'I don't have an edit button': Twitter user Penelope Trunk on why she announced

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'I don't have an edit button': Twitter user Penelope Trunk on why she announced

her miscarriage on the networking site

By Louette Harding

Last updated at 12:11 AM on 25th July 2010

When Penelope Trunk posted the comment `I'm in a board meeting, having a

miscarriage' on the social-networking website Twitter, she had no idea that her

forthright remark would provoke a media maelstrom.

But, as she tells Louette Harding, there is good reason

for such bluntness

Penelope Trunk cannot help running into trouble. The first time I spoke to her

she became distracted by her younger son and put the receiver down, only to lose

it. I could hear her wailing, `Where's the phone?' and then conclude hopefully,

`Maybe she'll ring back…' But the klutziness goes beyond the endearing to the

foot-in-the-mouth blunder. A few months ago, the 44-year-old American

businesswoman caused a maelstrom of publicity on both sides of the Atlantic when

she tweeted while in a board meeting that she was suffering a miscarriage. The

fierce backlash extended from US TV to the British broadsheets. Even as she

defended herself (she was relieved that a problematic pregnancy had ended

naturally), her brusque tone won her few friends.

To her credit, she did not play the sympathy card by drawing attention to the

reason for her bluntness. Penelope Trunk has Asperger's syndrome, an

autistic-spectrum disorder characterised by problems with social interaction.

Men are diagnosed with the disorder 15 times more often than women, and it's

thought of as a condition that takes `maleness' – logic rather than emotion – to

the extreme. It is usually linked to a high IQ and may be to do with faulty

`connections' in the brain. Penelope's father and elder son have Asperger's, as

does her ex-husband. `It's a genetic condition, and people with Asperger's like

being around other people with Asperger's,' she explains.

She finds the rest of us `overwhelming' in prolonged doses. `I tend to hang

around people who talk in a monotone. People who have musical voices and are

very animated and bubbly are hard for me.' Yet she is a successful entrepreneur

with a career-networking website and an international audience for her blog. In

2007 she won a six-figure advance for a book on career management.

`I know that I'm kind of limited because of Asperger's, but the best thing I can

do is be honest. I feel it's my job to tell everyone what it's really like to be

a high-powered woman,' she says. `So many journalists want to do interviews with

me about how to " have it all " , and it's so insipid. I try to talk about what I

give up. It costs me so much effort to look after myself and my kids, more than

for most women. I struggle a lot.' Every day is a battle in communicating. `I

don't have an edit button. I blurt out everything on my mind. I can't learn the

cues. I struggle with wishing someone happy birthday. Somebody has to teach me

because it all looks crazy to me. If only I could just say something like,

" Pleased to meet you. " That's the level I'm at.'

She has a neat sense of humour and a curious mind but her tone of voice is a

little characterless, her conversation repetitive – she makes the same point

several times as if she's unsure you understand. Talking to her requires

empathy, which she is unable to reciprocate. It's a bit like talking to a

scarily honest child prodigy.

Asperger's was only recognised in 1994, and Penelope grew up thinking she was

`weird' but unable to identify why. She says it was only when her elder son, now

eight, was undergoing tests for Asperger's with a neuropsychologist that she was

also tested and diagnosed. `It's better for people with Asperger's to do

something soothing and repetitive, and I have recently begun to change my

working life to accommodate it,' she says.

She avoids the office wherever possible [but goes to meetings], catching up with

colleagues at a diner over morning coffee instead. She finds power lunches

overwhelmingly stressful and has learnt to order the same meal – salmon – from

the menu wherever the restaurant. She takes needlepoint to board meetings to

calm herself. She is clumsy, can't tell left from right and doesn't notice she's

invading your personal space. It all adds up to a formidable list of challenges.

But she says Asperger's bestows advantages as well as disadvantages. `I'm good

at learning rules and a lot of business is predicated on rules – men's rules –

although as I got higher and higher up, my skills topped out. I've had

opportunities to run very large departments and I didn't like it. I do not have

the patience.' Because she is an original thinker, she has concentrated on

starting her own businesses. She stepped down as CEO of her present company,

Brazen Careerist, when it grew to 20 employees. Is today's business climate

tolerant of the eccentric genius? `Definitely with men. How eccentric genius

plays itself out in a woman is a little more complicated.' She hopes she

compensates for her quirks with sparkling ideas.

Her career has been a roller coaster. After graduating from college in Boston

with a BA in history, she had a crisis about her future and essentially dropped

out. She then moved into marketing at a software firm before founding two

high-tech companies of her own, enduring a flotation, a merger and a bankruptcy

on the way. In September 2001, she was standing a block from the World Trade

Center when the towers collapsed. Today, she still suffers flashbacks when she

jogs along the dirt roads at the farm in Wisconsin where she lives with her

partner and her two sons, aged five and eight, from a previous marriage. `On a

dry day the dust gets in my mouth and it feels like it did when the air was so

thick with debris from the fallen buildings that I couldn't breathe.'

