My Story

The London Marathon (my first full marathon) - wow, what a day!

Well, I'm still amazed I'm writing this sentence but - I've just run the London Marathon!  In 3:59:33, having wanted (but certainly not expected) to get under 4 hours 😀.  And it was pretty warm 🥵.

I was running on behalf of the National Autistic Society, the UK's largest autism charity supporting 700,000 people and their families across the country!!  Thanks to them for the opportunity and to allow me to raise awareness and funds.

My Motivation

I want to raise awareness within my family/friends/colleagues and the wider world of the day-to-day struggles we all have, the relatively easy adjustments that other people can make to make autistic lives easier and just for everyone to have a bit more understanding, including that autism comes in many different shapes and sizes.  And to raise a load of money to enable the NAS to do those things much better than I can…

My Autistic Family

Both my daughters have, relatively recently, been diagnosed with autism (and that itself was an incredibly painful long-winded process) - these were not “oh, my god, how could they be?” moments but as young adults they already knew they were but needed validation and wider understanding. My youngest daughter is convinced that I am also autistic, and as I read more about autism and see their struggles, short of a diagnosis I don’t need much more convincing.

With the addition of variously ADHD, OCD and emetophobia in my daughters, it’s little surprise that our family life, like for that of many others, has been extraordinarily challenging (and often exhausting), all the more so when I look back with greater insight.  Oh and chuck in social anxiety (I definitely relate to that) too and getting out of the door often becomes a significant challenge!  In that context, we’re incredibly proud of their achievements, each one being that much more significant, in the face of such adversity.  It’s frustrating that the outside world only wants to go on to “the next thing” rather than celebrating the here and now!

We’ve particularly struggled, as a family, with a lack of the right help and understanding (they’re being naughty, you're making a rod for your own back, just ignore them, surely they can “just” do such-and-such - it’s easy, etc etc). Only recently have we become more aware and I guess realised that our approach wasn’t “too” far from where it probably should have been. This, though, is where the awareness raising comes in.  In particular, this awareness is DESPERATELY needed for schools as we’ve come off the back of very bad secondary school experiences for all our children, where you simply didn’t count if it didn’t allow the school to “tick a box”.

I’m desperate to shout about this (this is our normal, you can help us, please try to understand) and I guess running the London Marathon on the organisation’s behalf is an amazing (albeit scary) way to do it.

My own struggles

I’ve always struggled with sport from younger, and have always shied away from social situations, which I can see very much echoed in my children…I started playing football in the last decade or so (but still carry the “nobody wants me on their team, I’m going to be rubbish, who’s ever going to pass to me, what am I even doing here” stuff;

I've started running (properly) only in the last couple of years but it’s still a bit of a social and psychological struggle for me to go out with people and do these things, but I’m slowly getting much better. I’m 56 now and have run 10 half marathons in reasonably decent times but never until now a full one - if I was ever to do a full marathon (& I would have laughed in your face only a few years ago if you’d suggested that I’d EVER be even contemplating doing that), it would have to be for a damned good reason and it would have to be London (as I remember watching it on the television when it first started in the early 1980s, as an unsporty geeky child)…it seems a kind-of appropriate circularity to raise awareness of the ways my children (& perhaps their children in future) can now be helped with fairly straightforward understanding and adjustments for them to be able to progress in a difficult world that struggles to understand the needs of autistic and neuro-divergent people.

Please Donate...

We’re an autistic family, that's who we are (plus a sprinkling of ADHD, OCD and emetophobia!).  It’s hugely challenging, we sometimes need space, we sometimes need to burn out, mostly we need understanding but also to celebrate our differences.  Please donate generously to help the NAS to help others struggling in similar situations, both financially and in terms of raising awareness!

Please donate what you can and please share my page. Thank you so much!