Autism & Sexuality

Yesterday, a pleasant chat with one of my nieces created an unexpected shift in how I see myself, and in how I parent Finian.  It's funny how profound growth can surprise us in the most ordinary of situations.

We were talking about relationships, when a clear, undeniable truth crystalised in my mind.  If I was a young, single gal again I would be open to dating girls.  I'm not sure if that makes me bi, pan or curious.  I'm not sure I'm even that interested in a label.  But learning a new truth about myself is thrilling...... that I am sure about.

Many of my friends and family are LGBTQ+ so I told myself that my attraction to the gay scene was to have a bit of fun while being supportive of my loved ones (plus I love rainbows, so there's that). 

But of course it was a covert way for me to explore my own sexuality without making myself vulnerable to judgement.  I find it hilarious that I managed, with great efficiency, to hide my own sexuality from myself.  Of course I had to, as being anything other than straight, white catholic in 80s Ireland guaranteed social ostracism.  It was a dangerous time to be different.

We all know that denial is a river in Africa..... but it  also appears to have plenty of tributaries in Co.Monaghan.

It's criminal that I grew up in a time when sexual exploration meant being an outcast.  Our sexuality is central to who we are, and to be battered and shamed to comply to a social norm is the real sin.  An awful truth dawned on me that the damage inflicted on our identity doesn't stop with us as individuals. 

It also affects how we parent.  

If we don't understand our own sexuality, how on earth are we supposed to help our special needs kids navigate theirs?

It's tricky enough to walk our neurotypical kids through the shifting sands of hormones, identity and orientation.  Throw autism and an  attitude conditioned by shame and self-loathing into the mix, and we have a recipe for a steaming hot mess.

I think the way forward lies in our openness to admit that we don't have any answers for our kids.  It seems to me that the best way to discover who we are is by feeling our way along in the dark, without direction from tradition, parents, churches, peers or social expectations.  We can find our true, authentic path by attending to the still, small voice within.

It's entirely possible to grow in tandem with our kids, if we are humble enough to feel our way in the dark with them.

 

Autism & Naked Walking

I submitted an essay today as part of my final semester at college.

To ensure its safe passage across the ether, it has been annointed by the blood of my firstborn.  I had it blessed by wise virgins (surprisingly hard to find) by the light of a strawberry moon.  Prior to it's dispatch I realigned its chakras with smudged sage.  Its aura was protected by incanting sacred mantras in ancient Arameic.  I thought it prudent to throw in a little garlic and holy water for good measure, because, vampires.

Y'know, the usual.

All the magic spells were evoked against a backdrop of Bob the fucking Builder in Albanian. 

My brain has been Moulinexed into particularly runny porridge, so I went naked walking to recalibrate.

Disappointingly, naked walking isn't as decadent (or chilly) as it sounds.  

Naked walking is mindfully exercising without the distraction of music, podcasts, phones, Autism, ...... or anything superfluous to surviving a brisk February afternoon.  So..... nothing in my ears.  Nothing buzzing in my pocket.  Just me and my senses and the elements.

The birds are starting to build now, so they were rowdy and energetic.  Sudden flashbombs of sunlight pierced the clouds and exploded back into darkness.  Rainbows played catch with the shadows.  Everywhere was light and movement and windrush.

It was magic.

I was alone, but part of something much greater than myself.

By the time I got home, I was re-centred and mindful that there's a greater world than my blinkered college microcosm.

Within a few hours I was once again part of the flow of family life.  Our ordinary dramas reminded me that I'm part of the poorer, uglier Kardashians.  A bit of naked walking helps me love every minute of it.

"ffs the bitch is watching us"

Autism & Pyjamas

I love pyjamas.

My favourite part of the day is when I get to peel off the layers of the day and relax into a body unencumbered by straps, belts or elastic. (I may be mostly talking about bras here, but whatevs).  It's frowned upon to traumatise the family by lounging around in the nip, so I spare their horror by covering up in flannel.  

Pyjamas are great.  I can breathe, the family don't want to gouge their eyes out, and I get to commune on a spiritual level with my inner sloth.

I love that damn sloth.

If we all wore pyjamas going about our daily business, it might go a long way to neutralise the differences among us.  It could create a more level playing field, in a brushed cotton, horizontal kinda way.

But then (in a definitely more cellulite-y Sex & the City manifestation), I couldn't help but wonder..... would it really be so utopian if we were all the same?  

