Consequential Loss - Notes On A Radio Play And Autistic Theatre

I recently took the plunge and joined up with a theatre group for autistic people.  It's a pretty new group and the people there are varied.  There autism is as varied as they are.  What everyone shares is enthusiasm.

The core group meet currently for one day a week, being joined for the morning by a group from a local college of ESPA (Education and Services for People with Autism).  We have fun and are supported in what we do by two paid staff members who work more or less full time for the Twisting Ducks Theatre Company which is run for people with learning difficulties and (now) autism.

I feel very fortunate to be able to go and have fun with the people of Spectrum Theatre - the autistic child of the Twisting Ducks.  It is hoped that in the future some extra funding can be obtained which would mean that the work of Spectrum could develop a lot further.  Also in the near future there's going to be an eight week creative writing course - which we're really meant to call creative storytelling in recognition that there may be people on that course who have amazing imaginations but who can't write or can't write well enough to set down their fantastic stories on paper.

I'm also very fortunate in that the current funding obtained for Spectrum means that the day that's laid on for we autistic people is free of charge.

I've met some great people in Spectrum, all autistic and all experiencing joys and trials that accompany our condition.  And it's just one more way for me to open up to my own creative possibilities and the possibilities of others.  For now it is a place I will stay.  I make no predictions for the future.

Almost the first thing the core group were asked to do was to write a radio play.  Each of us would write, with the idea being that we will record the plays and put them out on a local community radio station.

I've written quite a lot in the past year, though not as much I would have liked.  But I've never attempted a play either from scratch or from adapting one of my crazy stories.

I have now written a play.  And then it had to be edited - the censor's pen had to be used.   The broadcasts would be daytime and I accidentally wrote something with adult content and language including rather more swearing than families would appreciate.  I'd written a late night show or something to adapt into a theatre piece with a 15+ age warning.

I've been my own censor though.  The fruity language has been removed or toned down and I wonder in places whether I've lost realism.  I've adjusted quite a few lines.  Watered down sex references and some imagery that the BBC controller would have banned.  I'm glad the actual plot is unchanged.  There's still the darkness and light, the despair, the betrayals, the hope.  I'm glad I haven't been asked to make the plot insipid

There's also the matter of religion.  One of the characters is a religious homophobic bigot.  I can write religious bigots.  I know the subject first hand!  The character is quite extreme but I've known people who are equally extreme and equally nasty about it too.  I thankful I didn't get quite that bad myself in my own years of religious homophobia.  I think that the character worked as I wrote her.  She's still there too.  She's surviving the censor.  But her language and bile is a little mellowed.  I also considered the intended audience and wondered whether they would be up in arms about my attack on the Christian faith.  It's not really that of course, just an attack on a particular manifestation of the faith, the version that names people like me as abominations.  For a late night broadcast or a theatre I'd let it stand.  But not for this intended broadcast.  So I've taken pains to point out that not all Christians are like that.

Since the broadcast will be in Newcastle I've pointed to a few of the churches here in which being queer won't result in the preacher abusing you or consigning you to hell for your sexuality and gender.  Who knows?  Perhaps someone will hear it who is a Christian and is queer too but hiding the truth and fighting against themselves through guilt.  Just as I did.  Perhaps someone like that will hear and something will be planted in them that helps them seek out a place where they can live their faith in more freedom.  I can live in the hope that a radio play might do some good.

I've deliberately kept the scenes simple.  Deliberately linked them with narration from the main character.  I think, as a first attempt at writing a play, it has worked out well.  Unfortunately I now want to re-edit it to put some of the fruitier language and imagery back in and have two versions of it to play with.

Each of us in that core group has written a play.  They are as varied as we are.  I've ended up being the only one of us to include nothing from the realms of science fiction and fantasy.  Much as I love those genres - and need to get back to working on my post-apocalyptic dystopian novel - I've ended up firmly rooted in the real world.  The other plays are each filled with their own surprises and it's a good thing that they are such contrasts from each other.

My first scene was initially written at a Spectrum session.  We were all told to write a scene.  One simple idea popped into my head and it just flowed with hardly another conscious thought.  Two friends meet in a cafe.  One confesses to the other that she is having an affair.  She was having it with a man named Graham.  But as I wrote his name my pen paused, almost the only break it gave to my writing hand.  My pen considered its options.  Crossed out the word Graham.  And wrote the word Erica.

Since that day I haven't made any enormous changes to the scene - just a few, arising from details the characters gave me about themselves as they wrote the rest of the play for me.  It's always nice when people can hardly believe that I've just written something from scratch in a writing session.  That happens sometimes.  Other times I can hardly write anything at all and any words that get miserably scrawled should really only be filed in the embarrassing section.

I hope that writing the play has taught me something about the process.  Something I can put to good use later.  I hope too that it will give me a little more confidence in writing conversations.  I never used to include much in the way of conversation because I didn't think I understood the rules of conversation well enough to write one.  I hope that this play is a step on the path to being able to write realistic and engaging talk.  I don't think I'm there yet.

Sometime soon I'll probably post the whole play here.  Unless I go crazy, edit it more and try and get someone more professional to record it.  That's always a possibility.

So, onwards with Spectrum.  See where it leads.  I'm guessing it may throw me in a few surprising directions.  And I'm happy with that idea.

A Letter To The Telegraph About Autism and Special Interests

A letter to The Daily Telegraph.  I'll explain it afterwards.

Image taken from the page mentioned below

Dear Sirs,

I read with interest your article of June 12th regarding the difficulties of being autistic.  I note that the article was written by someone who is not themselves autistic and am dismayed to see that his portrayal of the autistic experience was overwhelmingly negative.  I am writing to you as a happy autistic woman in order to correct this portrayal by focusing on a positive aspect of being autistic.

Being autistic is a trial.  No doubt about it.  You wouldn't ever look at us and say, "Wow!  I wish I was autistic too."  Not with everything we go through.  Your article was right.  The autistic experience can be excruciatingly difficult.

