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A review by amandamlyons
Strong Female Character by Fern Brady
4.0
An Honest Narrative About Coming to Terms with Trauma and Nuerodivergence
I wasn't sure if I would like this book when I started, from the first page we're shown what it's like to be a person who gets overestimated and has meltdowns under intense stress and it's easy to assume a person dealing with that intensity is being terrible - instead you get put into the thick of Fern's experience and shown how hard it can be. That can't have been easy to do when her level of meltdowns and intense overstimulation are high and often involve violent outbursts she feels powerless to control, the sort of thing that gets many autistic people judged and often harmed by those who don't understand. I'm grateful she could be so honest with these things, discussing many parts of her experience that can be triggering and are often left out of the discussion because of how much of this experience causes people to leave or panic, even loved ones. Here you'll read about the highs and lows of sensory seeking, violent meltdowns, shutdowns, substance abuse, social struggles, the trauma of growing up nuerodivergent without treatment or diagnosis, and the difficulty of learning to manage your experience. Like Hannah Gadsby's Ten Steps to Nanette, Fern Brady's Strong Female Character brings attention to the feminine autistic experience with blunt honesty and frankness that is needed, particularly for women who have their own experience with it like myself, and by society as a whole. There are so many things about womanhood that get pushed aside, suppressed, limited, and tamped down and all of these things are only that much more poorly accepted or understood when the woman involved has experienced trauma and has a nuerodiverse mind, I'm grateful for Fern's honest memoir.
I wasn't sure if I would like this book when I started, from the first page we're shown what it's like to be a person who gets overestimated and has meltdowns under intense stress and it's easy to assume a person dealing with that intensity is being terrible - instead you get put into the thick of Fern's experience and shown how hard it can be. That can't have been easy to do when her level of meltdowns and intense overstimulation are high and often involve violent outbursts she feels powerless to control, the sort of thing that gets many autistic people judged and often harmed by those who don't understand. I'm grateful she could be so honest with these things, discussing many parts of her experience that can be triggering and are often left out of the discussion because of how much of this experience causes people to leave or panic, even loved ones. Here you'll read about the highs and lows of sensory seeking, violent meltdowns, shutdowns, substance abuse, social struggles, the trauma of growing up nuerodivergent without treatment or diagnosis, and the difficulty of learning to manage your experience. Like Hannah Gadsby's Ten Steps to Nanette, Fern Brady's Strong Female Character brings attention to the feminine autistic experience with blunt honesty and frankness that is needed, particularly for women who have their own experience with it like myself, and by society as a whole. There are so many things about womanhood that get pushed aside, suppressed, limited, and tamped down and all of these things are only that much more poorly accepted or understood when the woman involved has experienced trauma and has a nuerodiverse mind, I'm grateful for Fern's honest memoir.