Knitting

Two needles with stitches of heather and gorse and clouds

A child's hat.

Not yet born, but in transit.

The mother fled from Syria to England to Turkey

England is the colour of heather and gorse and clouds.

Yet it splits the family.

I knit on.

Remembering my own family arriving dirty, dishevelled, stinking of long journeys and fish.

Heavy fur hats preserving the dignity of the past into the ridicule of the present.

My great grandmother's hands blistered as she delivered coal by wheelbarrow from house to house

Her daughter's hands blistered on the sewing kit she gained at school - not the reward for intelligence that would have set her free, but the necklace of iron keeping her poor and enslaved.

My father's soul blistered, from the chants of other children

Hating his otherness, his difference, his Yiddishkeit.

His soul blistered from rescuing his father from the pub

Where he drank to hide his otherness, his difference, his Yiddishkeit

Lest his soul blister and burst open.

A butcher needs hands that are unblistered and firm.
To prepare meat and to serve.

My soul is blistered and burst with hatred and fear.
It boils in the shtetl and burst the bridges in the ghettos

In the camp it drowns us.

I knit - heather and gorse and cloud

I pray for the next generation

I pray for peace - in heather and gorse and cloud.

Pittsburgh

Grief clinging like wet mist

Memories fogged by its presence.

White wraiths on the Tree of Life

Bird's flying at the sound of gunshot

May their memory be a blessing

Survival

As I child I learned very early on
That there is no one there.
No one came when I cried
No one came when I fell
No one came when I hurt.

You were always there, but these things were always my fault.
So clumsy! So easily upset!
Or "I know you how you feel
but my pain is MUCH, MUCH worse"
Be in thrall to me

Your illness transcends all
it's the sky of my childhood,
Everything is lived through its storms

Everyone reads the weather better than I
And blames me for not wearing a better coat
Or not knowing when to run
Or being me.

I'm tired

I'm tired of being frightened of late night phone calls
Tired of weary voices telling me you're sick, you're unwell
Tired of letters inviting me to be involved in your care
Tired of the disappointment when I can't
Tired of the relentless anger and fury
Tired of being blamed
Tired of the number of times you threatened suicide and didn't
Tired of the blood pouring out of my nose and my glasses breaking - I was 8
Tired of caring and caring and looking for love
Tired of validation through hate
Tired of seeing you piss on the bedroom floor
Tired of you hearing voices
Tired of the unending fear and suffocating protection
Tired of the hiding
Tired of the shouting and slapping
Tired of counting the days until the next assault
Tired of mapping your moods in my diary
Tired of self-protection to deflect the abuse
Tired of being resented
Tired of not being loved
Tired of being sworn at, beaten and madness
Tired of fear
Tired of hatred
Tired of you.

You were never my mother, only my jailer.
And I'm free

Yesterday's emotions have draped themselves, cloak like around my shoulders.
The material is hard and rough and scratches my skin.
Staring at the pricks of blood I see a map of grief
The continent of depression looms large
but there are islands of hope and "it's not so bad" and "shrugs"
I set sail accordingly.

Remembering the Dead.

How quickly the two worlds collide, rip asunder and we stand in the gap between now and the past.
Heads bowed we remember the dead, the suffering, the sick, the old.
In that sacred space between now and the next moment, we stand and remember.

Then, at the call of the horn, the two worlds are one again, the moment is lost and carries on
The dead are forgotten, back in the graves.
The sick are ignored, the old ones lost.
Their voices half remembered, no longer as bravery but as raised in complaint
Against the wrongs of this world.

Fascism rises

Meteorite

Falling from the sky, I hesitate to catch you.
Burning the ether, no one can miss you.
So fast, so slow, your trajectory terrifies.
I wait until you fall into my arms,
To sleep.


(Waiting for my child to be calm when in the grip of a meltdown).

Joy in small things

Joy in small things
Minute, tiny, twinkles of thought.
In structure and lines
In conversations bigger than the world
In too many things to think at once
In ordering
In beauty that strikes me to the core
Rendering me breathless with bliss
In shapes and stars and dates
In watching the breath and calming the mind
In watching the mind dance on the beauty of thought
In textures soft and smooth and fur
In music, expressing love
In happiness

To Mum

Trapped behind glass,
Breath is constricted by the smudge of emotion,
Words distorted by love that hurts.
I wish my happiness was not such a barrier for you,
I wish we could be happy together,
I wish for the joy from my childhood.