But it can be a great joy too.  People talk of autistic ecstasy and that's a thing.  It's real.  For me at least, and I choose to focus on the joy.  When I can.  Sometimes that overwhelming overloading collapse of everything within takes over.

I'm not going to list the joys and the total fun I have.  I just want to tell you about one aspect of it.  You see, we autistic people tend to focus in on things.  When we find that particular thing our brains scream out, "Wow! Wow! This is for me!" and then we don't ever let go of it and seek to find an everlasting corridor filled with more and more and more of it.  It's not an obsession.  Oh no.  Not quite.  We call these things our special interests.

We all have them and we discuss them too.  Join an autism group and inevitably the subject will arise many times because we like our special interests and there's always this part of us wondering why everyone doesn't share them with us and why they switch off when we infodump at them.

So.  Imagine the online conversation.  Me?  I don't have to imaging.  It's already happened.

New member:  Just out of interest, what are everyone's special interests?

Old members:  Trains.  Helicopters.  Tapestry.  My Little Pony.  Or, and these are all common, Nazis.  Serial Killers.  Murder.  And darkest of all, weather forecasting.

They read about these things.  They know everything.  Collect ponies.  Become meteorologists.  They don't actually become serial killers of course.

Then it's my turn.  They ask me, "What are your special interests?"

Me:  Fraud, bigamy, and highway robbery.

You read that right.  I should explain though, clarify a little.  Because while fraud and bigamy are true and perfect special interests, robbery is just a hobby.  It makes me happy.  After a hard day, when autism has given me problems and my brain feels like it's going to implode and explode at the same time, after those days there's nothing better than popping out for a bit of highway robbery.

Being outside helps me.  Under the bare black night sky when the rushing clouds call to me or the stars send messages that it's all going to be okay.  I'd be out there anyway, even without the robbery.

And I say all this in the groups.  Explain how I get a thrill from all the logical steps you need to successfully get away with fraud.

I talk too about how you need to be very careful when indulging in a spot of bigamy.  Or biandry.  Polyandry really because right now I have four husbands on the go.  James is alright.  But the other three are complete shits.  I'm looking forward to divorcing them but it's a complicated business and I have to follow all the logical plan perfectly.  I love logical plans.  They make me tingle inside.  It's hard to get a worthwhile divorce settlement from your rich shit of a husband when you're not legally hitched in the first place.

Sometimes the things I say produce less than positive reactions, even in an autism group.  I don't know why.  I mean, trains and My Little Pony?  How dull can you get?  But I don't moan when people are into weird things.  Some of those people don't grant me the same respect when I'm sharing my happy things.

Fraud, bigamy and highway robbery.

Talk about autistic ecstasy!

Pointing a pistol at a tourist and demanding their cash and valuables.  Now that's ecstasy.  You wouldn't understand it.  Unless you're autistic too.  I would ask therefore that all future articles you publish about autism would be more positive than the one I read this week in order to reflect the deep wonder we can find in this world.

Yours Faithfully.

Ann Meders



On June 13th I attended a writers' group.  The subject of the morning was female highwaymen, or highwaywomen depending on your preference.

During the course of the session an article was read about several of these women.  If you care to read it you can find it here.  One of the sentences reads, "Alongside highway robbery, Ann Meders born in 1643, made fraud and bigamy her special interests."

That was enough for me.  Out of all these women, the bored and the desperate, out of all their deeds, I couldn't leave that sentence behind.  Hence the above letter.  It was actually free written in the cafe as a monologue.  I've altered it a little to make it a letter, but only as far as necessary.  Ann Meders was hung at the age of thirty.  I think my fictional autistic Ann would get into trouble too after sending that letter.

I will stress that while I have my special interests, and while special interests do get discussed sometimes in groups, I do not share the interests of Ann Meders and I haven't seen Ann's interests raised.  I've seen all the others she mentions in her letters.  They're real.  But I haven't seen anyone plotting how to defraud their illegal husbands.  I also have no good reason to claim Ann as an autistic woman or to place a seventeenth century highway robber in the position of being able to join online autism groups. 

On Gratitude And Thanking Non-Autistic People For Their Support, Autism Acceptance, And Positivity

[Note: All photos in this post are taken from the gratitude diary I kept throughout 2016.  Note too that I pretty much free wrote the following.  It's not an essay, struggled over for weeks.]


I am a great believer in gratitude.

It's no secret that I have plenty of hard days, that my mental health is sometimes shot to pieces in ways that make it hard to see the light.

Yet there is light.  There is always light somewhere.  Always awe, always wonder.  Feeling the warmth of the sun in the day - or the strength of the storm when the sun is hidden.  Watching the night sky and considering how far away each point of light is from us and from each other.  Or smiling at the closer lights of Jupiter, Mars, and Venus, the glorious face of the moon, and the chance of spotting the International Space Station.

Sunrise, viewed from Cullercoats

Today I could be miserable.  Mentally I'm finding today very tough.  I am also anxious about something I can't change.  My thought patterns run wild.  I could be telling myself I have nothing much to celebrate.  There was a time I couldn't find positives.  I would sit for an hour with a piece of paper to write a list.  Sometimes I only wrote one thing.  Sometimes I wrote nothing.

Yes the positives were there and are here now.  I sit on a comfortable sofa surrounded by soft toys and books.  Music is playing and I had the freedom to choose to play it.  In this room I have a guitar, a bubble gun, art materials, and many photograph albums covering my entire life.  I have notebooks, a giant rosary on the wall (honest!), pictures on the walls - some drawn by a friend, blankets, a clarinet, and a window letting in light.  Through that window I see a tree and the sky and I hear the singing of the birds.

Beyond this room I have family.  I have friends too.  Most of my friendships are recently formed.  Because I have chosen to go out and meet people.  Some are embryonic, some more full fledged.  I can travel into the city centre and get involved with all kinds of things run by good people.  And - as much as my health allows - I'm choosing to do that.

I refuse to not live.  And I strive to be grateful for what I have, who I am, and the opportunities around me.

