Mental?
Menopausal?
Magnificent Me.

​I’m a 51 year old menopausal female who has just been diagnosed with autism. I worked as a deputy headteacher in a primary school for 26 years until I had a ‘burnout’ No one knew what was happening to me and I’ve been through 3 years of hell from being misdiagnosed with psychosis, anxiety, depression and stress. My mental health team have worked tirelessly to find out what was happening to me yet despite meeting over 40 professionals, including psychiatrists, consultants, doctors and mental health professionals who knew my trigger was social gatherings with my family, no one suggested autism. I’ve been sectioned and tried to take my own life twice in the last 3 years as I struggled to make sense of what was happening to me. Then came my lightbulb moment 2 weeks ago. I’d been to my family for Christmas and spending just 2 days with my family, who I love dearly resulted in another meltdown. The recovery took 4 weeks. During that time I couldn’t work and was unable to go on my holiday of a lifetime touring around South America.I then began to get angry that whatever ‘this’ was had taken away so much from my life, friends, family, work and now my passion of travelling. So I decided to sit down and right down exactly what I’d found so difficult about Christmas time. Well I cannot tell you. The words just flowed page after page and there it was clear as day hundreds of autistic traits! I’ve worked in education all my life so was very familiar with the traits and my current work is with young people with ASD. It was a lightbulb moment and I cannot tell you the clarity I felt. Suddenly everything made sense. A lifetime of low self worth, anxiety and feeling like I don’t belong just disappeared. I felt alive and it feels incredible. That was only last week but since then I’ve been working tirelessly to get my story out there to help others.