Top quotes from ‘Strong Female Character’ by Fern Brady
Strong Female Character provided me with comic relief when unpacking my autism & ADD diagnosis, making me feel less alone. It’s a fantastic memoir and I’d recommend it to anyone, especially those of us with autism. Scottish Comedian Fern Brad unapologetically shares her story of womanhood and neurodiversity. Embracing her messy, heartbreaking and challenging moments.
“It’s very painful to start loving someone when holding on to the idea of hating them keeps you safe.”
– p283
“When you have a nervous system that’s in a state of hyperarousal, muscle stiffen into knots every week and lungs that breathe shallowly every day, you start viewing exercise as a necessity.”
-p270
“Masking was surely better than being poor”
“I do wonder: as a woman, if i’d been the shutdown-type of autistic, how much longer would it have taken me to get diagnosed?”
– p258
– p275
“I’d walked and walked and felt at peace. The gigs themselves had been terrible but if I walked long enough it was like a balm for my brain.”
– p269
“I also exercised regularly to prevent meltdowns but found that even too much of that eventually caused them. Lifting very heavy weights, for example, can cause overload in the central nervous system.”
– p269
“Proprioception is a person’s sense of their own body’s movement and position and is sometimes known as ‘sixth sense’. Many people with autism seek proprioceptive input to help regulate their responses to sensory stimuli.”
– p263
“… and dress for work, screaming and swearing to myself intermittently. It’s 8am and already I feel totally depleted.”
– p262
“She realised that art is a good thing because you carry it with you inside after.”
– p171
“There was no fiction available to describe being a girl who thinks the world is out to get her and after years of taunts finally lashes out.”
– p143
“I understand that my body overreacts due to my amygdala being too large and so I must mentally talk down disproportionate fight-or-flight response that perceives any loud noises, shouting, confusing facial expression or tones of voice as immediate threats.”
– p140
“I consistently made whoever I was going out with my special interest.”
– p117
“A guy called me a ‘gorgeous weirdo’ once and I knew instinctively that was good – that the ‘gorgeous’ part would help and cancel out any potential discomfort with the ‘weirdo’ part, even if only for a little while.”
– p18
“It never occurs to doctors when looking for special interests in autistic women that the intensity of their interest can manifest in people, not just things.”
– p118
“One of the most hurtful aspects of crossed wires in a lifetime of dealing with allistic people is that they tend to look for and assume there’s an unspoken agenda in your behaviour.”
– p102
“I managed four years at secondary school before I started walking out without a word of explanation. Out of the classroom, through the car park, out the school gates.”
– p83
“At lunchtime I’d eat my sandwiches in the toilets. I didn’t know why, it just felt calmer there.”
– p55
“From the age of three or four I experienced a feeling I didn’t have words for. The feeling was unease, a sense of wrongness, of impending doom. I babyishly named it ‘The Bad Feeling of Life’.”
– p43
“I found they misinterpreted my shyness as coldness and my almost constant overwhelming anxiety as anger.”