I began to learn more about the power of gratitude last year.  I joined an online gratitude group.  The idea was that each day members would post words or photos expressing gratitude for something in their lives.  It didn't have to be a big thing.  Whether it was a plate of beans on toast or a massive life changing event didn't matter.  I posted in that group nearly every day - I missed ten over the course of the year.   Focusing on the positive in that way helped me, one of many things last year that helped me.  Seeing other people post their positives helped too.  And for me it changed my life.  There were plenty of days on which I would go out and seek positives and find previously unimagined things for which I could be grateful.

In short, I believe in gratitude.  I don't believe in ignoring the horrible parts of life or pretending they don't exist.  This isn't some method of positive thinking that loses sight of realism.  I believe in acc-ent-u-ating the positive.  But not e-lim-i-nating the negative.

Recently I decided I wanted to go further.  I don't just want to be thankful.  I want to act in thankfulness.  If I am thankful for a person, to say so.  If I am thankful for an organisation, to say so.  If I'm thankful for the great cake at a cafe, to say so.  Not just to myself.  Not just in an online group.  But to the person, organisation, cafe or whatever else I am grateful to and for.

As an intentional part of this process I have begun a little project.  I wouldn't have thought of it without the suggestions of a friend who pretty much came up with the idea.  Together we brainstormed - and I really hate that word! - and came up with a plan.

We, as autistic people, would seek to thank those people - especially but not exclusively the not-autistic people - who have helped us, supported us, and accepted us.  There were events leading up to this decision.  I don't need to recount them here.  Let it just be said that on a recent occasion one of us was badly hurt and mentally wounded by a group of autistic people who treated us very badly and didn't accept our autistic needs.  It was a group of not-autistic people who came to the rescue.  They understood, accepted, and gave lots of support through what was an extremely difficult situation. We looked at this situation knowing there had been betrayal by our own community and acceptance outside it.  The one of us who was hurt didn't behave badly and wasn't being mean to anyone.

Autistic Pride Wrist

As we talked together, that group of non-autistic people was the first thought of to be thanked.  They really were marvelous.

But then my friend took it further.  Why not thank other non-autistic (neurotypical, allistic) people and organisations?  The ones whose actions and attitudes can be described as examples of good practice.  The ones who believe in us and lift us up.  The ones who encourage us to be the best versions of ourselves we can be.  The ones who will sit with us in silence.  The ones who will see us through meltdowns and shutdowns.  The ones eager to learn and understand if they don't already.  The inclusive ones.  The ones for whom autism acceptance and appreciation is already a given.  Why not thank them?

I'd been getting annoyed by some things I'd seen online in autistic communities.  Particularly the way people can be treated if we perceive them not to be doing things just right.  I might agree that the things aren't right.  I'm no big fan of ABA or Autism Speaks and there are far worse things than either of those.  But I'm less of a fan of the times that people who might like ABA are made out to be evil.  They're not evil.  They're doing their best and children given ABA or restricted diets or any of the rest of it have parents who love them and want the very best for their autistic children.  While I might disagree about methods I'm not going to disagree about love.

I think there's a tendency online to find a bad particular situation and apply it broadly.  Not just with autism.  In every sphere.  Take politics - hey, the UK is leaving the EU and there are many memes telling how the people who voted to leave are majorly racist.  Some might be.  But I firmly believe most are not.  Of course they're not.  Or Muslims get called terrorists.  And all Christians get called homophobic bigots.  The particular is applied too widely.

A woman wants to cure her child.  That gets applied to many women until, in extreme cases, the "autism mums" are all seen as bad mothers who hate their children.  In reality of course nearly all of them deeply love their children and may be desperate to get them the best support there is.  Because they do need support - raising a severely autistic child isn't exactly easy.  Sometimes desperation may lead to unwise paths.  Sometimes.  But not to unloving paths.

Then there's Julia.  The new autistic character on Sesame Street.  One of the most autism positive things I've ever seen, as least on a TV show.  The puppeteer's son is autistic.  The designer of Julia felt very strongly about things because of all the autistic children he's known.  And the makers of the show have tried to do as good a job as they can having decided where on the spectrum Julia might be.

I have seen so many posts about how Julia is a terrible thing and how the makers of Sesame Street should be ashamed.  I don't need to give the reasons I've read.  Many of them were total rubbish.  Perhaps the makers need to continue to learn.  That's true and they say so themselves.  Perhaps Julia isn't some totally perfect autistic character, perfectly portraying every aspect of the condition.  It looks like she'll do a very good job though.

So I've been getting saddened when, especially online, the autistic community can sometimes [The word there is sometimes, not often.  That's deliberate.] spend a lot more time and energy blasting things and not much time at all congratulating people and organisations for the good they do.  We can get so stressed about whether we are autistic or have autism (and we can't agree on that ourselves) that we miss the picture of caring non-autistic people working their butts off for the sake of autistic people.

The Autistic Fringe Yurt, Edinburgh 2016

We decided we wanted to say thank you for the good.  Not ignore the bad.  But say thank you for the good.  So my friend and I planned.  I confess she was the instigator of the whole thing.  Our planning didn't take long.

April is known as Autism Acceptance Month.  It's a month in which many of us will campaign to be accepted.  And I will be glad to campaign - as long as autistic children suffer, while there aren't resources for brilliant child-centred early intervention, while adult support can be almost nonexistent, while people push for cures or in desperation use bleach solutions, while the situation elsewhere may be far worse than in the UK, and so on.  As long as there's a need I am happy to campaign.

But my friend and I want to spend the month rejoicing over the places and people where we are already accepted.  We want to rejoice over good practice.  We want to rejoice that there are lots and lots of great people out there.  Both of us know that there is much campaigning still to be done on many fronts.  Here in the UK and across the world.

So what are we doing?  My friend has bought cards and found out addresses.  She is sending personal thank you cards to people throughout the month of April.  "You've done this for me.  I appreciate it and you.  Thank you for your support/care/acceptance/creative compassion."  Or something like that.

I have started a Facebook page.  This one:  https://www.facebook.com/AutisticThanks/

I plan to publicly thank someone each day in April and to let them know that they have been thanked.  Sometimes I'll have to anonymise what I write on Facebook - but they'll know who they are because I will thank them privately.

