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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. In August 2015, Katherine May set out to walk the 630-mile South West Coast Path. She wanted to understand why she had stopped coping with everyday life; why motherhood had been so overwhelming and isolating, and why the world felt full of inundation and expectations she can't meet. Setting her feet down on the rugged and difficult path by the sea, the answer begins to unfold. It's a chance encounter with a voice on the radio that sparks a realisation that she has Asperger's Syndrome. Age thirty-eight and feeling every day of it, Katherine May sets out to walk the 630-mile South West Coast Path. Determined to reconnect with her sense of self and rediscover her love of nature, she seeks to understand why everyday life can feel overwhelming and isolating; why sensory environments can become all-consuming and why normality seems to involve social expectations that are exhausting. As she begins her journey, answers begin to unfold—starting with a chance encounter with a voice on the radio that sparks the realisation that she may be autistic. Katherine’s walking becomes a process of both psychological and physical exploration and moments of discovery as she navigates and re-evaluates her life so far. 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.”
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.of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars The Electricity of Every Living Thing: One Woman's Walk with Asperger's by Katherine May Yeah, that’s beautiful. Thank you. So let me ask you one last question. Before we wrap up. I’m wondering, you know, throughout the book, it’s clear that you also feel conflicted about the choice that you’ve made to walk this trail, it’s to kind of prioritize, you know, your need, or your deep desire to reach this goal to do this thing, and your husband and your son are kind of there for you, you know, they’re often waiting for you in the village at the other end of a 12 mile walk, that feeling of sometimes feeling guilty? Or is this self indulgent or that you’re not a good enough mother, and also knowing strongly what you need in that moment? And I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about that tension? And what gave you the permission ultimately, to do what you did? Yeah, I mean, so powerful and, and certainly, so you said you were 39. So this has been, you know, maybe five or six years ago that you went through this, this process. And I do think that things have changed, I certainly read more and more about self identification really, especially among women being really the primary way that people are identifying as autistic. I’m just wondering, you know, for listeners who might be in the same space, and they’re kind of connecting some dots for themselves, what thoughts do you have for them about whether or not it’s worth pursuing, or, or maybe what having that identification has meant for you and what you’ve seen it mean for other women? Her journey to understand her own atypical mind takes her across 630 miles on England’s South West Coast Path, through pesky rain, cheerful lemon shandies, and interior landscapes that, thank goodness, don’t conform to anyone else’s boundaries.” —Orion Magazine It feels as though I have two different selves; a desperate, animal self, emerging in chaos, and a calm, wise human, squinting to recognize her twin.”
Underneath that carefully learned set of gestures is raw, boiling chaos. I cling to the right to cover.” Katherine often receives messages from people who have received an autism diagnosis and are struggling with what that means, or who think they might be autistic and want more information and reassurance. Go to work: grinding guilt at my absence. Stay at home: grinding guilt at my own impatience. I may as well enjoy myself while I’m feeling guilty.” Katherine describes her ‘adult self’ as a, “a parrot, a mynah bird”, having learned social nuances from observation. She ‘masks’ so well that, even when trying to seek psychiatric help, she isn’t able to let her guard down, This is me right now, crumpled, incoherent, gasping for breath. Flapping my forearms at the elbows like a hyperactive windscreen wiper.”
Resources mentioned for Katherine May, Autism, and Her Books
What finally leads her to end the project (and take to walking in a much more reasonable way) is the realization that while she needs to walk, to go out alone into nature, she doesn't need to have a goal--not anymore, not once she understands her needs are real.
Her journey is about discovering where she can compromise, where she can’t, and building upon the relationships that matter to her; she forces herself to hold hands, (something she finds ‘grindingly’ uncomfortable) to support a friend though a cow phobia. She describes her close friends as ‘adoring’, but because of the stigma portraying autistic individuals as perpetually ‘lonely’ she felt she needed to hide her sociability when seeking diagnosis, In anticipation of her 38th birthday, Katherine May set out to walk the 630-mile South West Coast Path. She wanted time alone, in nature, to understand why she had stopped coping with everyday life; why motherhood had been so overwhelming and isolating; and why the world felt full of expectations she couldn’t meet. She was also reeling from a chance encounter with a voice on the radio that sparked her realisation that she might be autistic.In this powerfully descriptive work, a grueling hike becomes a metaphor for a woman’s experience with Asperger’s syndrome…Candid, rough, and uplifting, this moving account shines.” —Publishers Weekly All this wonderful diversity is invisible in the winter, but in a couple of months, it will begin again: buds, blossom, and then apples which will fall to reveal naked branches.” 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' We’re not an evolutionary accident, but an adaptation. We are not what you think we are. We are useful, valued, loved. We’re the scientists and artists, the dreamers and the engineers. We’re vital to all of it. We’ve been pushing it forward and holding it together while the extroverts take all the glory.”
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