Helena Mary Cole

My name is Helena Mary Cole. I’m starting this blog because I can’t find much content on the internet for late-diagnosed autistic adults that approaches the topic from a Christian, specifically a Catholic perspective. To be honest, I was hoping to find more Catholic autistic people and maybe we could flesh this out together: what does being autistic mean to us, when we’re also Catholic? How can we make sense of a later-in-life diagnosis in the light of faith? I believe very strongly that, when we get diagnosed as autistic as adults, the healing that follows comes from God. And it’s good to acknowledge that.

I am also a wife and a mother of three autistic children: Clark, who is almost 11, Lance, who turned six last October, and Leah, who will be three in March. Of the three, only Clark is non-speaking. I’ll probably be touching on being an autistic parent of three autistic kids, which brings its own joys and challenges.

I will also be touching on my journey to become a published author. Last year, I entered a manuscript I wrote in a writing contest, and got nominated for the win (“Best New Canadian Manuscript” by a Christian author) but didn’t go on to win first prize. That’s all right. I was honoured just to be nominated. It was more than I expected to happen, really – it was outright fantastic. I’m excited to be able to mention the nomination in my query letters. Also, fiction writing is definitely an autistic special interest for me. And of course, as human beings, our creative endeavours are an important and potent way to connect with the Creator. It’s all related.

This would be a good time to mention that my main genre of interest in fiction writing is contemporary young adult fiction. I have a tendency to write autistic protagonists for obvious reasons. Actually, the manuscript I’m trying to sell right now was written before I knew I was autistic, and after I found out, I reread the thing and realized, “What do you know? My protagonist is autistic, too.” She had all sorts of autistic traits from being unaware of her own social cues to having a best friend from an older generation to jamming herself into tight spaces to talk on the phone. Funny how that happened. So, I rewrote the entire thing with autism in mind. Oddly enough, autism turned out to be the ingredient that was missing that made the plot work that much better.

But I also like fantasy fiction. In fact, I owe my “conversion” (for lack of a better word) to Catholicism to The Lord of the Rings, which I will be writing about along the way. Reading Tolkien was the first event that got the ball rolling towards converting anyway. I was an evangelical Protestant for over twenty years before entering the Church with my husband and oldest son (the only child we had at the time) at Easter Vigil 2015.

When it comes right down to it, what I really want to do here is tell my own story: my faith story, the story of how I discovered my autism and got diagnosed, and along they way, I’ll write the story of how I put those two things together. That’s me, Laney Cole, the Catholic, autistic writer.

It’s going to be an amazing journey. Join me!