We'll thank the people who behave like this for us.

My hope is that other autistic people will be a part of the page and thank those who have helped them, accepted them, loved them, supported them, in large ways and small.  My hope is that autistic friends might join in the game and maybe some autistic strangers too.  My hope is that the page will be a place filled with gratitude and positivity.  I also hope that others might see the page, see what kind of things autistic people appreciate and seek to act along those lines.

It's a little daunting though.  I have to find thirty people and groups to thank and I haven't made my list yet.  I've also got the first thoughts of another project in mind that will take a lot more work than posting thirty things on a Facebook page.

Beyond that I don't know what will happen.

One of my soft toys enjoying Greenbelt festival.

We hope to bring smiles to ourselves and each other as we remember all the good people in our worlds.

We both hope that we can bring smiles to people and encourage them for what they're doing and being for us.

We hope that our simple thank yous will enrich the lives of those around us.

We hope too that saying thank you will not prove controversial.  I've already been told that it is and I've had grumbles about we poor marginalised autistic people thanking privileged neurotypical people.  Enough of that.  Please.  I know we could thank autistic people - for a start we could thank each other for acceptance.  But this time, just this once, we're going to look outside the autistic community and hand out a whole load of gold stars and celebrate autism acceptance in our own possibly peculiar way.

Autism Acceptance Month begins in two days.  This year I am looking forward to it.

On Learning That I'm Part Of An Extremist Group Of Fake-Autistic People

I'm part of several online autism groups.  This post is about one of those groups.  It's run by people I respect and I know quite a few of the members, either from conversations online or from meeting them in what some people call "in real life" as if an online conversation and developed friendship can't be real.  It's not just an autism group though, not now.  Now it includes various conditions and differences and disabilities that would come under the category of "neurodivergent" or "neurodiverse."  It's a group which campaigns for acceptance of all people.  Among the members are autistic people, other neurodivergent people, and people who would be classed as "neurotypical."

This week we got trolled.  Someone joined.  Acted badly.  Left.  And then posted a thirty minute rant on Youtube insulting us all and insulting some of the members in particular.  While doing something else I left his video playing.  He made me cross because of the attacks he was making on people I know to be good people, trying their best to build something of value - something which not so long ago very nearly crashed on the rocks and got shattered into a thousand jagged pieces.

So what did I do?  I wrote some words.  They're rubbish poetry but they're heartfelt.  Now, having written them, I can let go of being cross.  I wouldn't post them here except that I'm still not that well and haven't been able to write the things I want to write.  For today, this is all I have.

Two extremists plotting world domination.  Or perhaps not.

I'm numbered among the extremists;

The radicals who in their words

Lie; hurling slander at all others.

My leaders are evil people

And we, their foolish followers

Have been lobotomised.

We hate science, we censor all debate,

We are the arrogant, deluded thousands

Who stand together in unity

And sometimes agree to stand in disunity.

We're not really autistic at all.

Because if we were autistic

We would see through the extremism

And leave. Not only that,

We wouldn't have been accepted to begin with.

Then, outside the dark citadel of that group

We would find the true Aspergians

The ones whose diagnoses are valid.

That's what I heard today.

However, I don't quite trust my source.

My source has a fixed view of his own rightness

And though many groups have given up

And, exasperated by his ways, thrown him out,

He claims it was never, ever, for trolling.

My source has something interesting to say

About feminism too. He says that people are right

To view it as a cancer.

He wants everything to be in context

Except for the video clips of feminists he posts.

Context is irrelevant. If it wouldn't serve him.

In short, he's as hypocritical as anyone

He may accuse of the same shortcoming.

My source claims that we of our group

Are not the real autistic spectrum people.

We're fakes. We're obviously neurotypical.

And we're trying to replace the real people

With our extremist deception and fakery.

My source says we don't know what we're talking about

Just because we didn't respond to his single question

With the answer he wanted us to give.

But, and this is a big but,

I know people from the group.

I know them to be autistic.

I've met them. Worked with some of them.

Some of them are my friends

I've sat in cafes with them, and tents

And waved sparkling lights with them in the dark.

I've smiled with them and cried with them.

I've even spent three days in a yurt with them

At an international autism conference.

It's safe to say this:

The autistic people among them are autistic.

Actually and undoubtedly and beautifully autistic.

We're fallible, we're faulty,

We're known for our social issues and complexities.

We screw up sometimes, and can fail to see the grey.

We argue and debate and sometimes fall out

Only to make up again when peace breaks out.

And sometimes our mistakes can be whoppers.

I know. I've been as guilty as anyone.

But we're trying our best.

We're not the liability he thinks we are.

We're not a bunch of brain dead radicals

Just because we don't want to discuss

Vaccines and bloody Andrew Wakefield for the

Hundredth time this week.

My source is correct though. In part.

Extremism is dangerous.

If it ran riot then autistic acceptance

Would only be a pipe dream.

I agree, and I share his concern.

It's just, he's pointing in the wrong place.

Perhaps there's nowhere much to point to.

Perhaps that Hell serpent is just a fantasy.

And perhaps, consider this,

He should point to himself, just for a day.

Perhaps we all should, just for a day.

I know I should.

A Three Way Rant About Donald Trump, Religion, and Autism Service Provision

Note:  This post was meant to be about walking along a canal in Manchester, just as Blob Thing wrote about it this morning.  It turned into a three pronged rant about Donald Trump, religion, and the lack of help available for autistic people.  So it's not about the walk at all.  It just keeps mentioning the walk.  Like this:

Blob Thing blogged about this already today.  He did a good job in describing the walk although I was a bit astounded at the way he managed to complain about Donald Trump so much when describing his day.  Trump was not a participant in our day and he does not have a tower in Greater Manchester.  I didn't know that a small soft toy could have such strong views about an American politician.  John Pavlovitz this morning noted that Trump was prophetic about himself when he said that his followers would still follow him even if he was to murder someone in broad daylight.  Someone could write a fascinating psychological study into his followers and how they are similar to fundamentalist religious believers.  Many of them are such believers.

