Autism Memoir

Autism shakes up your world. It has changed my life and I wasn't even the one diagnosed with it. My brother's name is Ethan Wolfgang, but we call him Deets. He is one of the greatest gifts my family has ever received. And one of the most challenging.

Seahawks star running back Curt Warner and his wife, Ana, were prominent figures in Seattle in the early 1990s. When they dropped from the public eye after Curt’s retirement, everyone assumed it was for a simpler life. But the reality behind their seclusion was a secret they hid from even their closest friends: their twins, Austin and Christian, had been diagnosed with severe autism. What followed was a painful struggle to hold their family and their marriage together in a home filled with chaos, emotional exhaustion, and constant fear for the safety of their unpredictable but beloved boys.

When Kate Swenson’s son Cooper was diagnosed with severe, nonverbal autism, her world stopped. She had always dreamed of having the perfect family life — watching her boy play at baseball games, walking him down the aisle. She hadn’t signed up for life as a mother raising a child with a disability.

Adults often find it difficult to communicate with autistic students and try to “fix” them. But what if we found a way to help these kids use their natural gifts to convey their thoughts and feelings? What if the traditional structure of language prevents them from communicating the full depth of their experiences? What if the most effective and most immediate way for people on the spectrum to express themselves is through verse, which mirrors their sensory-rich experiences and patterned thoughts?

Now you can go where no one has been before: deep inside a mind with high-functioning autism. In his roller coaster of a life, Dylan Volk (aka Dielawn) has lived all over the country, tried to fit in with many different crowds, and been in jail a few times. Now he has written a tell-all book to give you all the juicy details. Don't listen to this book before you go to sleep - you may be up all night!

In 1991, 21-year-old Sarah, the recently divorced mother to two-year-old Hayley, moved from the dusty small town of Farmington, New Mexico, to the bustling city of Houston, Texas, with dreams of a better life. A year later, she was swept off her feet by Greg Swindell, an established major league baseball player who had just signed a lucrative contract with the Houston Astros. Over the next several years, Sarah's Cinderella story continued.That is until 2002, when her picture-perfect life came to a gut-wrenching halt and Sarah was faced with more pain than she ever thought possible.

Henry Markram is the Elon Musk of neuroscience, the man behind the billion-dollar Blue Brain Project to build a supercomputer model of the brain. He has set the goal of decoding all disturbances of the mind within a generation. This quest is personal for him. The driving force behind his grand ambition has been his son Kai, who has autism. Raising Kai made Henry Markram question all that he thought he knew about neuroscience, and then inspired his groundbreaking research that would upend the conventional wisdom about autism, expressed in his now-famous theory of Intense World Syndrome.

Families who have supported a child with special needs will connect with this memoir about Sarah, a feisty girl with autism and a unique genetic blueprint. Her mom, Jenny, is equally feisty and determined, which leads her to make a commitment that dramatically changes her and Sarah’s lives—as well as those of many others.

When you have been abused and bullied much of your life, can you raise an emotionally healthy child? What if that child becomes abusive himself? From an early age, my son, Seth, hit me on a regular basis. Because of my history, our interactions triggered me – to the point I began doubting I had the emotional strength to raise Seth successfully – but I knew I needed to push through those fears and stop the cycle of abuse that had been plaguing our family for generations.

Challenging the view that autism is something that needs to be ‘cured', Virginia Bovell testifies to the extraordinary care Danny has received for over 30 years and the everyday kindness and decency of the people – ‘the band of angels' – that surround him. She asks us to consider what makes a thriving individual versus an inadequate one; what it means to be ill versus what it means to not to conform; what roles society values and rewards; and how humans might flourish outside of failing political and economic systems.

Eloquent. Philosophical. Introspective. These are not the words usually associated with an autistic child. But in a remarkable display of courage and creativity, a boy named Tito has shattered stereotypes, and in The Mind Tree makes us question all of our previous assumptions about autism. For Tito is severely autistic and nearly nonverbal, and this is his story.

Follow a mother's journey through the twists and turns of autism spectrum disorder. Planet A is a book that gives the reader a glimpse into the behaviors of a child, Jackie Christiansen, on the autism spectrum. It is real and raw dealing with issues of explosive anger, social ineptness and low maturity, all of which can cause complete confusion and low self-esteem. Parenting can be extremely exhausting and getting the outside world to understand can be challenging. Through IEPs (Individual Education Plans) within the school systems to navigating the causes of behaviors the book is laced ...

My Autistic Fight Song is a memoir that follows Rosie Weldon’s journey from a college drop out as she tries to achieve her dream of being a qualified accountant. With the odds stacked against her and the stakes high, she refuses to give up on her dream. Of two things Rosie was sure. First, she wanted to be an accountant. Second, she was destined to be alone. But when life threw at her an autism diagnosis and a mystery girl, she was left asking: Who would employ her and was she capable of falling in love?

We all know the fairy-tale. An everyday girl meets her Prince Charming, they get married, have children and ride off into the sunset. Sadly, this isn't always the case and Christine McGuinness is keen to change the stereotype that marriage, fame and fortune brings an easy and blissful life. This is Christine's first audiobook, where she tells the world her life story for the very first time. While telling her story, Christine was diagnosed with autism, as revealed in this book for the very first time.

For an autistic little girl, the world can be hard to navigate. Her behavior wasn't always understood by the world, and she didn't always understand the behavior of the world. But like a touch of cayenne pepper, Kyan brings a special spice to life!

Rose Cartwright reveals how the failure of the mental health system to cure her OCD led her to radical action. While she explored her trauma through a series of mind-bending psychedelic trips, Rose started to interrogate our dominant medical paradigm. What if people’s intense distress is not a symptom of illness, but a desperate expression of our need for love and connection? Rose set out on a quest to draw a new map of mental health, interviewing experts in psychiatry and neuroscience along the way: what she discovered will have implications for generations to come.

Dive headfirst into the urban symphony of "Smelling the Taste of Sound", a riveting memoir of a newly diagnosed, neurodivergent trainee lawyer. Her sensory issues are compounded by the sirens that punctuate the daily grind of a tough, inner-city law firm. Amidst encounters with eccentric characters and surreal personalities, our protagonist navigates the chaos and unorthodox office dynamics with comical observations and resilience.

An Unexpected Story of Hope & Perserverance: As a young child, something was wrong with Michael. He lacked basic motor skills and was unable to follow simple instructions or answer questions. Testing revealed a diagnosis of autism with a low IQ. Experts insisted that leading an independent life would be impossible for him...and school was not an option.

Powerful and eye-opening, Seeing Ezra is an inspirational chronicle of a mother's struggle to protect her son from a system that seeks to compartmentalize and "fix" him, and of her journey toward accepting and valuing him for who he is - just as he is.

What do you do when you wake up in your mid-40s and realize you've been living a lie your whole life? Do you tell? Or do you keep it to yourself? Laura James found out that she was autistic as an adult, after she had forged a career for herself, married twice and raised four children. Odd Girl Out tracks the year of Laura's life after she receives a definitive diagnosis from her doctor, as she learns that 'different' doesn't need to mean 'less' and how there is a place for all of us, and it's never too late to find it.