Late Diagnosed Autism in Women | A Little Less Broken with Guest Marian Schembari

In this episode Wendy speaks with author Marian Schembari about late autism diagnosis, self-understanding, and the journey from feeling broken to feeling whole.

Marian shares insights from her memoir, A Little Less Broken: How an Autism Diagnosis Finally Made Me Whole, and reflects on the impact of discovering she was autistic later in life. Through humor, honesty, and lived experience, she discusses the challenges of navigating a world that often misunderstands autistic people, as well as the relief that can come from finally having language for your experiences.

From coping with stress, managing auditory overwhelm, and finding trustworthy sources of information about autism, Marian encourages newly identified autistic adults to learn from autistic voices and experiences rather than relying solely on social media.

Takeaways:

 • Don’t rely exclusively on social media for information about autism
 • Seek out books, articles, and resources created by autistic authors
 • A late autism diagnosis can provide clarity and self-understanding
 • Understanding your autistic needs can help you better manage stress and overwhelm

About Marian Schembari:

Marian Schembari is the author of the memoir A Little Less Broken: How an Autism Diagnosis Finally Made Me Whole. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, and Good Housekeeping.

Her first published work, a poem about dragons, appeared at age eleven in Highlights for Kids. Today, she writes about autism, identity, parenting, and life as a late-diagnosed autistic woman. Marian lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and daughter.

Website: https://www.marianschembari.com/

Sign up on Marian’s website to receive the first chapter of A Little Less Broken for free, along with her newsletter.

You can find Marian Schembari’s book wherever books are sold, or you can use the Amazon Affiliate Link below. As an Amazon Associate, I earn a commission from qualifying purchases through this link, which helps support this podcast at not extra cost to you.

Amazon Affiliate Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250895774/ref=cm_sw_r_as_gl_api_gl_i_V84ZF1AT5JGXGVMZ0F8P?linkCode=ml1&tag=wendelawhitco-20&linkId=0ebb3de9d10e48647f65e5f9c83ccc9a

About Your Host:

Wendela Whitcomb Marsh, MA, RSD, is an award-winning author, TEDx speaker, and host of Amplifying Autism. Though not autistic herself, Wendy has dedicated her career to supporting the neurodivergent community. She is the founder of Adulting While Autistic and helps late-diagnosed autistic adults find clarity and community. 

Books Available on Amazon

Website: wendelawhitcombmarsh.com
Instagram: @wendela.w.marsh
Adulting While Autistic: @adultingwhileautistic 

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Thank You for Listening:

If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it. Your support helps us reach more late-diagnosed autistic adults and those who care about them. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

This is Amplifying Autism, where every voice matters and every story shines. Join us as autistic authors, professionals, and trailblazers share their journeys, real stories, and real insight from those changing the world, one conversation at a time. I'm delighted to welcome to the show my friend Marion Shambari. She's the author of the memoir, A Little Less Broken: How an Autism Diagnosis Finally Made Me Whole. What you may not know about Marian is that her very first byline appeared at the age of 11. She wrote a poem about dragons, which was published in Highlights for Kids. Since then, her essays have appeared in The New York Times, Cosmopolitan, Marie Clare, and Good Housekeeping. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and daughter. Welcome, Marion Shimbari. Welcome, Marion Shimbari. It's so good to have you here today.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

It's so good to see you.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

Now we we've known each other for a while, but but it's been a while. But so one thing I know about you is you did not always know that you were autistic. No, I did not. Do you want to talk about what that change has meant for you? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Yeah, it I have not known, always known I was autistic. I God, I was somebody asked me recently how long it's been. And I keep thinking it was like, oh, just like a year or two ago, but it's actually been like five or six years at this point. So I've known for a long time, so long now that I don't think about it at all anymore. But there was like a good three-year period where it felt like everything I did in my life was like, oh, that makes sense now, and that makes sense now. And oh, I can't do that, and that's why. But now it is just totally blurred into the background. But no, I found out when I was 34, I found out because a friend found out. And for whatever reason, that friend, just her specific way of being and the specific way that she found out, kind of like unlocked something in my brain. And it suddenly made me feel like, oh, all of those things are my things. And I should maybe look into this. And then the more I read and the more people that I talked to, that kind of led me down this whole rabbit hole, which I'm very happy to talk about. But um, to answer your question, it has definitely been um really nothing but a positive experience for me to identify as being autistic, and the diagnosis process was nothing but positive. And so all it's really done for me is helped me live in the world better and easier.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

