Wayfinding: A lived-experience guide for late-identified neurodivergent women (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781764615907)

You were not missed because you were hard to see. You were missed because the maps were never drawn with you in mind.

For generations, the picture of Autism and ADHD was drawn from boys whose differences stood out. Women whose neurodivergence moved inward - contained, camouflaged, impressively managed - simply didn't appear on the map. Many reach their thirties, forties, fifties, or beyond before the truth of their own story comes into view.

Perhaps it's arriving for you now. Through a child's assessment that reads like a description of you. A reel that fits too precisely. Or a slow accumulation of noticing: the school reports that called you lazy - or a delight to teach. The friendships that ended without explanation. The rooms that were too loud, too bright, too much. The distress nobody else could see. The lifelong sense of being too much and not enough at once.

Could that have been neurodivergence?

Wayfinding is a lived-experience companion for women late-identified as Autistic, ADHD, or AuDHD - and for women who are only beginning to wonder. It is not a diagnostic manual, a workbook, or a set of instructions, and it will not try to fix you. Written by a late-identified neurodivergent woman, it offers language, orientation, and recognition - a way of finally making sense of the life you have already lived.

Through its waypoints and lanterns - places of orientation, and small points of illumination - Wayfinding moves through the territory of late identification:

• Why the frameworks missed you, and why that was never your fault
• Masking, camouflaging, and the survival logic beneath them
• Identity grief, identity language, and the slow work of unmasking
• The logic of your nervous system - senses, attention, energy, burnout, and rest
• Relationships: the translation tax, the loyalty trap, and the rare relief of being at ease
• Building a workable life inside systems that weren't designed for you

Your path through Wayfinding is yours to choose. Walk it straight through, wander, circle back, or set it down and return when you're ready - the trail will keep. However you arrived at this question - suddenly, gradually, or through someone else's story - you don't need certainty to set out. Curiosity is enough.

Here, you are not being fixed. You are being seen.

Welcome to Wayfinding.