In both cases, evidence does not knock the belief.  They believe Donald Trump is wonderful and they want him to rule them.  No evidence seems to knock their evangelical fundamentalist Trumpist faith.  And no evidence knocks the fundamentalist religious either, of whatever variety.  Science and reason keep knocking blocks off fundamentalist religion and keep showing why it's (almost certainly) nonsense.  A rational person either gives up the religion totally or finds ways to adjust the beliefs so that their God fits in with human knowledge and slides into the cracks where we lack full knowledge.  A fundamentalist ignores the evidence or creates words and arguments that attempt to show why evidence is wrong.

So whether it's evolution, a young earth, the existence of Satan, the inerrancy of the Bible or Koran or Gita or whatever other scripture, or the glories of Donald Trump, the fundamentalist will not be budged.  They are not rational.  They cannot reason about their faith.  I don't condemn them.  It's just a sad thing when someone falls into such a system in their own heads.

I know.  Because I fell into it myself.  We are sorting part of the house at the moment and I found the sheets of paper on which I wrote brief notes before starting to write my life story.  It was to be my spiritual story and contained all the wrong turns I made and how I discovered the truth of the Catholic Church - the "best" version of Christianity and the "only" one to be truly and completely one, holy, catholic, apostolic and sacramental.  I was writing all this.  How I now KNEW the truth.  How I praised God for showing me the best way.  And how I was convinced that now I knew the truth I would remain a faithful Catholic for ever and ever and ever.  Well we all know how that plan turned out!  I read it now and I am a little embarrassed - and I am even more thankful that I moved on.  It's not that I hate the God of my past or think anyone with a similar God has lost a grip on reason.  There are some very reasonable believers out there, ones who accept doubt and accept that faith sometimes has to change in the face of evidence.

It's a hard road away from fundamentalism and the certainty of a religious system.  It might be just as hard for people to turn away from Donald Trump when they have pinned so many hopes and dreams on the man.  Especially when some of those people share many of Trump's despicable attitudes and beliefs.  As was said the other day by a Christian pastor,  "Better a pussy grabber than a pussy in the White House."  Yep.  I don't want to call a human being a little piece of shit.  But.  His views are big pieces of shit.  And they arise from an antiquated, horribly patriarchal religious system that may once have had a place but has now gone rotten and putrid and smells worse than a big piece of shit.  Plenty of churches teach it though - a woman should not have authority over a man.  They say that God said it.  In his book.  Which is infallible and God breathed.  Some churches are explicit in that.  So Trump might be a disgusting sex criminal but to have a woman?  No.  Nay!  Never!  That's banned in the Bible.  They're right too.  It IS banned in the Bible.  It's quite explicit.  A woman isn't even allowed to speak in church and if they have questions have to wait until they get home before asking their husband.  As for authority, well man is head of the woman.  The Bible says so.  To go against that is to go against God - at least according to some believers.  But even to others to go against it is just one part of noticing that the Bible is wrong about God.  And once a believer reaches that point they have a lot of soul searching to do regarding what value both their holy book and their faith have.  There are multiple answers to that soul searching.  Some lead to atheism.  Some to a form of progressive or liberal Christianity.  Some to hiding one's head in the sand and holding on to a form of faith that a believer cannot bear to allow to die.

I'm not going to talk much at all about the walk.  I've talked enough already.  It was a walk along a canal.  Simple.

In any case.  I just that moment had a phone call.  Not my favourite thing.  This was to tell me - and I had to chase people to find this out - that the NHS people I was referred to for help with my mental health problems cannot help me because I am autistic.  Basically because I have a neurological difference the NHS tells me to fuck off whenever I ask for help.  Great isn't it?  No.  It's another big piece of shit and at this moment I feel pretty bloody bad about it all.

I am autistic.

I need MORE help.  Not less.  More.  I've been fighting over and over again for the past year and yet again another service waves me away with an "Oh yes you need help for your mental health but all of us people who spent years training in mental health can't deal with you because you are autistic."

Aaaargh.  If I had severe learning difficulties - if I was "low functioning" - there would be lots of services almost falling over themselves for me.  But I am "high functioning" - which means that I function very well, in certain areas, some of the time and I have a nice high IQ  (I am officially a genius).  And that means there is no help.  None.  Fuck all.  And even the help anyone else with a nice high IQ could get is stolen away from me because of my diagnosis.

I am bloody glad to have my diagnosis.  It helps.  And self understanding helps greatly.  But right now it stinks.

Anyway.  The photos.  Nice aren't they?!  I'm not going to talk about them at all.  Not today.  My head isn't up to it now.

Oh well.  Life goes on.  I'm out tonight with some of those progressive Christians.  They're very nice but still a little too much into the old old story for me as if they still need psychologically to grasp onto a tale that they know doesn't make that much sense.  That might be unfair.  But they know the Bible is just the record of a bunch of people trying and often failing to find the divine and that much of the Old Testament contains a lot of nationalist propaganda.  They look to Jesus for their guide which is fine.  But even there they have to be very selective or interpret in a way that surely the gospel writers didn't mean or else they have to cope with all the things he said about unbelievers and Hell.  So in effect they love the nice bits of Jesus and leave the rest because those bits aren't right.  I don't know exactly what's left that is worth basing a 21st century life on.  But maybe the speaker tonight will enlighten me and leave me wanting to read all his books - of which I own five, four of them bought in the last year.

The photos.  Because life contains incredibly wonderful days with or without an autism diagnosis and with or without help from an NHS with funding and training and service provision gaps.

Maybe I will just have to sort myself out, as I would if the NHS didn't exist - and who knows, under our caring sharing Tory government its future isn't safe.  I've done a lot of self work.  It's just that a bit of help wouldn't go amiss.

You know what?  The photos can wait until the next post.  They are too good to be combined with my woes or musings about people believing beyond the point of rationality.  Just one photo.  Because life is good.  Life is a wonderful thing.