That's that's wonderful. I I'm I'm so happy for you. And I do hear that from other autistic folk that knowing can be so freeing and can really open doors to to forgiveness, you know, forgiving yourself, forgiving others who just didn't know what they didn't know. Yeah, exactly. Now, one of the things that you have done out of this new knowledge is you have written a wonderful book.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

I did. Oh, not only about wonderful, but I did write a book. I read it. Thank you for the wonderful. So I would love for you to talk about that a little bit. Yeah, I wrote the book again, a million years ago now. Um, it's called A Little Less Broken, and it is about it's both, it's a memoir, it's what they call a hybrid memoir, which I did not know was a thing until I kind of entered the publishing world. But really, what that means is it's a memoir. So it's one author's specific personal story interwoven with research and a broader universal story. Because when I wrote the book, I don't want to say I hate the word trendy, just kill me now for saying it, but I don't have a better word. But a lot of people were talking about autism, late-in-life autism diagnoses being trendy. And that all that really means is that more people were realizing that they were autistic and getting diagnoses. That all that's all that means. Um, you could say that about a lot of conditions, um, where suddenly research kind of jumps forward, and then a lot of other people realize, oh, this is the thing that I've had all along. So because lots of people kind of like in the cultural conversation were talking about their autism diagnoses, especially women of a certain age like me, um the publisher wanted my story to be a little bit more universal. So the book looks at is essentially kind of like a retrospective of my childhood, kind of looking back on the things that now that I know I'm autistic, suddenly made a lot more sense. And interwoven with those stories are other women's stories, um uh some of the research, a lot of the kind of like new conversations that were happening about things like uh autism in the workplace and being an autistic parent. And so my book is really it's a memoir of my life and my experience and my childhood interwoven with other women's stories as well.

SPEAKER_01 5:11

And I I love that about this book. And it's also very compelling to read. You know, you don't want to put it down.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

Thanks.

SPEAKER_01 5:20

And some story, some of the stories that you told in your book have really uh I think are important to share, and you have shared them. Uh, for instance, a lot of autistic people have a need for proprioceptive input, deep pressure. And I know your your husband um participated in helping you find um regulation. And and I I'd love for you to tell that story.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

Yeah, my dear husband, he's the best. Um, so before I knew I was autistic, I was probably 27, 28, and I had a job in tech in San Francisco. And for anyone that's ever worked in tech in San Francisco, it's a lot, it's a lot of input all the time. And you're in an open plan office, and all the it's very glass and metal, and all the sounds echo, and you have absolutely no personal space, and there's noises from everybody all the time. And not only are you expected to work and do your job, but you're also expected to be social. They have like family dinners and rooftop yoga and all these things that are considered to be like amazing perks of the job. I found them unbearable. It was the most sensory overwhelm I've ever experienced in my life, and it made me feel like shit all the time. So I'd come home and I would just collapse and sob to my husband. And I was good at my job. The actual work I loved and I found challenging and I was good at and I could do quickly, but with the constant interruptions and the noise and the expectations of eye contact and socializing and then going out after work felt completely um, it made me feel insane that I couldn't do them. And without knowing I was autistic and not knowing that this is a thing that autistic people tend to like, my husband would lay on top of me. So I'd be, he'd come home from work and I'd be lying in bed, just wrap I'd wrap myself in the duvet and just make like a blanket burrito, but it wasn't enough pressure, right? The duvet is too light. I wanted weight on me. And so when he'd come in, he'd be like, Are you okay? And I'd be like from under the covers, no, I'm not okay. Can you lie on me? And he'd just come in and lay his like 165 pounds on me and I'd feel better after five minutes, right? I just needed that pressure. And this was before, you know, weighted blankets were sold at like Brooklyn or wherever. Like um, and I I just found that really, really helpful. And so my body kind of knew before my mind knew what was going on.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

And that that is so important for people to know that that's not crazy. That is a normal response. Um, and proprioceptive need is a real need, and that's why they sell so many weighted blankets. I know.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Now you can buy them. Now I don't need my husband, I just need a $200 blanket.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

Well, but you still have your husband, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:13

I do, and honestly, they don't sell 165-pound weighted blankets, so I'll still take my husband any day.

