So, you want to be an anti-racist? But, you’re White? Maybe, you live in an area that is not “diverse”, and you would like to help the International Black Lives Matter movement without asking your One Black Friend or colleague to perform the exhausting emotional labour of explaining British racism and Black History to you?
You first have to stop, listen, never assume, and look inwards, and backwards, at all the ways that you might have internalised and perpetuated the White Supremacy that we all have been brought up with here in the United Kingdom. It’s not going to be a comfortable process but it’s a necessary one if we are to move forward on this Earth in a way that will promote equity for everyone.
A lot of Black History is America-centric and maybe you even believe that the UK does not suffer from the kinds of racism and police violence that are apparent in the United States.
So, if you ‘d like to read about the reality of life in the UK for Black people, address your own prejudices and understand how British White Supremacy manifests itself, a good place to start are these books (covers downloaded from my Audible collection. Also available in other formats and from other retailers):
I’m also going to add this book. It’s not English, but the content spans continents and even can be applied to all types of oppression such as ableism and sexism.
And this, is just a brilliant read.
This is a tiny selection of books but, IMHO, an essential reading list for the budding Anti Racist.
So, I might have been a bit quiet this year, but I’ve had a LOT to get my head around. Back in January I started to do a course named Understanding Autism by Future Learn. I thought that I’d do the course because some friends of my son are Autistic and I thought that if I knew more about it, than I could explain what that meant, to him. Coincidentally, at the same time I came across some YouTube videos about autism in women.
And the penny dropped. The reason behind my crazy messed up life. The reason for my clumsiness of body and speech. The too-many-to-mention mix ups and misunderstandings. The way that I can write fluently yet struggle in face to face communication. Why I can’t stand wool on my skin or scratchy labels in my clothes. Why my parents had my hearing tested as a child because they didn’t think I could hear them. The way I like things neat and clean, and why my ears hurt if it’s too loud. How I can hear electricity and nobody else can. How I literally cannot hear someone talking to me if there is more than one noise of a similar volume going on at the same time. Why I’ve felt like I can fit in everywhere and yet nowhere at the same time. Why I seem to experience time very differently to everyone else. Why I’m different, “other worldly”, “too good for this world”, and even “aggressive” or “patronising” or other such hurtful descriptions for my poor overloaded little soul.
How I’ve been gaslit into thinking that none of the above mattered that my experiences were somehow all in my head and I was making them up. How all the bad things that have happened to me are my fault, because I was a broken, a wrong, a faulty individual. That I deserved it, brought it all on myself, that I am flawed, and nobody else is that accident prone/stupid/careless/naive/other insult.
How I’ve cried and accepted that I was just faulty, damaged, wrong, a square peg in a round hole, a black sheep, defective and somehow deficient because I am unable to cope with things that other people seem to do really easily.
But I’m not. I’m normal. A perfectly normal autistic person and there are thousands and thousands of people out there who are just like me. It was an emotional cannonball. From my initial joy that there are so many people out there who have had such similar experiences of life as me, the confusion and depression hit me as I looked over a whole lifetime of experiences and re-examined them under the lens of autism. I don’t want to go into it all here but I’ve had an unusual life that has been unusually traumatic. The victim-blaming I experienced became even more upsetting now the light of autism has been shone on those dark places.
I’d accepted over the years that I was different from everyone around me, and now I find I am not so unique after all. At first this felt like a betrayal, but is increasingly feeling like a comfort. But the comfort of a community also brings with it the outrage and despair that people like me have been mistreated, institutionalised, misunderstood, misdiagnosed and even killed because we are different. The marginalisation and abuse of autistic people is a heavy burden to share, and it is still very much happening today.
So just as I found I am no longer alone, at the same time, it’s now set in stone that I will never, ever be “normal”. I’ll never be able to enjoy normal social occasions like weddings and barbecues. I’ll always stick out like an awkward sore thumb and I’ll never just blend in and be one of the crowd. Some things in life will just always be hard and upsetting for me and no amount of mindfulness will fix that. And I know, you should be proud to be yourself, and I know I’ve never even wanted to be a Karen but I guess part of me wanted the normal two kids, a husband and financial security. I know that I have talents and skills that your average person doesn’t. But it’s tough.
