I started my career in Human Resources, and at the point I commenced my maternity leave I was a Deputy Director in HR in the NHS. Like many people, after children, I started to look at what I was doing and decided that I wanted to do something that fitted better with my family, so retrained as a teacher. Your commitment and dedication in sharing your experiences, your thoughts and feelings indeed changes the hearts and minds of all of us who read your posts and blogs. You teach professionals through your training programmes and your books. Your skills in raising awareness alter the mind set of people world wide. Above all, you continually help me to understand my darling grandson more and more every day. A thank you never seems enough, but I do thank you hugely. I send you boundless blessings every day x”

Thank you for all you have done and do Alis. Have been following you since the beginning, and you will never know how much help you have been to me and my family, and how much you helped me to change my own opinion of myself.” Being autistic, for me, means having a very strict and rigid routine and feeling devastated, like the world is going to end, when it gets disrupted. When someone shows up ten minutes late, asks me to do something last minute, or strikes up spontaneous conversation, it causes me an enormous amount of stress. Meet Alis Rowe, the autistic creator and entrepreneur behind the Curly Hair Project , a social enterprise that creates resources to support autistic people, their families and carers. I have combined all of my interests and skills – and learned plenty of new skills along the way! – to create some amazing resources including: books, visual guides, blog, infographics, podcasts, training courses, webinars, songs and animated films.I wanted an explanation for why I could not fit in with other people and seem to have “normal” relationships, as well as an explanation that I could give to people who misinterpret my behaviour as me not liking them, or being uninterested. For example, at the end of university, all the students and lecturers met up on a sunny day by the river to celebrate. Everyone was having a wonderful time. I stayed ten minutes. I had made a massive effort to attend, but it was such an excruciatingly difficult experience. How did it feel when you got the diagnosis? Several years later The Curly Hair Project is now an award-winning organisation known worldwide and my resources are endorsed by the world’s leading autism psychologist, Professor Tony Attwood. My favourite hobby is Olympic weightlifting (snatch and clean & jerk), which I do 6 times per week.

I am Alis Rowe and I am The Girl with the Curly Hair. I was known as The Girl with the Curly Hair when I was at school. I was always teased for being ‘different’ and having curly hair also made me stand out. It is thought that lots of autistic women and girls present as very quiet, shy and introverted, which means that their problems can be ‘invisible.’ Nobody thinks that there is anything wrong, because sometimes they don’t express themselves, or interact much in everyday life. They may have very high anxiety, but not externalise their thoughts and feelings. To the outside eye, this sort of person is quite ‘neutral’ and isn’t ‘challenging’ or ‘naughty,’ so no one really notices them. However, I always say that people noticed that I really struggled to interact with other people when I was growing up– being so invisible made me stand out! What advice would you give to someone who has just received an autism diagnosis?I feel like I am insightful about people, because I spent my whole life observing them and wondering how I could be more like them.