Days Of Gratitude - Happy Times in Salford - Reservoirs, Religion and Relaxation

October has begun.  At the end of last year the challenge was set by the Sunday Assembly Newcastle to post something for which you are grateful.  Every day.  Nine months later and I have missed a total of nine days.  The group description reads:

Sunday Assembly Newcastle is all about finding ways to #livebetter, so our 2016 challenge to you is to photograph something every day that makes you feel grateful and share it to this group. 

Every day.  Every day.  The group currently has 129 members some of whom joined recently.  Sharing every day?  Well, no.  Not every day.  Some days there will be three posts.  Including mine.  Some days a couple more.  Sometimes there will be just two posts.  And on a couple of days I have been the only person to follow the challenge.  Even the person who set the challenge only posts sometimes.

But this is me.  It says every day.  And I want to post every day.  It's good for me.  On the days that feel rubbish I can find something.  And on the days that feel good I can find some amazingly, wonderfully, spectularly, beautifully positive things to be grateful for.

Cases in point.  The six days below.  After a couple of weeks of real struggles it was very good to have days like these.

September 30^th

Grateful to be able to hear great talks at an autism event before leaving for Manchester. I hope people listened and will act.

Grateful that the coach driver let me sit in the quiet seats behind him when I was struggling and getting melty while waiting.

Grateful that a side effect of being so delayed was that we detoured across the Saddleworth road which is gorgeous.

And very grateful to be back here in Salford with Amanda.

October 1^st


Grateful for a great day out with Amanda.

We enjoyed Glossop and my lunch was massive. I will go back and find walking routes.

And then we rowed across and around a reservoir.

They just gave us a boat and pushed us away from the jetty without checking to see whether we had ever rowed before.

In the evening we were at the theatre and managed to get two tickets for five pounds - a student and a carer.

October 2^nd


Grateful for a good morning with Amanda before she went to work.

Grateful for some car boot sale and charity shop bargains.

Grateful to have decided to explore a sign I have passed on the bus here quite a few times: Schoenstatt Shrine.

Loved it. I will go back one day just to sit in the peace of the shrine and the community garden.

Sorry. (A lie!). There are far too many pictures.  [There were many more posted in the gratitude group.] And they're all of a Catholic place where they do God quite a lot. But I really was very pleased to have explored.

October 3^rd

Grateful for a lovely day out with Amanda. We played crazy golf, went on everything in the playground, and ate too much ice cream. Happy times.

I only took one photo all day. Here it is. You get quality graffiti in the toilets of amusement arcades in Southport. Or at least in one cubicle.

October 4^th

Grateful for time spent with Amanda.

Grateful for getting some ideas at an autism event in Manchester in the evening.

Grateful for a pretty walk in the day that ended with buying Amanda a unicorn.

October 5^th


Grateful for the days away.

Grateful to be home and to have life here to look forward to.

Grateful to have been greeted by family and my trusted warthog friend.

Also grateful that Blob Thing managed to post on his blog today.

Day Of Gratitude - The Writers' Cafe And A Whole Heap Of Honesty

I am proud of myself.

Because this was a very difficult day.  And yet I still managed to do some things and to do them well.  And even though it was so hard and my brain was not recovered I managed to do things the next day that surprised me and gave me real confidence boosts.  I was going to include all those good things in this post but they'll have to wait until the next post because this one came out differently to expectations.  I hadn't meant to write nearly 1000 words about a day.

Some days contain much that is dreadful.  But not all days.  And even the dreadful days contain much that is good and much to be grateful for - even past the mundane, taken for granted things like "I have a house, I have the ability to walk, I live in a country where I won't get thrown in prison for leaving my religion or for being queer, I have books, I have clothes, I am richer than most people on this planet, I have a ready supply of clean tap water."  Those are all big things and perhaps we all take them for granted too much because of their daily familiarity.

If I had focused differently and was part of the Sunday Assembly Honest Description Group then this difficult day would have read like this:

September 20th

I felt bad in the morning and due to sensory issues the journey into town was painful.  Nevertheless, I took part in the Writers' Cafe and am pleased with the results and was able to spend some time with people afterwards.  I am grateful for that and possibly came out with an idea that hasn't been written before.  By anyone.  Ever.  I didn't eat in the cafe with them though because I wasn't up to eating lunch just as I hadn't been able to eat any breakfast.  I was able to mask well through the morning and I am glad to have been able to do it but inside was hurting and being out in the street was too much, too loud, too bright, too smelly, too everything.  One of the bad days in which I have to work extra hard to get through.

Then I went to my electrolysis appointment.  Because of the extra sensory issues and because the anaesthetic cream was only applied 30 minutes before (as they recommend) rather than 50 minutes before (as I recommend) it hurt far more than usual.  Usually I find it very painful.  Today was excruciating as every nerve and every part of my brain was wired up for amplifying every input and giving it all to me at top volume.  Listening to distracting music and clutching a soft toy wasn't helping.

It's not just the pain.  It's the bright light shone at my face.  It's the sensation of being touched so much and in such a way.  The whole experience is awful for me even on the best of days when I manage to get through the appointment without collapse.

I struggled through the appointment determined to get through to the end.  I pressed my right hand into my left hand hard and as it got worse dug my nails in repeatedly.  As a result my left hand is bruised and has blood marks from my nails.  I tried so hard to get through my appointment.

I failed.  Instead my whole body went into some weird spasm.  The person doing the treatment asked if I wanted or needed to stop.  She's nice.  I wasn't able to speak but managed to nod.  So we stopped.  I couldn't speak.  I couldn't move my body.  She asked if I needed time.  I managed to nod again and she left me alone.

Slowly I was able to move again and managed to sit up.  I looked at my arm and wanted to cry.  I wanted to cry anyway because I hadn't managed to get through the appointment.  I tried to tell myself that I am not useless or a failure but at that moment my head wasn't accepting reason.  My face hurt.  But everything else hurt more.

I managed to get myself going and was able to leave the clinic.  I can't remember whether I made another appointment.  I will have to check that out.  It's a period of time my head is now choosing not to remember in detail because then it would take me back there in full technicolor glory and present the hyper-sensory medley to me once more.  Sometimes it's good to forget.