I wish the woman I knew from years ago,
Could still come and comfort me, kiss me, chide me.
Instead this shadow of haunted dreams,
That you seem determined to become

I wish this hadn't been my creation and that you were free to have been that in the first place.
The first place being before I was born.

I wish I could free you,
I can't help you,
I do love you.

No Man is an Island

No man is an island, no woman a continent.
No child a violent storm that rips the world apart,
No parent alone, no child destroyed,
Families,
Love
Together.

No adult alone and housebound
Locked into the bricks of the walls of their home by the threat of the world outside.
Nobody so isolated that non existence beckons them.
No child without a future
No person without hope.
How?

Come together in quiet
Listen to the voices that cannot speak
Respect the gaze that flickers like a candle
In peace let ears rest and words be heard

In love come together
Share ourselves and our lives
Share fear, and panic
Share love, and symbols and hope

Share and be strengthened by sharing
Share, accept and love.

Find ourselves in the eyes of others and in the heart of ourselves
Love makes us one.

Autistic Skin (A life in feeings)

Where the world ends and we begin is a curious thing,
We feel the world through our bones , drape ourselves in it's beauty, clothe ourselves in its majesty.

Sometimes we sense the misery of our friends seeping into feet and chilling our heart
We find ourselves too frozen to answer, powerless to act and cry teas of ice

Sometimes the heat of their happiness burns our skin, charring our embrace, searing our lips just as we want to reach out and congratulate them.

How much more soothing is a woodland walk, tree's lit by dappled sunlight and the dancing of birdsong in our ear drums. How much safer to feel the drumming of our feet on tarmac in the deepest part of our belly, how much wider is the world when we encompass it.

The white branches in our foreheads grow tall and strong, they cover our gaze and we peak out through them.We curl up in their embrace, the twisting of the limbs as they reach out through our senses gives us incredible beauty, incredible sadness, incredible joy.

After a summer storm

When the wind is calm
And the trees unbowed,
We find leaves scattered on the floor
And a million hopes for summer gone
The tree's weep, and so do we.

Winter comes,
Hides all with a thick blanket of snow.
We freeze, the comfort paralyses.

Spring
The tree's start to bud
And our heart's lift.

How a meltdown feels

Assault

Caught in an explosion of feeling I lose my name.
I see snatches of peace, parts of initials, someone is speaking making the air tremble.
Straining my ears against the glare of the world, the cacophony of bird song, tapping of shoes, keyboards, phones, noises, I hear my feelings roaring.
I identify the maelstrom through which I am working is the thunderclap of misunderstood emotion.
An explosion of feeling that erodes my soul.
When it's beautiful I am one with world, to bring me back from the skies and singing too quickly by beeping a horn is brutal and cuts like a knife.
When it's ugly when my child is crying or hurt, I cower underneath black clouds and can see no way out, panicking and churning the swirls of air to find my way out.

Yesterday my child was in danger, today my whole body has erupted in the joy she is safe, and the fear of the maybe's., the what if's and the what will be's?

Who knew that feelings were body wide, soul wide, did not merely make one feel, but made one be. Simply be one solitary thing, but then another comes colliding with the first, a sound is heard,a smell glimpsed, associations are made, randomly, sensibly, the eyes are full and stretched to brimming with the everything of it all.

Call me back, help me label it.
Set it free, set me free.

Fancy some shoes?

“Where would I find enough leather
To cover the entire surface of the earth?
But with leather soles beneath my feet,
It’s as if the whole world has been covered.” 
― Śāntideva

Shantideva was an ancient Buddhist Saint.  I think he has a point don't you?  It's autism awareness day/month and there's the usual dialogue between awareness and acceptance. Both are important, and we all need to practice both - not just for autism, but heart disease, mental illness, cancer, ME, miscarriage, abuse survivors and a million, million other things we as humans are prey too.

