Both my son and my adult sister have been diagnosed autistic this year. I support them both, helping my sister obtain her diagnosis. I care for my son with my husband and we celebrate his differences and his strengths, supporting his needs and advocating for him and helping him to learn how to advocate for himself as he grows older. I suspect my mum is autistic and I realise it's genetically possible I am, but I don't have many autistic traits and don't feel a diagnosis would help me at this time in my life. My sister doesn't accept this, believes I am in denial, and so has estranged herself from our family (our mum, my husband and kids too). She has also suggested numerous other people are autistic, suspect it is her current special interest. Her cutting us out coincided with her coercive ex-husband getting back in contact (he ghosted her when he decided to end their relationship, including keeping money and belongings of hers), which makes me think his 'support' has replaced mine.
I have tried to appeal to her, asking her to respect my decision not to seek assessment for ASD, reminding her that her neice and nephew don't understand why she has disappeared from their lives again, but she has ghosted us for a number of months now. She has previously estranged herself from us for about 6 years, as a result of different opinions and she only responded when I emailed her to say I realised I was wrong, she was right, so I apologised, which I can now see is controlling.
I appreciate it is her decision and cannot make her get in touch, but I worry about her isolation, having no friends or job (at least she didn't have when I last heard from her), only her ex, whom I worry she is risking trusting again, for support. Equally I feel upset and betrayed that we appear to mean so little to her and the love and support we gave her doesn't convince her we can accept her as autisic without necessarily believing I am too. I also believe even if we made up now, she would do this the next time I disagreed with her, making her controlling and unreliable, so perhaps her life and ours is better without each other in it. I wondered if anyone else has experienced this with an adult autistic family member? Thanks