I was now on the street in central Newcastle.  I knew that I would be unable to get myself home.  In my current state it would be impossible.  I also knew that that street was too hard to deal with and that I needed a quieter place, close by, and somewhere familiar.  There may have been unfamiliar quiet places close by but at the top of the hill, maybe 100 metres away, there is Waterstones.  There are some comfy chairs in there, it's relatively quiet, and they don't play music at you.  Somehow I got there.

I found a chair.  Sat down.  And went more into shut down.  Unreactive.  Unresponsive.  I couldn't do a thing.  My brain continued to churn but I couldn't act.  But a comfy chair in Waterstones beats the noise of the city street.  It's a nice city.  I love it.  But not on this day.

My brain kept going and eventually I was able to come up with a solution and was able to put it into practice.  I texted Beth who would be finishing work at 4.30 and passing close by to Waterstones on her way home.  By that time it was nearly 4.30 anyway.  I wrote "in waterstones   come get".  And I waited.

She arrived and held me for a bit.  I couldn't speak.  She led the way and took me to buy food for dinner because I still hadn't managed to eat.  And then she took me to the bus stop because I couldn't manage the underground Metro platform even with help.  I was able to talk with her a little on the bus and even at the bus stop.  But not vocally.  I had to use a text to speech application on my phone.

So, some gratitude.

I am allowed to stop appointments early.  Nobody is mad with me.  With help - absolutely necessary help - I got home safely.  With help, with safety, I was able to speak again.  With help I was able to find food and find the encouragement to eat it.  Without that help I would have been at great risk.  I expect though that had I still been in Waterstones at closing time - if I hadn't been spotted sooner - someone would have helped me.  There would have been a solution found for me.  If I hadn't got to the shop and remained on the street I would have ended up at grave risk.  Grateful to have been able to get inside.


That's what I could have written.  Instead I wrote this short entry:

September 20^th


The second half of the day was awful. Some of the worst bits of being autistic. Pretty crap.

So. Focus on the morning.

Grateful for the Writers' Cafe. I wrote some words that may be worth playing with. A lot. And adding to and building on. A lot. This is a happy thing.

Days of Gratitude - The Near Paradise Of An Autistic Fringe Yurt

These were great days.  I feel I should warn regular readers of something.  Lots of the days since have been very difficult indeed as my lovely autistic brain has struggled with the whole idea of getting through things and has failed to do so at times.  Although in another sense it has succeeded because, after all, I am still here.  Last night was very difficult.  Today has been very difficult indeed.  So many tears.  So much shaking and yeah, it's generally been horrible.  I cancelled today.  I had things I wanted to do or needed to do and cancelled the lot.  Later I did manage to get a few things done - like prepare this post.  But self care involved pulling out of everything I had committed to.

But these days below were great.  It astounds me.  Today I couldn't leave the house.  Yesterday I couldn't leave the house.  But I spent three days in the unknown-to-me city of Edinburgh, wandering the streets, navigating my way around - including managing to find the Quaker Meeting House in order to meet strangers for a bit of Shape Note Singing.  I spent time among more strangers and people I've not met that much.  I coped with a pretty harmless but rather too friendly drunk woman and was deemed brave by one of the "names" of the autistic community.

I was quite amazed with how well I managed those days.  Yes, much of it was spent in autistic space with autistic people and that's easier to cope with than most things.  But it was all unknown.  And I am pretty proud of myself for how well I did.  It's the confidence boost I mentioned in the last post.  There's going to be another confidence boost in the next post too - it won't just be staggeringly crappy days.

So here we go.  Four days.  And a musical decision at the end.  I was playing it today.  Parts of the Mozart Clarinet Quintet.  Badly of course.  I am surprised to be playing it at all.  It was a horrible day in many ways.  But I played a clarinet.  And I played a guitar.

September 16^th


Grateful that I have coped today with day one at an autism conference in Edinburgh.

This is the Fringe Yurt, safe autistic space.

And a conference hall that by all rights I shouldn't have been in.

Grateful too to meet up with a friend I haven't seen for 20 years. She says it was totally obvious then that I am autistic. Took me a long time to work it out for myself!

September 17^th


Grateful to have been given this opportunity to be in Edinburgh at the Autistic Fringe and to have been able to sneak into the main Congress too.

It's been a bit like an unstructured mini Autscape. Being with part of my tribe for a few days.

The yurt was well lit in the evening.

September 18^th


Grateful for the yurt days and the autistic space. But grateful for my own bed.

The weekend was an amazing opportunity. Totally glad I went. Now I need to recover from the last couple of weeks.

 Grateful too for a morning walk in Edinburgh. Pretty.

 September 19^th


Grateful for a decision to pick this thing up for the first time in years and blow air through it.

There is a plan to blow lots of air and maybe make some nice sounds too.

But it's been a long time. The sounds are not currently as pleasing as once they were.

Days of Gratitude - Autscape, Friendship, And Finding Freedom In A Cemetery

I am posting this on August 25th.  Today would have been my mother's 72nd birthday.  She died a few days after reaching her 70th birthday.  Facebook keeps giving me memories to share each day and most of them have been status updates about the events leading up to my mother's death.  Every day I am given the option to share some painful circumstance.  I haven't been sharing.

The morning after my mother died I had to return from Sussex to Newcastle, leaving my brother to deal with everything for a while.  On returning to Newcastle I attended the appointment at which I was officially diagnosed as being transgender.  It's tempting to wish that my mother had lived to see that day and the two years that have passed since then.  But no amount of wishing would make it a reality.  After that appointment I returned to Sussex.  I wrote the address for my mother's funeral and reading it was a privilege - and quite a challenge to not fall apart at certain points in it.  I posted the address in a post on this blog and it also appears here, the final ever post on my mother's blog which she lovingly wrote nearly every day for quite a few years and filled with family and friends and many photos.

That all happened two years ago.  This is now.  And these are five days of memories for this month, to add to the memories Facebook keeps on recommending I share with the world again.