SPEAKER_01 8:21

Yeah. Uh, another thing that many autistic people and people who are not autistic don't understand necessarily the difference between like a a tantrum and a meltdown. And when they see someone uh who seems to be angry, they think, oh, they must be angry. But often it's related to a sensory overload. It may come out as yelling at someone, but it is definitely a sensory response to too many conversations going on at the same time. There's background music, there's the TV, there's um two different people talking, and then somebody comes. And I know that you had experienced that, and you you yourself thought that it was anger, an anger problem, but it wasn't, was it?

SPEAKER_00 9:08

No, no. I have, I mean, even now, you can't always I try really hard to control my environment, and that keeps me pretty level, but um there's only so much that you can control. And even now, just being in my friend picked me up and drove me to a doctor's appointment the other day, and the radio was on in the car and she was talking to me. And I just felt myself like my brain felt like it was being pulled in 17 different directions. I couldn't concentrate on what she was saying, it made me really anxious, and I very quickly knew, oh, it's just because the radio's on. Just turn off the radio. So I was like, hey, can we turn off the music? And she's like, Yeah, of course, turned it off, and I was fine in like three minutes. But before, right, before I knew I'd keep the radio on because that's a thing that normal people do, right? They can go to a coffee shop and have a conversation and hear the person sitting across from them, even though the coffee shop is playing music and the barista noises in the background and all the conversations happening around them, right? And so I'd go to a coffee shop and just kind of freak out. And I thought everybody, I mean, I didn't think a lot of people said that I was scary, right? That I, that my facial expressions would get really intense, that I was a bitch, that I was too harsh. And it really wasn't anything more than me being incredibly, incredibly overwhelmed. Sound is my my biggest trigger. And so I saw these people doing normal things like going to a coffee shop or talking to a friend in the car while the radio is playing. And I would um I wouldn't really shut down, shut down. I would just get really angry and be really bitchy and not really be able to be my most polite, happiest self. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:54

It's good to know that there's nothing wrong with you.

SPEAKER_00 10:58

Well, exactly, right? Like it did, like a lot of the language that I used to describe myself in those years was that I was a bitch, right? That I was harsh, that I was angry. I mean, even my own family like called me terrifying, right? You use a lot of um really terrible words to describe yourself when everyone around you seems to be able to function normally in these scenarios, and you just can't. And so you assume it's a personality flaw and not the way your brain is wired.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

Yeah, because speaking as a neurotypical, my brain filters out everything that's that I don't need. What a dream. What's that like? I'm sorry, I'm not saying this to make you jealous. Don't hate me, but it's the brain I have. Yeah, and and most people who have this brain do not really get that it's all coming in at the same intensity. Yeah, your brain is not saying unimportant, unimportant, unimportant. Your brain is saying pay attention to everything all at once.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

And that's gotta be exhausting.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

There's this really beautiful theory. Um, I and it's in my book. I want to say it's the Markhams, the the a couple that do autism research, but don't quote me on this. It's in the book, and now the book is behind me and I don't remember anything. But yes, maybe it's in the book. Okay, but this this couple with I think one autistic child talks about their theory. Um, it's like the intense world theory or something, where they say that autistic people, it's not like that they don't have enough wiring, it's that they have too much in their brains. And so, like you said, everything is coming in at the same intensity, right? Like there's a garbage truck passing in front of me, and I am now half with you and half with the garbage truck and half with a cat outside my door, right? There's all this stuff going on, and it is coming in equally. My brain thinks they are all equally important, and that's because autistic brains, according to this theory, their wiring is all supercharged, right? Which is why we can notice patterns, why we can um get really smart on certain topics, right? And go really deep into certain topics because our our wiring is supercharged. Um, but the downside to that is that it's hard to have a conversation with the radio on, or hard to go to the grocery store when you have an itchy tag, or concentrate in class when the kid behind you is like snapping their gum, right? Pick a pick a thing, right? And then everybody else around us thinks that we're broken, that there's something wrong with us when actually our brains are like, hello, this is important and this is important, this is important.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

And and I'm guessing that that child who's hearing all those sounds at once is imagining everybody else must be so much stronger than I am. Yes, because they're still writing their spelling words, they're not covering their ears when the bell rings.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

Yep, I'm weak and they're strong. That's such a that's the perfect way to put that.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

And you know, and of course, it's it's not true.