What would be really great as well as the acceptance campaigns, would be our own offerings of not knowing, failing to understand but trying to anyway, listening to others and our judgements, and doing our best to notice but move past the latter. As an autistic adult I feel it's imperative to offer both my successes and my failures as part of my autism "story".  There is great happiness in being autistic, great love to be found in the most unusual of places, great peace and clarity in just being.  I want to offer it all rather than just showing the rocking child in the corner - these are snapshots of a life, not the whole of it.

Awareness is wonderful, so is acceptance. Will we find a world covered in leather, or will we take a step first and meet people coming the other way?

These times are special, they inspire awe.
When death is close do we not breathe clearer an with more joy?
Does not every second become more precious?
When life is stripped away, love is revealed.

Sadness and joy. Spending time with my mum in hospital, who is recovering from life threatening gut perforation. She can't speak much as she is still on a lot of morphine.  For the first time ever I am able to have a conversation without worrying about getting it right, wrong, shouted at etc.  So sad I will never have this again.  Joyful to be able to feel that pure love that a child feels for it's parents, when all the abuse is swept away. Bittersweet to realise mum's path is that of severe mental health and that all the interventions over the years haven't managed to shift it. What a life, what is a life without happiness?

Theory of Mind

Deborah comforted a boy at her birthday party who was upset. She next to him and quietly stroked him, visibly calming him  Is that's not theory of mind, I dont know what is.  She's not yet 7, I vividly remember developing my own TOM when I was 10 and it would have taken me years longer to do that.  In awe.

And another thing..

I've actually been really, really poorly! Only realised today when the anti biotics kicked in and removed the chest infection that was a knock off from the viral phlegm thing I had for a month.  So the other nagging thing at my memory was that I was ill and not acknowledging it.

These are all short, boring posts, but am writing them so I MIGHT remember this the next time this combination of seasonal stress/enforced cheerfulnesses and illness hits again....

Stress make me more autistic.

Who would have thought it?  I had such a bad reaction to Christmas as I felt stressed. Stress reduces my coping skills, and makes me feel much more autistic, just like I did as a child.  It's a bit of a bugger to suddenly find I have the skills of an 8 year old when I need to be 42.  At least I know what it is now, and why it was so frightening and familiar to feel like I did.  Not a regression, but gives me much more insight into why D descended this summer.  The stress removed her capabilities, her awareness of such would have made her more stressed, etc.  how to plan a way out? For now, probably just documenting it and awareness will help.

Done it again

Not sure what, but I have. I recognise this in my kids - both get over excited and then meltdown, and I think this is what I do too.  It's really upsetting - today is Christmas and I spent half the day so worried as D has a nasty cough/cold and is so poorly.  We went out for coffee and I was working super hard on keeping her calm and connected.  I was feeling resentful for having to take D out, worried about taking the kids away from their toys, confused as it's also a good thing to do something my husband wants to so, anxious as I was going to be making lunch late, and Christmas lunch is so complicated (It's not) and worried the kids would argue through being hungry and ARGH. It went on and on.  Whilst we were eating I calmed down and then a friend visited this afternoon with her son which was lovely.

Then it was all ok and I started to feel such grief that I'd wasted so much time worrying, and not enjoying the kid's Christmas. I've had 42 now and I remember the day's when my Christmases were in single figures and how special and magical they were.  December has been so much hard work navigating tired child, Michael's HUGE anxieties, nativity plays, and just the social Christmas pressure It's been like an iron band tightening round my head and I haven't had time to notice as I've been so busy looking out for the kids, friends, etc.  I feel numb as I wanted to enjoy Christmas so much by cherishing and adoring my children, but actually it ended being a huge stress despite everything I tried to avoid it.  When we were at the coffee shop, I was so focussed on D, I was actively rude to people who were trying to talk me (I didn't have the attention to spare) and I felt/feel so bloody autistic.  I then feel like I'm having a tantrum to get my own way, which is also true, which then goes around and around and around....

Talking to my friend apparently she was warned off me by her friend who said "I'd lost weight and was outspoken".  Neither of these qualities are bad things, neither should invoke suspicion (loosing weight) or disdain (Being outspoken).  I'm admired for my bravery in being completely honest and I'm open on purpose - to inspire parents/children living with ASD and to show I'm just who I am, and I'm no longer willing to hide.  Except today I needed to hide and didn't, and worried and was out there and missed my children.  I'm grieving for that.