Grace for my Childhood Self

What happens when you find out that you're autistic as an adult? Many things. But one universal experience is the process of offering grace to your childhood self and your childhood memories.

An autism diagnosis as an adult is a real eye-opener. It gives you a new lense, a new perspective with which to look back on your childhood memories. Suddenly, so much makes sense. It allows you to give yourself grace, self-compassion for your past self.

Christmas 2017. I was sixteen years old and celebrating Christmas with my family and some family friends in a small town in England. I knew what most of the presents from my parents were. My mum had recieved two ipads a few months earlier and was going to give one to me and the other to my younger brother. I was looking forward to it. The white ipad would be mine and the black one my brother's. Only, that's not what happened. My brother opened his present, delighted by his white ipad and ran off to play with it. I opened mine to find a black ipad. Not the white one. Not the one that i had planned in my head. My routine was gone. My struicture was gone. I proceeded to then have a massive autistic meltdown for a few hours, effectively disrupting our whole Christmas morning.

I spent many years later remembering that meltdown. I thought of it as a tantrum and saw my sixteen year old self as a spoilt child throwing a ridiculous tantrum. I was embarassed. I have been embarassed about that incident for many years. It was only through my recent autism diagnosis that I came to realise that I did not throw a tantrum. I experienced an autistic meltdown, something completely out of my control. Something that I do not have to feel embarrassed about.

This is one memory, one experience. I have many more. My autism diagnosis has helped me to be able to offer my younger self compassion for similar moments - moments of miscommunication, meltdowns, shutdowns and the like. It has allowed me to stop carrying those memories with me, to stop berating my past self for things that were out of my control, to leave those memories in the past.

Through reading the experiences of other autistic people from a variety of backgrounds, through learning about autism, I have been able to recognise the moments in my past that have been a direct result of my autism, of my autistic experience. I have been able to offer myself the grace and self compassion that I always deserved. An autism diagnosis gave me the grace and compassion that I have always deserved, that I should have always received, from myself and for myself.

So I implore you to give yourself some grace. Take a moment to reflect on an unpleasant memory from your past, perhaps a memory of a public meltdown, miscommunication, or something else. Now look at that memory through the lense of autism. Look at that memory as a combination of symptoms, autism struggles and unfortunate circumstances. And please, give yourself a little grace.

A photo of little Saffron aged ~8 standing with her dad beside a large block of compact snow on the side of the road. She is wearing a headband, with her hair in two plaits. She has a white shirt, black ballet wrap, long denim skirt and knee-high black boots on. This is the girl I try to have grace for.