And so begins a trek along the ruggedly beautiful but difficult path by the sea that takes readers through the alternatingly frustrating, funny, and enlightening experience of re-awakening to the world around us…

She often puts other people’s happiness first, describing herself as a ‘people pleaser’. But performing for so long has caused her to lose a sense of what her ‘true’ wants and desires are. And, when new stresses arise with the arrival of her son Bert, Katherine feels her coping strategies are stretched, and worsened by tongue-wagging mothers. She fears re-living isolation and rejection as she finds many new situations deeply challenging, As the blurb suggests, May didn't find the diagnosis of Asperger's/ASD distressing, but rather almost liberating. It gave her the permission to be who she is, which on reflection, is kind of a sad thing--that only a diagnosis offers permission to be unable to tolerate a busy, crowded room or being touched by a stranger. A new collection of stories: I Am Not A Label, written by disabled CBBC presenter Cerrie Burnell is intelligent, politically bold and beautiful to browse, says reviewer Kate Lovell Someone said to me afterwards, you do know that nobody walks the South West Coast Path in winter, don’t you? And I was like I do now. Yeah, and as I was reading that, too, I also related to that idea of so many listeners of this show, so many people in my community are working toward accepting and leaning into, you know, who their child is. And it’s that same kind of tension, that disconnect between accepting what is and leaning into that, and that the pain can often be caused by trying to, to avoid or deny or not really look at what’s going on.The astonishing sensitivity and awareness in her writing, both about the beautiful landscapes and nature around on her walks, and in relation to her family, friends and self put paid to many outdated myths about what it is like to be autistic' Yeah, I mean, because actually, the thing about being a masked autistic person is that you don’t get to just drop that mask, even if you want to, like the masking is so ingrained, it’s very, very hard to get rid of, and you’re not really sure who you’d be without the mask. And, you know, of course, the mask is also a privilege because it allows you to kind of pass in mainstream society. And quite often, I’ve learned that when I drop the mask, like because I felt like it would be the best way to meet my needs, my relationship with the people, I’ve dropped the mask to immediately changes and their tone changes towards me. And that feels very hurtful quite often, I think it’s really important to kind of talk about that as a, as a sort of baseline. I mean, for me, that’s changed the kind of minutiae of my life in a really significant way. And obviously, like, it’s been safest for me to drop the mask around the people I’m closest to, not everyone has reacted really well with that, but loads of people have, and I’m learning how to unmask and to sort of state my needs, you know, and that’s often showing up in really small ways, like being able to say to my husband, this music’s too loud, or you got this film on too loud, and I can’t cope with it, or being able to say, like, I just can’t, I can’t go to this event this afternoon, I’m already feeling overwhelmed, it’s going to completely tipped me over the edge or being able to say, Can we go home now, please, I have reached my limit. And to be able to say that really gently without it being a crisis, you know, because in the past, and like, partly because even I didn’t understand what was going on, I would often have to feel like I had to reach a kind of crisis point, before I got to do the thing that I needed to do, you know, like, I parties, I would get completely just spooked really by all the people of noise and the social demands. And I would end up disappearing off to the bottom of the garden or hiding under the coats, I used to do quite a lot. There was always a room of coats, and I’d kind of bury myself under them and go to sleep or like getting upset, I don’t need to reach those points anymore. Because I’ve dropped my mask. And I began to own up to what I actually need. And that’s, you know, that ‘s it, it takes little learning, it’s surprising, you don’t even recognize what your needs are, first of all. And this year, for the first time, like my dad loves to throw parties and I, instead of me kind of finding an excuse not to go out like saying yes, and then finding the excuse not to go last minute, he said he issued the invitation with the world’s that you might not want to go so it’s okay, if you don’t. And I was like, No, thank you. I don’t want to go. And he was like, Okay, no problem. We’d love to have you there. But we get it. And I just thought Allie Lou Yeah. I felt like finally I began to get the message across in my own very faltering rubbish way. But actually, that isn’t my ideal environment, thank you. And I love to be considered, but I love to be allowed to say no to. Sure. Yeah. So Wintering is a book, I guess that draws on my kind of lived neurodivergent experience, really, to talk about the times in life when we feel kind of cast out in the cold. So those fallow periods in life, when we feel like, you know, everything else is carrying on around us. And we’ve dropped out, you know, whether that’s through mental or physical illness or through a bereavement, or you know, something like a divorce or a big life change. They’re these times that come to all of us, but we don’t tend to talk about them very much. And so in Wintering, I wanted to really kind of manifest them for the world and shepherd, so everyone that they have this thing in common, and also to talk about some of the gentle ways that you can enjoy them, I think is the best way to put that. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we’ve been together for more than 20 years, by the time I realized I was autistic. And that’s a long time to feel like you’ve been undercover, I guess. And, you know, hopefully people will discern from the book that he is just a basically decent person. And you know, we love each other very much, which helps not everybody gets that actually, you know, not everyone has that privilege of having someone that loves them for who They are. But when I realized I was autistic I, yeah, I got inside my head about it because I was so worried about telling him specifically and what would he think of me? And what would he think of his situation in that light? You know, like, what? What would it mean for us? And how do you break it to someone after all this time? When it came to it, he knew. I mean, he didn’t know the specifics, but he knew and he’d loved me anyway. And I think that’s kind of what we forget, sometimes we’re so we autistic people spend a lot of time noticing the way that the world has rejected us and the way that world has pushed us away and spat us out and made us feel small, we don’t often turn our attention to how we are loved and how we’re valued. And it turned out that I was loved and valued for me all along, and not for the pretend person I was because he’s the person that seen the real me the most, you can’t mask all the time. And he’d seen me a mask, and he loved me anyway, even when he found me frustrating and difficult. And of course, like what I don’t write about the times when he’s frustrating and difficult, because that would be incredibly rude of me because it’s not his book, and he doesn’t get to speak. So that’s, you know, that’s what love is, it’s not to perfect people coming together and adoring each other unquestioningly for decades. It’s actually like knowing each other’s difficult bits and caring anyway. She has powerful sensory reactions to her environment, describing it as ‘electricity’ which pulsates, at points wonderfully consuming… other times far too intense (like screaming at children’s parties… or hand-dryers in toilets).

The boy who’s more machine than human, who lists facts, who cannot look at you. Who lives with his mother because he can’t cope alone…”

Summary

People like me can live entire lives wondering why everything is so hard for us. Doctors, teachers and mental health professionals are still routinely unable to spot our autism, and their knowledge is often agonisingly out of date. The invisibility endures. My book, sadly, is very much of the moment.”