SPEAKER_00 13:52

Of course, and like to think of a child feeling that way about themselves and and the way that we the way that we talk to children, right? Is like, pay attention, you're why can't you be more like blank, your sister, your friend, whatever. Why are you a bad kid? My um the fourth grade vice principal when I was a kid said that I was the worst kid in fourth grade. And I that's like stuck with me, right? The language that we use to talk to children when they physically cannot pay the same type of attention as the other kids. We're telling them that they're too sensitive, that they're bad, that they're broken, that they're the worst kid in fourth grade. And it's just, I'm like, I don't know. There were kids in fourth grade who were like giving each other wedges and throwing kickballs at each other's faces. And I'm the worst one. Like, I just find that really insane.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

It is, it is, and shame on that person who I'm thinking should not be in the field of education. Probably not, but it was the 90s, you know. Yeah, you know, and some things still happen. Yeah, and and there are also wonderful, amazing teachers out there who recognize the differences in their kids, and we wish that we could clone them.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

Uh, we really do. My um, my kid, I want to say her first grade teacher, her second, her first grade teacher, uh, super young, very neurodivergent affirming, made a big point in her classroom to have uh she built out a calming corner. All the kids got fidget spinners that they could keep in their desks. They were never penalized for the ways that they needed to move their body or get up or pay attention. She didn't see those behaviors as a distraction to the other kids, but a necessary part of that individual kid's learning. And it was, I mean, honestly, it was beautiful. And the language that my daughter uses to talk about her own emotions and her own feelings is miles ahead of the language that I had access to as a kid. And so I do feel like we are trending in a really positive direction with the way that we talk to kids about their own brains.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Yes. And I I do remember when I was a teacher back in the middle ages. Actually, my first year teaching was the first year that IEPs were required in the 70s.

SPEAKER_00 16:00

Oh my God.

SPEAKER_01 16:01

That's how old I am. But um, I used to talk to kids because I had I had special ed kids. So we didn't know that half of them were autistic, honestly. Yeah, we just knew that they were special. And we had to have a definition of what's a fidget. And if you are playing with it in your hands at your desk and listening, then it's a fidget. If it leaves your hands and goes across the room, then it became a toy. Toys get put away, fidgets can stay with you. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

That's funny. I'm gonna steal that. That's good.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

It's yours. I give it to you. Thank you. I love your first book. So I'm anxious to know do you have another book in the works or what's next for you?

SPEAKER_00 16:42

Yeah, I do have another book. Um, I have it's not about autism at all. It's not about nothing, it's about autism. It's like I've said everything I needed to say about autism. It's not a memoir. I'm so not interested in writing another memoir. I I uh it's too early to know if it's gonna be anything, if it's gonna be published or good enough, or I don't know, but I am super hard at work um on a novel about time travel. So the the general gist uh or my like general kind of like elevator pitch about it is that I love time travel stories. I've always loved time travel stories, but if you think on like what they're about, they're inherently about men trying to go back in time and change the past, right? Kill Hitler, get the girl, manipulate the stock market. And they feel it feels very like the patriarchy to me. I don't know. I love them, but it's very much about domination. And when I think about what I would do if I could time travel, it would be to go back in time and hold my daughter again as a baby, or relive my wedding day, or be 20 again and sleep with old boyfriends. Um, I'd be 10 and my body would be pain free and I'd run around, you know, on the beach and build fairy houses, right? So that's what the book is about. It's it's a time, it's like a kind of female focused time travel story that's about motherhood and invisible labor. Um, and kind of about me coming to terms with being middle-aged, which makes me sad and makes me feel old. So that is that's what I'm working on now. I'm done with the first draft. I've kind of given myself an internal deadline of the end of the year. So we'll see if it becomes anything. But that's the that's the gist.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

I'm excited. I can't wait to read it.