I wouldn't like all our differences to be mixed into a homogenous grey sludge of boringness.  Diversity imposes an edge of sparkiness that challenges convention and rigid security. Diversity births creativity.  Darwin, in the tradition of beardy clever people, told us this.  

Fear of difference can be explained as the original stranger danger, where rival tribes fed each other through mincers in case they robbed each other's crab apples and gave the gals the glad eye.  Or something.  Anyway, it was never a clever move.  A narrow gene pool is not healthy.  Check out royal families.

Difference in race, language, skin colour, age, gender, sexuality, IQ, religion, ability, species (I threw this one in to check you were paying attention) ..... whatever you're having yourself..... is what paints this world with beauty and interest.  Acceptance is not enough.  Embracing 'difference' is a joy.  Embracing difference is a key to transcending the dullness of this world.  

It's kinda a pain that I may need to change outta my pjs to get there, but some things are just worth it. 

would totes wear PJs if I could be arsed

Autism & Villages

I spent much of today procrastinating.

Instead of tidying up a few irritating loose ends in my college portfolio, I draped myself across the couch like I was in the terminal stages of a Victorian wasting disease.

My portfolio will be assessed in three days.  The bits that need attention will take about an hour to tidy up.  It's not even proper work.

But I acted like deadlines weren't even a thing.  It was of grave importance that my eyebrows were tweezed into perfect symmetry.  It was most urgent that the dog was groomed.  And all the tea wasn't going to drink itself.

My portfolio gathered dust while I alphabetised the spice cupboard.

I'd like to make my procrastination sexier by saying it was a coping mechanism, used to protect me from my fear of not being good enough..... like a type of performance anxiety.  But the real, and tragically less sexy, truth is that I was just being a massive lazyarse (real word).

And I loved every minute of it.

I idled the day away deeply appreciating having a lovely husband who will take Finian to youth club while I crack on with (*cough*) work.  I am weak with gratitude that I have emerged from the happy side of many months of intense therapy, now able to eat, sleep and not view the world as a hostile place.  

Having a kiddo with autism is hard.  That's hardly headline news.  Crawling through decades of psychological awfulness (without much grace, it has to be said) was also super not-good while managing autism.

But when things are hard, I've learned to look for the good people.  The ones who hug you when you're a stinky mess.  The ones who meet you for a walk or a coffee when you're Not Your Best.  The ones who let you know they're there for you, even when you've driven them insane with your lunacy.  There are good people who supported me without knowing it..... my yoga teacher, my college buddies, strangers who smiled at me in shops.

Before this becomes an Oscar acceptance speech, I think it's important to point something out.

Among our autism circles, we often remark that it takes a village to raise an ASD kiddo (albeit a weirdly niche one, characterised by much talk about streaking kids, and children taking enormous dumps in the display toilets in B&Q).  

But as I continue to flounder my way through this perplexing world, it's clear to me that it takes a village to raise every one of us.  It takes a little humility to accept this, but all of us need each other. 

Portfolio done, with fabulous eyebrows

Autism & Growing an Adult

I have Finian's head wrecked.

The whole object of parenting is to produce functional adults who will eventually leave us.  That part sucks, but it's how the gig works.

I know Finian will never live independently, but I want him to live as independently as possible.  So I give him jobs to do that challenge him a little, like unloading the dishwasher and changing his sheets.  Hopefully this will deepen his self-trust so that he can tackle more complex things in the future.  I try to help him develop confidence in his own abilities, safe in the knowledge that he can come to me for help if he struggles.  My hope for him is that he will have the courage to move further and further from my safety net.  That he will develop a sense of safety within himself and within the world.  This is where creativity and personal growth flourishes.

Like any self-respecting teenager, he resists like crazy.  He becomes deeply engrossed in his toenails, or urgently needs to watch an episode of The Power Puff Girls, or becomes strangely deaf.  Sadly for him, he's my third kid so there's no get-out-of-jail-free card.  I've heard all the excuses, and none of them fly.

Then, I had one of those light-bulb moments when I realised that I'm going through the same process.  As epiphanies go, mine wasn't as poetic as Saint Paul falling off a horse and being blinded by the divine light of God.  I think I was scrubbing skid-marks off the downstairs toilet wearing a pair of marigolds at the time.  While sweating like a mare through a menopausal hot flush (I suspect God doesn't like women very much.... he definitely seems to favour saints on horses). 

