By Sophie Westwood
Hello and welcome to our blog! I say ours because it’s just as much yours as it is mine. Here at Beauty By Jenna, our goal is to start an ‘understanding and acceptance’ revolution! First order of business: a snappier title, haha.
Here, in our bright and shiny new blog, we will be collecting real stories from real people, telling us all about their personal experiences with autism—including those who are still waiting for an official diagnosis, like yours truly. So, if you’d like to share your own story with us, just drop us an email, and it could be your story printed right here next.
So, allow me to introduce myself. My name’s Sophie (if that wasn’t obvious, ha), I’m 28 years old, I live in England, and I’m still living at home with my parents. I’m also the newly hired helping hand here at Beauty By Jenna. Things I’ll be doing for them include: writing these blogs, replying to emails, answering social media comments, and, hopefully, if I have any, providing ideas. So you’ll be seeing a lot of me around here!
I’ll be taking one by the team today by being the first person to share my story with you all, so you can see just how easy it is. When I think about publishing my story online like this, I think ‘but I’m a nobody,’ surely blogs are for somebody’s. However, that’s kind of the point! We want everyday stories, from everyday people.
So, if, like me, you’re feeling like, ‘nobody is going to want to hear about my life,’ we absolutely do!
‘But Sophie,’ I hear you cry, ‘I’m not interesting, my life isn’t an engaging read.’
Wrong! Everybody is interesting, and everybody’s life is engaging. If you don’t believe me, stick around, read my story, and soon you’ll see that if I can be here, you can too.
My Story: Life Undiagnosed
I’m rather jealous of people who were diagnosed in childhood because at least they knew what they’ve got going on with them. I’ve spent my entire life knowing I was different somehow but not understanding why or how or in what way. I’ve also spent my entire life being treated like I was some sort of freak.
It’s only now, at age 28, that I’m coming to understand that I am autistic, and that makes me different; but that also makes me amazing!
So, what’s it like to only realize you’re autistic at age 28? What has my life looked like?
Well, let’s start with the beginning; I was born one snowy Sunday in November of 1996. According to my mother, it was so cold the day after I was born that the hospital didn’t let her leave, for fear of me being walked across the car park in that weather. I find this detail adorable.
I was born to my two traditional parents; Mom and Dad. Mom used to be a health care assistant, which means she took care of elderly people in a care home; washing, dressing, feeding, and the like, but she stopped working when she had me. Dad was a block paver, which means he laid driveways. They were in their early 20s and in love (daw), my Dad being only 21 when I was born. They were married and sharing a tiny flat on the 9th floor, which was soon my home too.
So there we were, Mom, Dad and me, a small flat to ourselves and the big scary world at our feet.
Baby Sophie, Mom & Dad
Soon baby-Sophie grew into five-year-old Sophie, which is when mandated schooling begins here in England. I never really fit the mold of school, and I was considered ‘behind’ for my age.
Google says that, “most children are capable of writing their own names by age 4. However, it’s common for some children to achieve this earlier, while others might not write their names legibly until around age five or six,” but I couldn’t write my own name until I was at least ten years old.
In school, I was put in the remedial class. That means I was in the ‘extra support’ classroom, or the ‘learning support’ class. This means that I was kept away from my ‘average’ peers, in an isolated classroom where I wasn’t really taught much of anything.
I’m not saying that all remedial classes or ‘leg up’ classes are always bad or always teach nothing, but I’m just saying that in my particular remedial class, at my particular school, we were treated like actual infants; mostly playing, doing arts, crafts, and going over the literal a-b-cs.
This clip from The Simpsons pretty much sums up what happened to me: Bart's School Struggles
Aside from being considered ‘behind,’ ‘slow’ and (warning: slur incoming), ‘retarded’ at school, I also didn’t fit in around people in general. I had to be literally forced, screaming and crying all the way, to go to any ‘people’ centric environment, including school, the shops, or family events.
I mean, let’s just look at poor suffering tiny Sophie:
“Stop touching meeee!”
I may look like I’m smiling, but the reality is that in every ‘people’ situation—be it visiting family, going to school, or trying to make friends—I was always deeply uncomfortable.
