I Now Know What Caused My Autism, Which Changes Everything - And Nothing

Life-changing news came on a Thursday just before Christmas, in an email so unexpected I nearly deleted it as spam. The subject line: "We have found a genetic cause for your autism."

In 2016, I sent a saliva sample to the Simons Foundation Powering Autism Research for Knowledge -- better known as SPARK -- for an autism research study, becoming one of its first participants. After five years of waiting, I assumed that SPARK didn't have any genetic answers about my autism. Even though a personal result would have been amazing, what mattered to me more was what this study could mean for our broader understanding of autism. My hope was that a study like this could help autistic people better find our way through a world that is often hard to navigate.

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