Afterwards, while suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, she was told that

she needed to address the trauma of her childhood first. In her blog, which

veers compulsively between career advice and the deeply personal, she has

explained why she sees honesty as a vocation. Recalling her childhood, she

wrote, `The next time my dad beat me up…I called the police and they came. My

dad said nothing was wrong…and then the police started to leave.' She concluded,

`I'm scared of secrets.' Her father's subsequent diagnosis with Asperger's has

helped her understand his actions. `People with Asperger's have a really low

threshold for things not going their way and they get frustrated – well, having

kids brings all of that.'

`I worry that I'm a dork. I always try hard to look more normal'

`Recently, somebody was telling me about an idea they'd had. I said, " Have you

told anybody else? " He said, " I told my parents but they think everything I do

is great! " That hit me hard. I was, like, " Wow! Some people have parents who

think everything they do is great! " I wish I'd had that. I'm close to my parents

but I still don't have that.' She says this without self-pity – rather, she

sounds incredulous at this commonplace revelation of the `normal' world.

At the time of the 9/11 attacks, she was newly married to her first husband, a

video artist. They met while he was making a film on memory – she was the only

one he interviewed who gave him honest replies. How much did Asperger's affect

their marriage? `It doomed it. We're not able to navigate the world, either of

us, and so we would reinforce each other's terrible decisions. We still get

along well. The things I loved about him have not changed.' Their split in 2007

was symptomatic of their problems communicating. She thought he was finding a

marriage counsellor. Accompanying him to the first session she found herself

instead in lawyers' offices. Only then did he break the news that he was

contemplating divorce.

Their first son was diagnosed with Asperger's when he was two. `People on the

New York subway would say to me, " That is a very smart boy. " Now I know it was

because he was staring in a way babies don't. He became very picky about what he

ate, which is typical of Asperger's. He walked at 11 months and recited poetry

by Longfellow at two years. The world said he was a genius but he was not

connecting words to meaning.' She took the risk of having a second child three

years later, `because I loved my first so much.

`My younger son is gifted and normal. He's so adaptable. It's something I see in

people I work with. I'll say, " Guys, we can't sit here, it's facing the sun and

it's bad feng shui, " and I'm always amazed when they say, " OK. " They don't care

where we sit! My younger son is like that. My elder son does well in school, and

society doesn't really start penalising people for not getting social cues until

puberty. But in the playground, he waits for his brother to find friends and he

has a lot of anxiety because he can't control things.' She understands this

perfectly, but for the same reason she is unable to help. `When he is upset, I

get upset and we both keep talking over each other and cannot solve any

problems.' She employs a highly experienced nanny to restore harmony.

Penelope has written throughout her career, contributing to Time magazine and

The Wall Street Journal. She began blogging in 2006 when she moved from New York

to Wisconsin while her marriage was failing. Her critics claim she is

inconsistent and narcissistic. `I don't understand that. I can't stand being the

centre of attention. In a group I stand to one side because I'm hoping no one is

going to talk to me. People say I am writing to be provocative, but why would

you write what everyone else is saying?' She is read by 40,000 followers, among

them a large Asperger's contingent. `I can pick them out. They send me an insane

amount of grammatical corrections.'

In her blog she has described her meeting and unpredictable relationship with

Wisconsin farmer Walter. After various ups and downs, they `married'

(informal commitment vows rather than a legally binding ceremony) last spring.

She says he has experience of dealing with Asperger's. But she also says, `I'm

not sure I can hold a marriage together.' She wants to – part and parcel of a

wish she expresses several times in our interview; a wish to live a good, decent

life despite doubting her own judgments and emotional fortitude. `I really want

to be a good mum. I want to be

a good person and make good decisions. I don't think that I can be happy, but I

have a lot of money and I want to spend it in ways that will make life better.'

While many `Aspies' have no wish to conform, Penelope has a touching wish to

blend in. Early in her career a boss sent her home to change from a nerdy

sweatshirt, and she twigged how important appearances are. She once hired a

stylist to advise on clothes and spends a fortune flying to Los Angeles for

haircuts and Botox and New York for eyebrow maintenance – the result of her

literal interpretation of adverts. `I have this worry that I'm a dork. I'm

always trying really hard to look a little more normal,' she says. `That's why I

watch [reality dating show] The Bachelor, although I have to shut my eyes

because I'm embarrassed. The contestants follow a lot of rules but none of them

makes sense to me. You know when you watch butterflies fluttering around in a

mating dance and you don't really know what they're doing? That's how it looks

to me.'