Online, the #ActuallyAutistic community is strong, and warm, and supportive and I’ve learned so much from my fellow autistics. But then I hop back into real life and realise how little people are aware of autism in my day to day life and how nobody understands or appreciates our struggles. And why should they? Before January, my main image of Autism was a little non verbal white boy, rocking back and forth and maybe screaming and biting people. That it was some kind of brain disorder and that the explanation was the “extreme male brain” theory.
I have only just begun this journey, but I’ve learned that just because we are disabled, it doesn’t mean we are incapable. That autism isn’t a brain defect but a difference in neurological circuitry. I’ve learned that we experience the world with less filters than the neurotypical brain, and therefore our daily experiences are significantly more vivid in many many ways, some of which can be utterly exhausting and overwhelming. I’ve discovered that simple things like headphones can make such a big difference to how tired I get in a day, and that not stimming causes me anxiety. I have to move, always, and this is OK. It’s beautiful to discover things that are helping me, but I have moments of regret, knowing that every area of my past from school results to avoiding abusive situations might have had different outcomes if I had just known I was different.
It’s been a rollercoaster, a bittersweet journey and I’ve barely scratched the surface here of my autistic internal voyage so far. It’s hard to believe that this time last year I didn’t know that I was autistic – or that the professionals that I’ve encountered over the years didn’t spot it either. I’ve still got a way to go till I achieve Autistic Nirvana and lose my well crafted but rapidly cracking mask completely but, I’m hoping, that getting it here in black and white, will help, a little.
Once upon a time ago, when your electrical items broke, you’d pop down to the local repair shop and get it fixed for a few quid.
Now though, these shops are far and few between and planned obsolescence is actually a thing. Ten years of austerity and a climate crisis though have meant that just disposing of broken items and replacing them is no longer wise for our own pocket or for the future of our planet. For me, living on a reduced income as well as my rising panic about the Earth that I am leaving for future generations, meant that I decided to cease needlessly disposing of and replacing things as they broke.
We have a wealth of information at our fingertips – in our pockets – that can help us find out how to repair common household items. All it takes is a small toolkit and a little self-belief and you can save yourself some money as well as having the satisfaction that you’ve empowered yourself to gain useful skills that you can use again and share.
Not everyone is confident enough to repair items themselves though but luckily there’s a worldwide network of volunteer repair people out there to help you. Check on facebook or therestartproject.org and search for your local group, find out when they are next getting together and take your broken items along to a repair party.
The fixers work with you to find out whether your item can be repaired, and work with you to mend your broken items and save them from landfill. Just in Leicestershire alone there are now seven local groups:
strong nuclear force (which keeps atomic nuclei intact) is about 100
times stronger than the electromagnetic force (which creates the light
spectrum), which in turn is up to 10,000 times stronger than the weak
nuclear force (which facilitates the subatomic interactions responsible
for radioactive decay). Three forces, all within six orders of magnitude
of one another. Then comes gravitation. It’s about a million billion
billion billion times weaker than the weak nuclear.
My last post described my experience of anxiety, and a few months ago I found my worst days were becoming my every day, and the good days were a distant memory. I told my GP that my medicine was no longer working and that I needed a swap. To do this, I had to discontinue my old medicine first. Then the games really began. Have you heard of discontinuation syndrome? Nope, neither had I until I asked Dr Google why my anxiety nightmare had levelled up. Add to this a complete inability to focus on anything, remember anything and my sense of the passage of time was making the world a really dreadful place to be in.
Years ago, GPs would provide benzodiazapenes to relieve anxiety and these had a swift and effective action on me, even if the next day was not all that nice. I’d experience a little panic and wooziness when I stopped taking them, but they seemed to press the reset button on my brain and in the context of extreme chronic panic, the side effects were absolutely worth it. This time, when I was going stir crazy in my own body, I was prescribed beta blockers. They knocked the edge off the fear but just made me feel like a really thick dry wedge of cardboard. I really can’t think of any other way of describing it!
