In My Own Time: Poems from a Late Diagnosis (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798247669104)

What Si has crafted within these pages is a deeply personal exploration of coming to terms with a late autistic diagnosis - one that reshaped how he understands himself and his place in the world.

In a previous collection, Si wrote through experiences of mental ill health. Here, he returns to poetry as a way of making sense of a different kind of realisation: discovering, later in life, that he is autistic, and recognising how years of masking and adaptation shaped who he became.

While childhood diagnosis often comes with frameworks of understanding and support, late diagnosis can bring clarity without comfort. For many adults, recognition arrives alongside uncertainty from others, and a sense of isolation at the very moment understanding is most needed.

This collection traces the early stages of that reckoning - from diagnosis to the first steps of understanding what it means to live as an autistic adult.

If you are newly diagnosed, or if you have known for some time but struggle to find the words, these poems offer quiet companionship. For those seeking to better understand the experience of late autistic diagnosis, they offer an invitation to listen. They are written not to explain, but to be alongside.