We won’t forget the impact on our mental health — I live in Australia and when someone recalls the pandemic, what they’re usually talking about is the lockdowns. When the WHO declared a pandemic in March 2020, our governments rapidly imposed a set of measures to protect Australians from the deadly Covid 19 virus. …

I don’t want to end up in prescription jail — NOTE: This story is about my own experiences and does not constitute medical or other professional advice. I’d call today a good day. I did a solid four hours work at what passes for my home office these days. I managed to send emails I’d been putting off, pitch an…

Language matters and the wrong choices can be objectifying and disrespectful — As an autistic adult, I’m fortunate to a enjoy certain amount of autonomy and agency. I can make decisions about how I identify and how I express that to the outside world. …

Autistic gatekeeping and the battle to control the narrative — Harry Styles was the common denominator in two recent stories in the Australian media involving Autistic women. The first is actor and Autistic advocate Chloe Hayden being denied entry into the sensory room at the Melbourne venue for the Harry Styles concert. Hayden was told she was not Autistic enough…

This is how it went — I made my way up to the seminar room on the first floor with very little idea of what I was about to experience. I was going out on a limb, moving well out of my comfort zone. …

The loss is what I have missed out on — I haven’t had any contact with my mother since my father’s funeral last August. I don’t miss her. At all. I feel a kind of guilt due to being hardwired to believe I’m inherently bad and incapable of doing the right thing. …

And what do we mean by visibility anyway? — Full disclosure. At the age of 51, I’m considered a middle-aged woman. I tend to gravitate to things that air the experiences of this cohort and I’ve got a bit to say about mine. In fact, I’m thinking of funnelling them into a novel. It’s a good thing that such…

What does it say about compulsory heterosexuality? — I’ve been listening to a podcast about women who have discovered they are lesbian after being in long term heterosexual relationships. To be clear, this is not my demographic, given that I’ve dated women exclusively (though by no means prolifically) for most of my (three decades long) adult life. There…

The amount of extra invisible work is next level — Just about every week a story about the mental load of something or other drops into my Facebook feed. The concept of a mental load is solid — it came from a lot of fed-up women looking for a way to account for the relentless but invisible labor performed in…