Then, I came someone on twitter who goes by the name of Dope Buds . They sell CBD products. Now – I had already researched CBD for anxiety and had decided not to try it because a) marijuana has a very negative effect on me, making me hallucinate and have panic attacks and b) it’s not been medically tested, so nobody knows if it’s truly safe, good quality and has no long term side effects.
However – faced with another two weeks of worsening mental distress and the only medicine I could access to help me through the discontinuation was guaranteed to make me feel like a thick dry wedge of cardboard – I was really, really desperate. So I ordered some Mia Liljana oil, with next day delivery.
I was apprehensive, but I really wasn’t functioning. I was glued to the sofa, too frightened to go outside. Discontinuation Syndrome really is a living hell. I took half of a dropper full.
Within half an hour, the majority of my panic just vanished. I didn’t feel woozy, or sick, or any of the other side effects of every other sedative that is out there. In fact, I was not sedated, i was energised! I felt myself smile, for the first time in weeks. The massive, loud, intrusive fear and internal noise just quietened. It was as though I had stepped out from that awful, noisy, painful, storm, into a peaceful, gentle, colourful new day. I was up, dressed and cleaning the living room.
While some people will no doubt argue that this is the placebo effect, I can only respond that I have never in my life been lucky enough to experience a placebo effect, even when I did believe in homeopathy and acupuncture and the like.
It’s incredible stuff. When I took more, I had no greater effect. There is definitely a personal plateau level. There’s some more information about this on Hempura’s webpage.
So I’ve experimented with a couple of different oils since then. The one I bought was a multi-spectrum CBD. There are also broad spectrum CBD oils, but the broad spectrum didn’t have the same calming and focusing effect of the multi spectrum. It didn’t seem to do much at all.
CBD gummies have the same-ish effect as the oil with the advantage that they are easier consume and the dosing is presumably more accurate. Some people prefer the gummies, like Yumi’s recover & de-stress ones (link for 20% off here), some the oil. I actually really like the earthy smell of the oil.
Since my new medication kicked in again, I still get panicky moments and I find the CBD helpful for this, though the effects are less dramatic because I have a higher starting point, I suppose.
If I could afford a constant supply, I would consider weaning myself off medication and just using CBD oil, but I can’t afford to take it in the quantities that I’d need it.
There are only a few disadvantages that I can see:
The cost. It’s not cheap. I’m not saying that it’s not worth it, but if you don’t have the money, you just don’t have it.
it’s hard to get an accurate dose with a dropper. I’ve considered using a pet micro dosing syringe but I don’t want to waste any because of 1.
There have been no studies of the long term effects.
Have you ever been nervous about an examination or a job interview? We’ve all been on edge at some point in our lives. Most of the time we ride through that worry and come out just fine on the other side. In a few days we will have wondered what we were concerned about.
I’ve been like that too. That kind of worry, for the sufferer of chronic anxiety is really mild and hardly worth a second thought. I suffer from long term, chronic anxiety. I am going to try to describe my experiences to you.
I feel able to talk about it just now in my life because I have been given some new medication and I think it is finally working a little bit. I can talk again, after about maybe a year or terrifying ups and downs. I don’t even know to what extent my anxiety is linked to PTSD, because I’ve had rapes, abuse, and a prolonged period of stalking. I am Autistic, so the world places extra demands on my senses even when my brain is in a non- anxious state. I will talk about Autism, another time.
Anxiety it is not a short term thing. On a bad day, it feels as though the world is full of noisy TV static which is not only a noise but a feeling of intense fear. Colour is dimmed. A thick gloopy grey fog surrounds me. I can see no fog, but I can feel it and my body struggles to move through it, as though gravity is extra strong. The world around me vibrates and is distorted by this static noise-feeling and I struggle to focus on anything. I am lucky to have a good brain that takes me on autopilot for most of my daily tasks, but each task is exponentially more difficult and concentrating on things is super frustrating.
My body tenses up and feels glued to the earth or to the sofa – a kind of feeling similar to that which you feel when you ride a roller-coaster and the gravity pushes you onto your seat . I feel pushed to the sofa, or my back to a wall with some kind of a force. Like when you pull two magnets apart, it takes a real big effort to move from sofa to table, from room to room. Like that moment before the roller-coaster drops, and your breathing is temporarily interrupted, your heart skips beats, but the feeling never goes away.