Anyway, I'm also learning to be my own safe space in therapy..... which is pretty much what I'm trying to teach Finian.  I had a happy little nerdgasm when I realised there's a parallel process going on.  It doesn't take much to please me.

Helping Finian to become a functional adult won't be let slide just because he's autistic.  I expect him to become all he is capable of becoming...... including creating inventive excuses to dodge housework.

somebody call Child Line

Autism & Amazing Parents

It's widely accepted that autism parents are saintly, wholesome creatures who could teach the Walton's a thing or two about being virtuous.  We have been gifted by the Gods with an eternal wellspring of patience, shouldering our load with inner tranquility.   We dispense kindly pearls of wisdom to those in trouble, having cultivated our Zen through the serene endurance of hardships.  

It is whispered that Buddha and Jesus are kinda jealous of the level of enlightenment we radiate.

Autism parents are the true Latter Day Saints.

"go in pieces"

No.  We're.  Fucking.  Not.

I'm having a shit day with Finian and I've just given him his third bag of crisps to try to stop him crying.  Learning to regulate his own emotions is a work in progress.  He's OK at indicating that a shower or a walk would calm him down, but he's unable to identify the reason for his irritability.  Equally, I'm OK at using Mindfulness and Other Tricks to help me attempt to co-regulate his emotions, but this relies on me getting enough sleep and eating properly.  This doesn't always happen.

Some days it all goes to shit and all I can do is throw crisps at him and hope it'll pass soon.

Today is one of those days that grabbing a shower is a hazy dream, and cooking a proper meal is the stuff of fantasy.  Balancing a Gin and Tonic on the ironing board while I tackle the laundry seems much more conducive to coping, as does a phone call to our friendly (and very familiar) take-away.  

You do what you gotta do to manage.

It's important that we forgive ourselves for being less than perfect, and for breaking the rules to survive a hard day.

Today I look like a small family of weasels live in my hair, and I seem to be wearing my husband's clothes (and not in a fun, Friday night sorta way).  Finian's breath stinks of salt & vinegar, and I may be half-baked by bedtime.

But I'm OK with not being an Amazing Parent.

Being OK will do grand.

The Waltons.
Off their tits on Mogadon.

Autism & Why I'm an Asshole

Epiphanies aren't all they're cracked up to be.

Having a blinding moment of insight usually means that, up until this point, you've been kinda an asshole (and by 'you', I mean 'me').  It's never my favourite moment to realise this.

I was bopping around the house with Finian and he wanted to go for a drive, but something happened that prevented us from going.  Instead of losing his shit, he amped up his inner Zen and shrugged it off.  He met this with an inner calm that surprised me, and I was struck by his acceptance that our change of plan was beyond his control.

We waste an insane amount of time and energy trying to change the unchangeable.  It occurred to me that we have no control over our outer reality.  This seems obvious, but we often act as if we can bend our environment.  But we can't change the weather, or make the driver in front of us speed up, or make our crush fall in love with us.  We can't force other people to see us the way we want them to.  We can't control random occurrences that scupper a road trip with our kids.  These perceived obstacles enrage us and we become consumed with the need to overcome them.  They devour our energy.

Imagine the creativity we could unlock if we channeled all that energy into developing our own inner strengths? 

It all starts with our self-concept, and the lies we tell ourselves to maintain it.

Our self-concept is who we imagine we are.  We construct it from what other people tell us we should be like, as well as who we imagine we want to be.  We build it as a shield to protect our vulnerable Real Self from the judgement of ourselves and others.  So basically, we become who other people want us to be, so that we will be safe and loved.  Eventually, we may come to believe that our self-concept is real.  Our Real Self  may become silenced and we don't achieve the potential we're capable of, depending on the level of judgment we are exposed to. It's kinda a bum deal.  

It's really only through having the courage and insight to dismantle our false ideas about ourselves that we can embrace our inner truth.  The energy we waste trying to maintain our self-concept could be vastly better used to become the best version of ourselves.

We drive ourselves crazy trying to change an unchangeable world to support our self-concept.  We scream at the slow driver.  We blame the weather for being in a bad mood.  We feel victimized by aging. Imagine accepting reality for what it is, free from the terrible anxiety of trying to twist it to fit a false agenda?

Acceptance doesn't mean passively enduring things that are bad for our soul.  It's not the same as giving up.  Finian knows this, and he kindly schooled me by being chill about change.