Table of Contents
Foreword Navah Paskowitz-Asner xi
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xvi
Introduction: Thirty-Four Years xviii
Chapter 1 Backwards in Heels: My Story in Reverse 1
Background Check 1
The Missing Link; Family Connections 3
Cracking the Diagnostic Code 4
What Ifs 13
Bell(e) Curve 14
Chapter 2 Camouflage; Hiding in Plain Sight 18
A World You Don't See: Synesthesia 19
Sketch the Portraits; The Masks We Wear 22
Tell the Stories; Behind the Mask 28
See and Be Seen 31
Lahelish, Much? 33
The Chick-List Checklist 40
Chapter 3 Life with the Volume Turned Up: Intense Minds, Intense … Everything 45
Splat! People 47
Championing the Human Spectrum: Intellectual Intensity 49
Song of Myself 52
The Name Game 54
The Wonder Bread Crisis 56
The Unexpected Redhead 59
Context Clues 62
Make-A-Wish 63
A Million Shards of Sand; Sensorial Intensity 68
Just Go Play! 71
Chapter 4 Executive, Functioning: Girls Can Be Professors, Too 74
Fault Lines (Through No Fault of Our Own) 76
Invisible on the Monopoly Board 78
I Can't Believe I'm About to Teach Brain Science in Public 83
Santa: Executive, Functioning 85
Brain Transplant 86
Executive Functions 87
Organization Function Skills 88
Regulation Function Skills 90
Trains and Fireflies 93
Functional Cruise Directors 95
Pivot Point 97
Chapter 5 Mythbusters: Open Heart Emotion 100
Can You Feel Me Now? 103
How Do I Look? 104
Alexa, Tell Me Horn I Feel 107
Poison, Dipped in Sugar 108
Cognitive Empathy, Theory of Mind, and Mary Poppins 111
Affective/Emotional Empathy: What Happens Once We Know 111
Ouch: Your Hurt Hurts Me 123
Why Not You-Or Me? 127
My Father's Daughter 129
Chapter 6 The Land of Anywhere But Here: Predators and Fandom Families 131
The Theory of My Mind 134
Little Blue Men in the Hands of Predators 137
Catching the Rain 146
Unlikely Heroes 148
Long Ago and Far Away 150
Chapter 7 The Statue of Venus: Friends, Rules, and Red High Heels 156
The Teachers' Lounge 156
That's What Friends Are For 162
Something Beautiful out of Something Broken 167
Bottoms Up 170
How to Be a Girl 171
Red High Heels 176
Chapter 8 So This Is Love: Autism by Gaslight 180
This. Wow. This. 180
Hands Off, Boys 182
An "Us" instead of a "Them" 185
A Cumulative Panic 187
The Poor Flower 189
A Kiss Is Not Just a Kiss 191
A Sisterly Aside 193
(A Little Rough Sometimes) 195
Finger Paint Bruises 198
The Piss Jar 201
Autism by Gaslight 203
For Good. 208
Chapter 9 Hurts So Good: Our Epidemic of Self-Harm 212
The Woman I Almost Knew 212
Again and Again and Again 217
The Wandering Years 222
If Anyone Had Known 224
Salads and Spreadsheets 225
Kathryn's Birthday Present 230
Chapter 10 Semicolon: The Story of a Sisterhood 232
The Yank Meets the Princess 233
Thelma and Anne-Louise 235
Lola 239
Works Cited 245