On a better day I can beat the exhaustion that being in a constant state of alarm gives you, and I can appreciate my dog’s soft fur and the birds singing outside. On a worse day, leaving the house is like a terrifying game of beat the zombies where I just have to focus on my tasks and act normally so that nobody suspects that I am not.like.them. I have to ignore the fight or flight response that my brain has activated and hold it together until I get home. It will take me the rest of the day or even the week to recover.
It affects the whole body.
And it’s very, very, tiring.
There is medicine to reduce it, but, it will always come back in the end.
I often wonder – if in a better society, one where we all had a guaranteed level of security (good healthcare, an universal basic income) in our lives – whether anxiety would decrease across the population.
Whether if I hid my Autism less, my anxiety would lessen.
If poverty and war were a thing of the past, would we all feel more secure?
How long have you been making your freaking amazing chainmaille jewellery?
It’s about 6 years now. I started out with other jewellery making methods but was taken with chains and making them myself. I found the amazing resource that is Maille Artisans International Leage (M.A.I.L. for short) and started teaching myself how to do it. I’m entirely self taught, with the help of the internet.
Tell me a little about the process of making a bracelet. It looks really intricate and tough work.
There are hundreds of different weaves (patterns) you can use, but the very basics are the same for each one. You buy rings that are half closed because of the winding method that’s used, so you either close them or open and then close them. Most bracelets start with closing one ring and opening the next. Sometimes you might close more rings to begin with, especially if you “speed weave”. “Speed weaving” is a time saving measure where you’ll close as many rings as you can to begin with rather than weaving them all in individually. It’s always important to know how to do it the basic way first, though.
I have a time lapse video that I made a few years ago, that shows how I make one of my Pride stretchies. It shows the build-up of a weave called Half Persian 4-in-1 with rubber rings to make the finished product elastic.
What is your one essential tool that you cannot live without?
My pliers! I have a few, but my absolute favourites are the Xuron pliers made especially for chainmaille. I use a 90 degree bent nose and a chisel nose together for almost everything. They can handle anything from 24 gauge to 12 gauge wire, which in metric terms is 0.5mm wire diameter to 2.4mm wire diameter.
Where in the world do you live?
At the moment I’m in Brighton and Hove down on the south east coast of the UK. It’s a lovely, creative and LGBTQ friendly place, with lots of Good People.
I also have an Etsy and an Amazon Handmade shop, but it’s much easier to just find my through my website. 🙂
More creating! If I’m not making chainmaille, I’m probably making macramé or music or crochet or fictional writing or something else creative. I listen to a lot of music as well (Current favourite is Soul Extract, All time favourite is Nightwish), and I cling to my Netflix account like there’s no tomorrow. I also spend a lot of time on the internet, especially talking to friends who live far away (across town or further afield) and pottering about with my web projects.
Have you got any pets?
Sort of – my partner’s cat has adopted me as step-owner. I can’t keep pets in my own place so this is the best I get for now.
What is your favourite book/art book?
I really like the art of H. R. Giger so the Necronomicon is a beautiful book. I’m also a big fan of Warhammer 40,000 art, so any art book that the Black Library has released is probably high on the list too. I like the gothic stuff.
I love to learn. What’s your favourite fact of the day?
I found out last night that in a fire it’s not actually the item itself that burns. The fire makes the item turn to gas and it’s the gas that makes the flames. Mind. Blown.
Mum of two Aspie teenagers. Wife of undiagnosed Aspie. Work part time for children’s charity. In my spare time I craft. I started needle felting in 2013, and have not looked back!
How long have you been making your art?
I’ve been making art all my life. Creativity is so important and therapeutic. I like to paint, I have in the past used fimo, I also do a little jewellery making as I have to make my inner magpie sparkly things.Needle felting has been a constant for me for 7 years. I love it!
Where is the world do you live?
I live in the beautiful garden of Kent. With my family and 5 rescue cats.
What is your one essential tool that you cannot live without?