18^th August


Grateful for Autscape. A lot could be said about that.

Grateful though to spend much of the afternoon not at Autscape!

Amanda and I walked into Settle, relaxed together, ate ice cream and then walked a little by the river.

We found a great rock to sit on in the middle of the river and I even had a free thirty seconds for stone stacking, reminding me that I want to take myself off for a quiet day doing it.

19^th August


There is much I will miss. Much to think about too.

But I am grateful that tonight I will sleep in my bed.

Farewell Autscape for another year. Tomorrow I have to attempt to think about food again.

Grateful too that this time round only a week will go by before I see Amanda again - for a Christian festival!

20^th August


Being looked after when arriving at the meditation group in a state. Sitting alone in silence helped and then good people and lunch.

Grateful for the people who set up that group and for the way the enterprise will be expanding very soon. There will be a meditation centre in the city centre and there are great plans for the future.
Also grateful to look out of the window.

21^st August

Grateful for missing the bus home after the Sunday Assembly social and going a different route back to the Metro that turned out to be interesting even though totally an incorrect route.

This led on to becoming sidetracked in a cemetery I have been meaning to visit almost since we moved here.

Also very grateful that a year ago today I met a very wonderful woman. I couldn't be more grateful than I am.

22^nd August


Grateful that one year ago tonight I danced, played and sang barefoot in a big thunderstorm.

She had encouraged me to do so. She didn't accept my refusal.

A year on and we have a most marvellous and undefined relationship centred on a stunning magic friendship.

A Little More About Autistic Pride And The Sometimes-Desire To Be Cured

I am mainly posting this so that I don't lose it.  I posted this a while ago in a Facebook group that celebrates and embraces neurodiversity.  I've made a couple of changes to post it here, but it's sustantially what I posted on Facebook.

 

I'll just make clear.  Autism is part of the neurology of autistic people.  It isn't a thing to be cured.  It's a complex beast - and isn't really a single beast at all.  It is something that contributes to making me the person I am, and that's not a bad thing.  I guess I'm not alone in the feelings I express.  I guess most people with a disability of whatever kind will have had days when they just want it taken away from them.  They may fully accept themselves but still, when passing through fire it's hard to say "Hoorah, I am being burned!"  I accept myself more than I have ever done before.  I do.  As a result I am happier and more content than I have ever been before.  But:

Self-acceptance is compatible with wishing for change.

The Facebook post:

 

Please read this before clicking the link at the bottom. It contains explanation and a couple of warnings about what I've written in the post the link leads to.

I posted one of my recent blog posts in a group subtitled. "We have our own views too! Autistics speaking for OURSELVES!" I posted it as an autistic person, speaking for herself, an autistic person who at times would love for it all to be taken away.

It was accepted by a moderator and appeared. Then it vanished again within five minutes, deleted by another moderator presumably. I guess that in that group only some view from autistic people are allowed. I guess that autistics are only allowed to speak for themselves if they have a particular opinion.

Otherwise they aren't allowed to speak up. The question was raised by a speaker at Autscape as to whether the autistic community is truly inclusive of all autistic people. Do we really accept ALL autistic people even if they're difficult, no matter how disabled they are, or if (shock!) they dare to have different beliefs, frustrations and worldviews to our own?  A good question, posed by someone who has been a very active part of "the autistic community" for twenty years.  He knows his onions!

On the basis of my experience today I have to say that it can be exclusive and we can cast autistic people into the outer darkness when they don't fit a narrow view of acceptability.

I'm going to share my post here. I know that most will disagree with it. I know it's not a popular view. But that's okay. I expect comments. I expect discussion. I expect both appreciation and distaste. That's fine. It may even be deleted by moderators who feel it's not the kind of thing they want an autistic person to be saying in their group. That is their privilege.

Warning: This post does talk of cures. Of the times when things deteriorate for me so much that quite frankly a cure would be a lovely thing.

Warning two: I do swear in this post. I try not to swear much but I was free writing everything and strong feelings were arising and some language fell out that isn't for sensitive ears.

But of course I'm proud too, and positive and know that a cure is an impossibility and that being autistic is a part of my identity, my human personhood. Sometimes I can celebrate that. Embrace the whole of what it means to be me. I wear an autistic pride badge and an autistic pride bracelet pretty much every day. Because I am proud.

But on the bad days, honesty compels me to say that I would prefer it if all those disabling things could be taken away just as much as I did before I had the word "autism" to help me understand me. On some days, to say it's "a different way of being" or to say "I'm differently abled not disabled" just doesn't do justice to how much of a struggle it is. I am disabled. I am. Yeah, I am different not less. We all are. And I've blogged about that in the past. But sometimes the difference feels overwhelmingly dreadful. And oftentimes it is disabling and no amount of accommodations would ever mean that it isn't.

So that's me. Being honest.

 

My previous post:

https://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/in-which-clare-says-something-unpopular.html



Extra to the Facebook post:

A link to the talk at Autscape, by Martijn Dekker, with a link there to all the slides shown during the talk:

http://www.autscape.org/2016/programme/presentations#martijn

Head to the homepage there to find out more about Autscape.  It's the only event of its kind in Europe and I am completely thankful that I was told about it in time to get there last year for the first time.  Next year it will take place at a different venue.  There won't be all the gorgeous scenery we've experienced for the last couple of years when it was held in Giggleswick, near Settle, North Yorkshire.  I'll be blogging some pictures of the area eventually.

 

Next year it is, I understand, taking place in Northampton.  So I won't be able to escape for a couple of hours by going up a hill.  But I will be able to escape by popping into the centre of a town where I used to live and seeing whether it has changed at all.  I may even take a picture of the plaque that commemorates the school for dissenting ministers run by Philip Doddridge - some of whose words appear in the pages of The Sacred Harp.  Maybe next year I could do a lightning talk about shape note singing.  No.  That's not quite right:  Definitely I could.  But maybe I would!  Because everybody should know about shape note even though many of them will learn that it's something they strongly dislike.