It’s of the most debilitating things I experience as an autistic person — The way sound affects me is possibly the most consistently debilitating part of being autistic. It happens from the moment I wake up in the morning until I doze off at night and even then I’m not free from it. Autistic people process sensory input in atypical ways and can…

There’s room for both of us in this town — I get it. I get that you want to do the very best that you can for your child. You want them to fulfill their potential, to be happy and to belong. I get that being a parent to a child with complex needs can take it out of you…

When you can’t see the forest for the trees — “You know how to write”, she said. “You just need to figure out what you’re writing about.” I signed up to a freelance writing masterclass and I was having my first feedback session with the tutor. I had drafted an article to submit to a mainstream news outlet but I…

I’ve become a little uncomfortable with identifying as lesbian — When I was a confused teenager, I didn’t even know the word for lesbian let alone know any. I knew there were women who were attracted to women but it was spoken about in hushed tones and the language of suggestion and innuendo. It wasn’t part of the real world. …

Me too and I’ve gathered my stories so far here — Exhausted and depleted to the point where I decided to take three months out of paid employment, I figured it was likely I was experiencing Autistic burnout. What I knew about it came from Autistic writers and podcasters generously sharing their lived experience but there seemed to be a glaring…

Why it’s so hard to give your brain the rest it desperately needs — That picture is the tangled branches of my brain enveloped by fog. It’s quite possible that I’ve struck a trifecta of Autistic Burnout, menopause and Covid, all of which can be readily blamed for brain fog. I’ve read quite a bit about Autistic burnout recently, as evidenced by my growing…

Pretending to be someone you’re not is exhausting — For many people who first identify that they are Autistic later in life, it’s the experience of burnout that sends them on a journey of discovery. That was definitely the case for me. It wasn’t until life as I knew it came to an abrupt halt in March 2020 that…

Women don’t need protecting, they need respect — I’m actually not that interested in Will Smith. Or Chris Rock. Or the history between them. I don’t care. And this fiasco will probably have blown over by next week when something equally graphic and shocking nudges it from the spotlight and the Academy knuckles down and goes into damage…

And making changes for the future — I’m one month into a desperately needed three-month break from full-time work. During that time I’ve read a lot about autistic burnout in an effort to understand how to get through it and the long term changes I need to make. You can find some background information about autistic burnout…