SPEAKER_00 18:34

Thanks. I hope it's okay.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

I think I would like to go back and see a dodo alive, you know. I want a dinosaur.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

Totally. You just want to like see some cool things. I I don't know. I have uh yeah, if I could have any superpower, it would be time travel for sure. But not to change anything. I just want to re-experience, you know, I just want to re-experience my life.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

Well, I can't wait to read that one. That's that sounds like exactly the sort of thing I will love. Um now I do I do want to um, well, first let me just ask, is there any question you wish that I had asked that I haven't asked you that you want to talk about? And maybe there's nothing that's okay too.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

You know, it's so funny. Somebody asked me that recently in a podcast interview, and I had a great answer, and I don't remember what it was. I feel like it was something around around joy, you know. We talk about around we we talk a lot about autism in terms of the like the bad things that it gives us or the things that we wish had been different and the hard parts of our lives. And I do feel like it, I I hate the phrase superpower because I just I think that infantilizes autistic people. And and I don't, I mean, really, if given the choice, would I choose to be neurodivergent? And I don't think I would, right? I I think I'd prefer friends and I'd prefer to go to the grocery store without it feeling really hard. And I feel guilty about the things that I can't do with my daughter. So I don't want to pretend that, like, oh, I'm autistic and I have a superpower and I'm so glad I'm this way. I don't know if I am. I don't, I don't know. It's not a yes or no answer, but it does also provide a lot of joy. And I think I had somebody ask me, what are the joyful things about being autistic? And my answer was my special interests are really cool. I I love having, I don't have just one, I have a really broad range of things that I get very obsessed with for about six months, and then I move on. So I have a really cool patchwork of interests throughout my life. I've gotten really into knitting and I've knit like 17 amazing sweaters, and I love fairy houses. And so we've built my daughter and I have built this whole like fairy house in our front garden. And oh this year I built a poetry box in our front little um like parking strip. And every week I get to pull a new poem and put a poem out that kind of reflects the seasons and what's going on in the neighborhood, and that has just been like such a joy getting into poetry. So I think to answer my own question, I do think that that um the special interest part of autism has brought me a lot of joy.

SPEAKER_01 21:16

I love that, and I love your po I've been getting into poetry too. I mean, I've always loved poetry, but lately I've just been getting more into it. Um, and the what you said about the special interests. Well, and I just want to jump sideways for a second. Thinking about the intensity of experience that makes the horrible things so horrible, I think uh for people that I know also makes the good things so much better. You know, to some extent. Yeah. And uh there was a TV show called Um The Extraordinary Attorney Wu, a Korean one, yeah, an autistic lawyer. And whenever she thought about her special interest was Wales, She looked up to the side, wind blew her hair, and an imaginary whale, kind of transparent, floated by the sky in front of her. And she was just transformed looking at the whale. And my autistic daughter said, that's accurate. That's how it feels when I think about my interests. Is like you can just be transported into thinking about, you know, whether it's Dimetrodons or or what, you know, or whales in her sense.

SPEAKER_00 22:28

But I so really I really that's beautiful. I I have seen that show, but I think I only watched the first episode. But I uh not not for everybody, maybe that is very much that's very much what it's like, is there is this whole other kind of colorful world you get access to that can sometimes feel very lonely and isolating, right? Like I I went really hard last year on gardening and I built out this really elaborate garden in my front yard. We've got a mural and the poetry box and a stone bench for people to sit on and an archway covered with jasmine. And I was like, I'm building an English garden for the community. And I like it was really it was such a passion project. Every time I walk through it, I hung these um wind chimes. So every time you walk through it, it's like suddenly you're in another world. It is a there's a fountain, there's the wind chimes, there's the jet smell of the jasmine. It is a sensory, I have I built my own little like sensory pod for the whole neighborhood. And nobody really cared about it. Not in the same way that I did. I I had maybe two or three people say something to me, like, wow, this is so beautiful, thank you so much. But I also had a neighbor come up to me and be and say, What are you doing? Why why are you still out here? Why are you doing this? I'm like, because it's beautiful. I'm making a beautiful thing, gardening is amazing. And he's like, I mean, plants can just live on their own. He seemed like personally offended by this. So it's it is to say that like I created this whole little world that is such a joy, and it does feel like a world that is accessible only to me. And and it's very possible that neighbors walk through it and enjoy it and don't know and I don't see their enjoyment of it, but ultimately I didn't really do it for them, I guess. I did it for me, and that that does feel like a apt metaphor for the autistic experience.

SPEAKER_01 24:15

Yeah, do it for you. It sounds beautiful, by the way.

SPEAKER_00 24:19

It's great. I love it. I think it's great.

SPEAKER_01 24:21

I think I love it too. So if you could talk to every uh person out there who is just thinking maybe they're autistic or has just been given the news that they're autistic, and they are where you were, is it five years ago, maybe? What advice or words of wisdom would you like to give to them?

