Being diagnosed autistic in 2021 was the biggest life changer for me. To be able to make sense of so much of your life gives you a huge sense of liberation. At the same time it also opens up a lot of questions and struggles I’ve not faced before which I am still trying to process now.

After the diagnosis I thought there would be some sort of plan from a health care point of view but I was lucky to live in a catchment area where there was a service that offer you 10 free sessions with a life coach - otherwise there is nothing!

This was extremely helpful, without this I don’t know how I would have handled it? It would have been basically “you’re autistic, there you go.. take care!!” and this unfortunately is the reality of a lot of people with a late diagnosis.

I cried on the phone when I got the news as it had been a very long process and I myself (once I had researched ASD) fully believed I was Autistic but to hear it did knock me and I was very emotional.

Again, I feel I was very lucky to have such a great life coach who I ended up having extended sessions with as she was very thorough and also put me forward to be assessed for ADHD - which I am still waiting for the outcome for. During my sessions the main thing I took from them was understanding that autism comes under the Neurodivergent classification. ADHD, Autism, Dyspraxia, and Dyslexia all fall within the spectrum of “Neurodiversity” and are all neurodiverse conditions. Being neurodivergent just means (to me) that your brain processes things differently from a neurotypical person - this made the diagnosis far easier for me to process. 

I feel if more people look at it in this way then it would help them understand it far better and also help break the stigma around these conditions.

I met Kellie after seeing the Harvey Price collaboration range with Born Anxious and I created an image in relation to this - again this is how art has a way of connecting people. I sent the picture to Kellie and that’s how are relationship started.

Kellie has been very supportive of me in my journey and helped me understand things I’ve questioned or not been to certain on. She mentioned a collaboration between Loveartpix and Born Anxious last year and I was so pleased at the opportunity.

I wanted to come up with an idea that had personal meaning to me which I do with all my big art projects. The background behind the back to front THINK DIFFERENTLY comes from an incident when I was a child in primary school. As a class we was asked to ‘write back’ what the teacher had wrote on the board. I took this to mean write it backwards and wrote everything back to front. My mum was called into school and they said that I had written perfect mirror writing and all the teachers was speaking about it in the staff room.

I feel this is a perfect example of processing things differently - especially if things are not explained in a certain way. So That’s where the THINK DIFFERENTLY idea was born. I think this design actually makes you use your brain a little more and even do a double take to process it. The hashtag under it reads #autismunderstanding I would have usually wrote it the other way round but I also wanted that to slightly stand out. 

For people to accept something that is deemed as different they first need to understand it. I’m hoping this design will make people think about the words and in turn speak about the topic and educate themselves on it.

Read more about LoveArtPix here.