In fact, ‘uncomfortable’ doesn’t even begin to cover how I felt. It felt like I was being thrown into a meat grinder.
I would have meltdowns almost daily, but rather than getting what I needed—i.e., help, assessment, support, or diagnosis—I was instead treated as if I was being purposefully difficult when I wasn’t.
Like at school, when I said I didn’t know my 2× times table, the teacher snapped that the 2× times table is taught in nursery school (something British parents can voluntarily send their kids to) between the ages of 2 and 4 to prepare them for school. But I was never sent to nursery school.
When I pointed this out, the teacher said:
“Well, that’s not my fault. You should know this by now, and if you really don’t, you need to go back to nursery and stop wasting the rest of the class’s time.”
The amount of times I heard:
“Stop pretending not to understand this! You’re just trying to be disruptive to the rest of the class!”
“I have 30 other students, Sophie. I can’t stop the rest of their learning to come over there and explain nursery-level things to you.”
The same was true at home.
When I had hysterical breakdowns about leaving the house, my parents would just yell that I was “putting it on” or “playing them up.” I heard pretty much non-stop that I was being rude and disrespectful for not wanting to go somewhere or not wanting to see someone.
“Do you hate us, Sophie? Do you hate your entire family?”
I’d sob that of course I didn’t hate anybody, I just didn’t want to go. And my parents would tell me:
“That’s the same thing.”
It’s safe to say that I was made to feel like my own needs were invalid.
I learned to stop asking questions in class because I got yelled at when I did.
I learned to stop crying at home because I just got yelled at for “making everything about me.”
I can’t tell you how many times I heard that either—
“You’re just trying to make everything about you.”
I was called selfish and self-centered.
I was told that I only cared about myself if I couldn’t even do something as “simple” as say hi to my auntie, for example.
To be treated like I was purposefully acting this way when I wasn’t… I didn’t have the words to express this at the time, but it felt like I was being set on fire and expected not to scream.
And when I did scream—because, you know, I was on bloody fire—I got yelled at for “making up” the fire.
With enough of this treatment—from my peers, teachers, and entire family—I began to feel like perhaps…
I was just a terrible person, and terrible at being a person.
I mean, I must be making up the fire, because everybody else said that I was.
I thought that I simply had to be wrong, and they had to be right.
Imagine you’re sitting on a chair made of sharp nails, and you keep telling everyone that the chair is hurting you.
Day after day, year after year, everyone keeps telling you:
There is no chair of nails.
You must be imagining it.
How long would that have to go on before you began to doubt yourself?
That’s how my life has felt up till now.
As if I was making up the chair of nails.
This Story Is Getting Sad Now…
Let’s take a sad break.
Finding Me
This is the point of the story where everything turns around, right? Well, I could tell you about how I was severely bullied for all 14 of my mandatory school years, or about how overlooked I was by the education system, or about how the teachers never got any nicer - but I won’t.
Instead, I shall simply sum up how my experiences, between the ages of 0 to 27, have felt:
Insert ‘fish being asked to climb a tree’ meme.
A Happy Timeline
2020:
• My sister, who struggled with constant anxiety, was convinced by me to ask the doctor about medication.
• Watching her improve made me realize maybe I deserved help too.
2021:
• At age 25, I went to the doctor and was diagnosed with anxiety.
• I started medication, which helped, but it wasn’t the full answer.
2022:
• I started researching autism and realized it described me perfectly.
• I went to the doctor and was referred for an autism assessment.
November 2022 – January 2025:
• After a long and frustrating process, I am still waiting for my official diagnosis.
Final Thoughts
I may be in diagnostic limbo, but I accept myself.
Despite studying to become a counselor, I now know that I’m not fit for a people-centric career—and that’s okay.
Now, I’m studying IT support so I can work remotely, and I’m here at Beauty By Jenna, where I can write, create, and help others feel seen.
If you’ve ever felt like an alien on Earth, know this:
✔ I accept you.
✔ Everyone at Beauty By Jenna accepts you.
✔ Most importantly, you should accept yourself.
If I can find myself, you can too.
Lovingly written from,
Sophie x
The chair of nails is gone now.