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Editor of Cup of Jo
One woman’s decades-long journey to an autism diagnosis, and an exploration of the barriers that keep too many neurodivergent people from knowing their true selves.
New York Times bestselling author of Everything is Figureoutable
Author of Women and Girls on the Autism Spectrum
New York Times bestselling author of Everything is Figureoutable
Author of Women and Girls on the Autism Spectrum
Author of The Great Pretender and Brain on Fire
Author of NeuroTribes
Author of Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism
Co-author of Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
Author of The Cycle: Confronting the Pain of Periods and PMDD
Author of Girl in the Woods and Your Blue is Not My Blue
By the time Marian Schembari was thirty-four years old, she’d spent decades hiding her tics and shutting down in public, wondering why she couldn’t just act like everyone else. Therapists told her she had Tourette’s syndrome, obsessive-compulsive disorder, sensory processing disorder, social anxiety, and recurrent depression. They prescribed breathing techniques and gratitude journaling. Nothing helped.
It wasn’t until years later that she finally learned the truth: she wasn’t weird or deficient or moody or sensitive or broken. She was autistic.
Today, more people than ever are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Screening improvements have made it easier to identify neurodivergence, especially among women and girls who spent decades dismissed by everyone from parents to doctors, and misled by gender-biased research.
A diagnosis can end the cycle of shame and invisibility, but only if it can be found.
In this deeply personal and researched memoir, Schembari’s journey takes her from the mountains of New Zealand to the tech offices of San Francisco, from her first love to her first child, all with unflinching honesty and good humor.
A Little Less Broken breaks down the barriers that leave women in the dark about their own bodies, and reveals what it truly means to embrace our differences.
