I watched a handful of Youtube TEDx talks that were very validating, helpful, and interesting.

I especially liked Ellie Middleton's explanation of how an autism diagnosis feels like an invitation to finally be who you are ---- that is exactly how I feel too.

I have recieved a formal invitation to genuinely be myself. I have permission, as it were, to stop masking so hard, and in that permission ---- I now have freedom.

I have freedom to accommodate myself, to advocate for myself.

I have an explanation for 24 years of preexisting concrete data that we all knew made me different but at the same time didn't have the tools or language to accurately approach it and name it.

I do not have Generalized Anxiety Disorder, I am autistic.

It is not just that I was raised outside of Western social norms as a missionary kid, or that I have a chronic illness, I am also an autistic woman.

I am not "overemotional", "too sensitive", "lazy", "anxious", "socially awkward", or "a picky eater". I am autistic.

It will be a messy process to fully unmask & be myself, but after 24 years of presenting myself as a collage of pieces of everyone else and pretending I was fine when I've actually been deeply suffering, I believe I am up to the challenge.

My future now is less about me undergoing a new change, and more about me going back to my normal, to my baseline that existed before I became a chameleon in order to be accepted and to feel like I belonged in a world that just wasn't built for my neurotype.

I am sure parts of these recent journal entries will convert into blog posts because I like how well-thought out they are, and these entries also feel more authentically like me than if I were to come up with some sort of screened PSA.

I want people to know. For 24 years, we didn't have the option of knowing. For 24 years, our family and all of my relationships were heavily impacted by something so deeply frustrating but also completely nameless. It was a beast made of shadows that tore me apart the second I was alone.

Well, now that we know, I want you to know too.

I am still me. I am still Grace. And I am just as autistic as I've always been ------ except now we all get to know about it, and the elephant in every room I've ever spent time in now has a name.

658 PM

I am a part of "the lost generation" --- a collective of individuals (mostly women) that flew under the radar and got misdiagnosed, didn't get diagnosed at all, much less offered supports until they were into adulthood --- and I'm just not that lost anymore.

12/19/2025

Today has been so hard. I slept in really late & still did not feel like I had slept enough. I'm just so exhausted & it has made everything so hard/a struggle to do.

238 PM

I am autistic & I will be OK.

12/22/2025

Today has been OK.

Sensory wise, I've been really struggling with sound. It's been a noise cancelling headphones heavy day as a result.

I have no idea what will come of the rest of the day.

1043 AM

Some people may think that 6 days is not enough time, but I know that I am ready to share this.

I can't keep it inside of me for one second longer. 24 years is such a long time to not have my instruction manual, and people deserve to know that we found it.

The people who have loved me, shaped me, taught me, shared in this life with me ---- they deserve to know ---- and I am trusting that they will meet me with the same gentleness that they always have.

Hello! My name is Grace, and I am autistic.