SPEAKER_00 24:46

That's a great question. I I feel two ways about that. On the one hand, there's that saying, right? If you've met one autistic person, you've met one autistic person. Stephen Shaw said that. There you go, love it. And there's an analogy from the autistic activist John Marble that I really love, where he says there's millions of different ways to be French, and a gay fashion designer in Paris and a Catholic nun in Bordeaux are going to be radically different, but they still understand each other as French. And so, while on the one hand, I believe, hey, if you've met one autistic person, you've met one autistic person, and we're all so radically different from each other. I found that helpful in in the beginning because my understanding of autism was so specific to this sort of boy little boy who loves trains and banks his head against the wall. And so it really made me feel like, am I even this thing? This is so different from me. And it was really important to me to find a lot of different stories from lots of different autistic people, nonverbal autistic people, trans autistic people, older autistic people, uh younger autistic people. And so there was that experience of feeling like I needed to find my own space in this community. But then I also really love the John Marble approach, which is that we're all connected to each other. All autistic people are connected to each other and we can understand each other. And just because on the outside we might look really different from each other, there is this sort of invisible thread. And I've also found as I kind of get older and feel more settled in this identity, I found a lot of comfort in that too. Um, so I don't really know if I have advice to like a newly diagnosed autistic person because I've heard from so many people now since the book came out. Um, and some people have found it really comforting, the diagnosis really comforting, while other people have found it really isolating and scary. We are all very different from each other in that way. I think reading a lot of different experiences from a variety of autistic people is probably the best kind of first step after you're newly diagnosed or newly identified. Because I I think more than anything, that's gonna be the thing that makes you feel less alone.

SPEAKER_01 27:16

I think that's wonderful. And uh, I'm gonna encourage our listeners to get your book.

SPEAKER_00 27:22

Oh, yeah, you could do that.

SPEAKER_01 27:24

You could just go out and get my book. Yeah, because so many people have uh I've I've read what other people have said about it too. They've recognized themselves. They've recognized even if one is a nun and one is a gay fashion designer, they recognize that commonality. You know, you may not both speak French, but you speak autism. Yeah, totally. And yeah, and I've always said if you want to learn about autism, read the autistic authors, listen to the autistic podcasters, you know, go to the autistic community and find yourself.

SPEAKER_00 27:58

And there's so much also I will say about that, on top of feeling less alone, it also gave me a lot of concrete advice, right? Like wearing earplugs, having a pair of earplugs in my purse, changed completely life-changing for me and for my daughter, who now has her own pair. So, like, I would not have learned about that or the various brands that are available had I not just read a bunch of books by autistic people. I don't use social media too much. I find that that is maybe has the opposite effect. So I'd really encourage people to read actual books and not necessarily go on TikTok because it can be really intense and overwhelming and opinionated over there. But in terms of like actual techniques for like how to communicate with your partner now that you know you're autistic and how to be an autistic parent to a neurotypical kid and how to survive at the grocery store, right? Those are all like really practical things that I have learned from autistic people in their books.

SPEAKER_01 28:52

And and that is wonderful. Uh and I I do encourage people to get your book and the other books because that's how you learn who you are, is from other people in your community. Thank you so much for being here, Marion. This has been thank you for having me. It's so good to talk to you, as always. We'll have to get together again. And when your next book comes out, come back on the show and we'll talk about it.

SPEAKER_00 29:16

And we'll talk about nothing about autism and only time travel.

SPEAKER_01 29:19

We don't have to. We'll talk about time travel. What a wonderful conversation with Marion Shimbari. She has such a wealth of lived experience as a late-diagnosed autistic woman, and she expresses it so well as an author. Some of the things that stand out for me in this episode include her strategies for coping with stress and auditory overload, and her advice to newly identified autistic adults. She encourages you to read books and articles written by autistic authors rather than relying on social media for your information. I would recommend starting with Marion's own book, A Little Less Broken: How an Autism Diagnosis Finally Made Me Whole. You can find a link in the show notes. Thanks for listening to Amplifying Autism. I'm Wendella Whitcomb Marsh. Looking forward to next time. You've been listening to Amplifying Autism, celebrating the voices that shape a more understanding world. Don't miss the next episode. More stories, more insight, and more voices that matter.