About

A.J. Mahari

 I am a 54 year old (young 🙂 woman with Asperger’s Syndrome (AS). I was diagnosed with AS when I was 40 years old. It has been a very interesting journey these last 10 years to say the least. What happened, as I talk about in some of my articles was a slow and challenging process of growing into a deeper understanding, awareness and appreciation of what Asperger’s means in my life. It has also been a journey of learning to adapt and find compensatory strategies to optimize aspects of my life.This is very much an on-going process.

 I have an Audio Program, available in the right hand menu at the bottom, in which I talk about my experience with some of this process and with Asperger’s in my life. I also have an ebook available. I will be doing another audio program and ebook about what I am learning now as I assimilate the experiences of my life before and after knowing about having Asperger’s Syndrome into a clearer picture of understanding and insight. I have learned much and continue to learn even more. I also realize, however, that no matter how much I learn or challenge my limits I am always going to be an aspie with what that means and entails in my life. In some ways that’s great and fine. Asperger’s is a gift in my life for sure. In other ways it means stress and challenge. That’s okay too. I have to accept who I am, how I am and why I am who and how I am. It’s about coming to a self-acceptance that defines my personhood without entertaining feeling less than others based upon capricious comparisons.

I have 2 wonderful dogs and 2 amazing cats. I spend a lot of time on my computers. A great deal of my passion and purpose in life has always been strengthened and nurtured by the very fact that I have Asperger’s. As I talk about in one of my videos it is about my experience in life with AS, my primary narrow focus of interest, which happens to be information, and more specifically, the processing of that information, that sits at the base of all I have always been meant to do in this life. I feel very fortunate and blessed that my “narrow” focus on interest, is, paradoxically, a vast area of interest and one that has always nurtured my ability to write and to pay-forward the insights that all this processing of information combined with a rich spiritual life has afforded me.

Not knowing that I had Asperger’s Syndrome until I was 40 played a very significant role in my life. It contributed to a lot of pain in my life because I could not come to the kind self-understanding I so needed and that I have been able to come to ever since. The first four years after I found out I had AS I didn’t want to deal with it or face it. I was in some kind of denial. That period of time prooved to be as frustrating as most of my life prior to that time. Not facing my diagnosis really did prolong my suffering. In hindsight it wasn’t a very productive thing to do. However, for me, upon diagnosis, there was so much grief and despair that I likely needed to go very slowly in the coming to terms with it all. That process was one that taught me a lot in and of itself. So I guess everything really does happen for a reason. And we have to come to understand those reasons, surrender to them, learn the lessons they hold for us and then cultivate and nurture an attitude of gratitude for who we are as individuals even if and when part of our reality causes us pain.

© A.J. Mahari – All rights reserved.