Chapter 18, born into a family of professors. My name is Sigurdardottir. I was born in Scotland, but I am Icelandic by descent, and I was brought up in Iceland, where I continue to live now. I was diagnosed with Asperger's when I was 44 years old, so a very late diagnosis.

I was under a lot of stress when I was 19 years old. I had some problems and went into a meltdown. I was wrongly diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. When I got my autism diagnosis at 44, they said, oops, she's probably not schizophrenic at all. So that's been withdrawn and now it's ASD with ADHD.

I was born into a family of professors. My father was a professor and my grandfather was also a professor, plus the director general of the health system in Iceland. So I come from a very strong family of academics.

When I was 11 years old, my parents moved to the campus area of the University of Iceland, so I was brought up in that environment. I went to a gymnasium, which I know in America means something else, but in Iceland, it's a school with a strong emphasis on academic learning. After that, I enrolled in university, and I really didn't get out of academia for the next 30 years. I was sort of hiding within universities, both in Iceland and in Sweden.

Getting diagnosed. The story of my diagnosis is actually a very interesting one. I was writing a thesis about the novelist Vladimir Nabokov when my professor asked me to check to see whether Nabokov was autistic or not. So then, I started looking at the signs of autism and found an article called adult Asperger assessment.

It is almost impossible to diagnose people when they are not alive, so I had to tell my professor that I cannot tell whether Vladimir Nabokov was autistic or not, but I did find out that I likely was. I'm a person of many preferences. I'd rather go to the library than a theater. I don't like crowded places. I prefer to be alone rather than being in a party.

So once I had this realization, I contacted some specialists, I did an interview, and then I was diagnosed. Autism, Asperger's, whatever they call it. It doesn't really matter to me. The thing that's important is that I'm on the spectrum and that explains a lot of my life, whether it be crowds, communication, or difficulties in the job market.

Finding our place. Like the story of my diagnosis, my work history is also a little bit unique. As I previously alluded to, I got my advanced degree, but then I bounced around different places because I would have communication problems with people at work, and so I started losing jobs and running into other difficulties.

It was never about my credentials, because I was very qualified. It was always about the other things that were mostly out of my control. Regardless, what would happen is that any time I ran into trouble in the outside world, I would go back to my home base, which was the University of Iceland. It was kind of a nest for me where I could start over, study different things, stay as long as I wanted, and then go back out again. Then, I would repeat the process. In total, I have four different university degrees.

Finally, two years ago, I did another master's degree in translation studies, started a translation company, and things have clicked very well for me. It's a very, very, very small company. It's only my husband and me. But I'm much better being the CEO of my own company than I am working for others. We translate for other companies in the United States and Europe, but we do it all from home in Iceland.

I do a lot of the negotiations and job offers for projects because I have the experience and the connections, while my husband does a lot of the translating. Sometimes, I also translate some myself if it's specialized in some field like chemistry or geology or something that only I can do. I think for us on the spectrum, there should be innovation centers where we are allowed to innovate and create companies based on our interests. That is my solution to the employment problem.

Companies don't even always need to be very big to be successful. Even small companies can be great. If you love animals, you can have a pet sitting business or a dog walking business. There are a lot of opportunities, anything that you can think of.

You can also create a company around a YouTube channel. You can stream videos about animals and zoology or dinosaurs and then make money from the ads. The hardest part is learning the skills and establishing a structure around what you need to do. Once you have that structure, then you just do it. If you take away the IM from impossibility it becomes possibility. That's what you need to do. Everything is possible.

I think the reason many autistic people find themselves in the situations we are in is mainly because of the judgment that society passes on to us, but we do not have to accept the judgment of society. We can create our own lives and our own companies. That's how I did it. That's how I made it work.

More of Sigurdardottir's story can be found in the film Seeing the Unseen. The film explores the life experience of 17 Icelandic women on the autism spectrum.