GIRL, UNMASKED : How Uncovering My Autism Saved My Life

Emily Katy

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*A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER*

'Moving and powerful. Should be essential reading for mental health professionals and anyone with autism in their lives.' - FERN BRADY, author of Strong Female Character

'This book will bring so many readers self-recognition and comfort.' - DEVON PRICE, author of Unmasking Autism

'Vulnerable, affecting and deeply personal.' - ELLE MCNICOLL, bestselling author

'A brilliant, thorough exploration of autistic experience, delivered with humanity, compassion and vivid clarity.' - PETE WHARMBY, author of Untypical

To the outside world, Emily looks like a typical girl, with a normal family, living an ordinary life. But inside, Emily does not feel typical, and the older she gets, the more she realises that she is different.

As she finally discovers when she is 16, Emily is autistic. Girl Unmasked is the extraordinary story of how she got there - and how she very nearly didn't.

Still only 21, Emily writes with startling candour about the years leading up to her diagnosis. How books and imagination became her refuge as she sought to escape the increasing anxiety and unbearable stresses of school life; how her OCD almost destroyed her; how a system which did not understand autism let her down; and how she came so close to the edge that she and her family thought she would never survive.

In this simple but powerful memoir, we see how family and friends became her lifeline and how, post-diagnosis, Emily came to understand her authentic self and begin to turn her life around, eventually becoming a mental health nurse with a desire to help others where she herself had once been failed.

Ultimately uplifting, Girl Unmasked is a remarkable insight into what it can be like to be autistic - and shows us that through understanding and embracing difference we can all find ways to thrive.

Emily writes:

“I see my life in two parts – before and after ...

This book is for 16-year-old me, who left that building that day feeling a thousand different emotions all at once. The 16-year-old girl who didn’t have the language to explain her experience, the knowledge to understand what it all meant, or the understanding that there were others out there just like her. This book is for her.

I want her to know that she doesn’t have to go along with the narrative she has been told so far.

I want her to know that autism doesn’t have to be her superpower, that autism isn’t simply a different ability rather than a disability, and that she can let her autism define her if she so wishes.

Because autism isn’t a bad thing. It is what makes her who she is. And she is imperfectly perfect.”

Different isn’t just a memoir of what it’s like to grow up autistic: to go from the safety of childhood to the ‘supposed’ certainty of adulthood, when neither safety nor certainty are available to you.

And it isn’t just a memoir that provides an inclusive space through which other autistic and neurodivergent young women (and their friends and family) can find comfort, support and understanding as they make their own way into adulthood.

It’s also a wake-up call to all of us to reflect on how we communicate and to bring more self-awareness to our relationships.

It invites us to consider what we think of as ‘normal’ and how we can all learn to deepen our compassion and humanity when we begin to redefine what ‘different’ looks like.

EMILY KATY, 23, lived as an undiagnosed autistic girl for nearly seventeen years. After completing her degree in 2022, she qualified as a mental health nurse. She has a large, highly engaged following on Twitter and Instagram (@ItsEmilyKaty) and a blog www.authenticallyemily.uk, where she talks about autism and mental health.

Emily is a Trustee of the charity 'The Autistic Girls Network', a former Governor and member of the CAMHS young people's council for her local NHS trust, and in 2021 to celebrate the International Day of the Girl, she was selected by the Women of the World Foundation as one of their 2021 40 Young Leaders.

Emily regularly speaks to schools, universities, businesses and health professionals on topics ranging from 'Surviving and Thriving with Autism and ADHD' to 'Neurodivergence in the workplace'. She regularly appears in the media, having been featured on the BBC, Sun, Daily Mail, Channel 4, Times Radio as well as a range of podcasts.