Reading Motherness felt like someone had reached inside my brain, grabbed a handful of thoughts I’ve never fully been able to articulate, and turned them into the most validating, funny, and moving memoir. I’m not a mom, but I am neurodivergent, and I grew up with a mother who, looking back now, was clearly neurodivergent too. We just didn’t have the words for it then.

That’s part of what made this book hit so hard for me. Julie’s journey isn’t just about parenting; it’s about identity. It’s about navigating the world with a brain that processes things differently, while trying to advocate for someone else doing the same. There’s this double layer of vulnerability in her story that I found so deeply moving: advocating for her son while quietly unraveling her own long unanswered questions.

It made me stop and reflect on my own mom. What she must’ve been going through. What it was like to raise a child (me!) while also struggling to make sense of a world that wasn’t built for her either. Motherness made me emotional in a way I didn’t expect and it gave me so much more compassion and understanding for her. Like, of course she didn’t always know how to help. She didn’t have the tools, the support, or even the vocabulary we have now. She was living in a world that lacked the resources we have now, and she was overstimulated and overwhelmed but could not get what we are afforded now. This really hit home for me!

Julie is so funny, by the way. Her writing is sharp and witty without ever being dismissive or flippant. She tackles some really heavy stuff, like meltdowns, masking, disordered eating, bullying, shutdowns, with a lot of warmth and relatability. I laughed out loud more than once, even while I was underlining passages that punched me right in the gut.

I especially loved the moments when Julie described recognizing traits in herself that mirrored her son’s. It reminded me of when I’d tell my mom something I learned about my ADHD or sensory issues and she’d pause and go, “...Wait, I do that too.” It’s funny how discovering things about ourselves can create a ripple effect that helps the people around us understand themselves too.

This book doesn’t have all the answers, and it doesn’t try to. What it does offer is honest storytelling, hope, and that warm feeling of being seen and letting you know you are not alone. It’s for the late diagnosed adults, the overwhelmed parents, the people navigating dual identities, and anyone who's ever felt a little too much or not enough.

💜 5/5 stars
📚 A must read for neurodivergent individuals and their families
😂 Funny, raw, real
🧠 Perfect for those who love memoirs that make you feel like you’ve found a long lost friend

Reading Motherness felt like coming home to a truth I didn’t know I needed. I will absolutely be recommending this one to everyone I know, especially my mom!

Thank you to NetGalley, Julie M. Green, and ECW Press for the eARC of this book.

Written from a place of motherly love, heartwrenching honesty and empowerment, "Motherness" is a book I am certainly going to be pestering every single fellow therapist I know for a very, very long time. Unique in its mix of self-discovery and parenting journeys, this book feels like biting into an ice-cream that's fresh out of the freezer: it sends a jolt through your whole body, and leaves you unable to think about anything else for a while.

As both the mother to an autistic child, and an autistic person herself, Julie M. Green hits the shelves with her family's story. Nobody prepared her or her husband for what raising an autistic child takes, but as one keps turning the pages and learning more about Mrs. Green's parenting journey, it's made abundantly clear that both her and her husband did their best and kept in mind their endgoal, which was their child's well-being. When Carson was diagnosed as autistic as a toddler, the Green family found themselves trying to navigate an allistic world that was neither ready, nor willing, to acommodate their child. Most people don't realise how hard it is to live with an invisible disability, or think that all autistic people are carbon copies of Sheldon Cooper whose autism is just a compilation of "quirks" and minor oddities. Consequently, autistic people and their families often face stigma and even discrimination as a result of autistic traits that are assumed as malicious or immature by others. When a child starts crying loudly at the supermarket, how many of us turn our heads to frown at the grown-up they are with for it? How often do we take offence when a pre-teen "talks back", and asks us for a reason why they should do things the way we tell them to? Aren't we, as a society, continuously singling out those who fail to "read the room" and end up saying or doing the wrong things? Don't we have a tendency to dislike anyone whose facial expressions are hard to read?

These are merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the myriad ways in which our society fails autistic people, and in this book Julie Green explores the many barriers that autistic people are faced with as a result. From non-verbal communication to unspoken social norms about touching, personal space, how much honesty is too much and whether eye contact is as big of a deal as allistic people make it out to be - this book explores what it means to be autistic in a world that is rarely ever ready for it. Something I was a big fan of was how Green peppered the book with scientific research that was, from what I could see at the end of the book, quite recent as well as methodologically robust. For some reason there are many people who still think that autism is the mothers' fault, or that it's a fancy way to describe poor parenting. In the face of such prevalent and ignorant opinions, this book doesn't shy away from describing the different sides of autism and how it makes autistic folks feel whenever allistic people react negatively to them.

Another thing that was lovely was Green's sincere account of her struggles as she and her husband did their best to support Carson. In this regard, it was quite moving to learn how harmful many of the so-called "therapies" for autistic people can be. Being a therapist with specific training in disability and diversity myself, I wish I could make every single colleague I know read this book. There is still a very prevalent view of autism as a disorder, rather than a neurotype that isn't any less just because it's different, and there are still far too many trained professionals whose approach is based entirely on supressing as much of the person's autism as possible through desensitization, exposure therapy, stim suppression and similarly aversive practices. While there might be some behaviours worth modifying or some horizons worth expanding for the person's own sake (such as stimming that entails harm to oneself or others, or severe ARFID that might lead to malnutrition and nutritional deficiencies), many others are harmless and do not merit being supressed.

Overall this is an extremely powerful book, and I am most definitely going to be purchasing a physical copy for my personal library as both a therapist, and a human being who wants to know how to make the world a little kinder for those who are treated harshly. I encourage everyone to read it, then lend their friends their copy!

What a gem of a book.

Honestly, I don't have words (because Julie M. Green seems to have stolen all the words from my mind anyway). Sometimes I take down quotes to get a more immersive reading experience, I am trying to do that a lot more now. In chapter 1, almost everything was something I wanted to take down. Julie's experience of postpartum depression, especially given that she did not know she was autistic then. The things that made her fraught, that triggered her (even if she didn't know that was what it was)--the entire experience seemed duplicated from my own life. It was like reliving those those, which, let's be honest, weren't the best for me. And while everything else that came after were deeply relatable (Julie's description of her migraine, the sensations, the description of the icepick stabbing, which is literally the same as how I always imagine when I describe my pain; that, or, a hammer bashing down the side of my skull into brain matter), there were some differences, primarily stemming from the fact that I am South Asian, and all of the generational trauma that comes with it.

I, like Julie, sought and got diagnosis after having a child, but mine came much earlier thanks to the meme-ification of the human experience. And like Julie, my partner is the thing in my life I have always been sure of. My diagnosis is still recent, however, and that means I am still seeking out explanations and understanding. It is only now that I have been able to look past my present grief to look back at my childhood. I am often filled with grief, a deep chasm of a grief: if only I had known, if only there was someone in my life who could have helped me. How different would my life be? How less unrooted would I feel?

This isn't just a memoir: though the memoir part is written so very well. Her writing is just the right amount of funny (which I recognize comes from a lifetime of not knowing what to say), and her narrative style is powerful, weaving you in, tightening and loosening the string in accordance to the events.

I want to thank Julie for this book. Thank you for writing this. It felt almost freeing to read this. And I certainly feel a lot less alone. Can't wait for September when I can get a physical copy!