Lost

Lost my compass long ago..
In the river called sacrifice

Mother was teaching me to smile:

“Sadness, anger and fear are ugly,” she said
You must let them drown
Obediently I threw them away
To the bottom they sunk down

Unaware, my compass drowned with them
She forgot, it was bound
Like words and their meaning,

One can’t exist without the other

Oh but, smiling was easy now!
So I wore mine like a stain

Then at night
When all was quiet
I could hear the sounds
Of the things I’d drowned
beginning to cry out

Years passed.
I left home,
Hoping to find my path
But without my compass
I wandered around
The pieces I lost became loud

One day i met someone
He liked my smile
He took my hand and led the way
Let me borrow his compass too
The things I sacrificed never died
Just went quiet for a while

​At times​ along the road
bright red flags would wave
We passed them by​, paid no heed
I’d become colorblind​ anyhow

I guess my friend grew tired
Of being followed around
Not ready to be discarded

I did what I knew how

Look away when he sighs
​Don’t see the anger in his eyes
At night, wander through our words again
“I’m OK” :) I say
More proof I’ve gone insane

Years go by,

I have learned:

Ugly parts drown, never die

Just grow loud and angry at times
demanding to be found

It’s too bad
Try as I might
This smile is sticking around

Most parents struggle but still have an underlying peace and joy about having kids.

Some struggle far beyond that, they exist in a space where they find very little or no joy. It’s better to admit it than to lie to yourself about liking it.

When you hate being a parent, you don’t have many safe places to actually say that out loud. Regular society simply isn’t equipped for that kind of talk - they haven’t been exposed to the dark side of truly dysfunctional families.

It’s scary for people to consider that the magical dust of unfailing love didn’t fall upon you and now you’re in charge of another human life.

So struggling parents go into hiding with their shame. But no one wants to hate their kids.

I get it

At 28 when I decided to have kids I felt terrified. I had never known good parenting or experienced things like being taken care of. I was hit. I was ignored. Was not asked if I was ok if I was hurt and bleeding. Or taken to the doctor after standing on a nail. Or allowed to cry after I burned my hand on the stove.

I was afraid of becoming my mum whom I disliked and was terrified of (also not a choice kids make).

After my first was born, I gradually became sleep deprived. And without help from family, I became exhausted. With no friends with kids, weeks were super lonely. My son was also high needs (I didn’t know at the time he was autistic and struggling with his own life on this planet). He cried all the time, even when I tried so hard to make him happy. I started to feel like I didn’t like my son. This lasted until he was 3 years old.

I’m going to be honest and not sugar coat it. I have a lot of regrets - things I’m ashamed of.

There were moments where I screamed at him to stop crying. Where I practically launched him onto the cribb, slammed the door and ran upstairs to cry. I hit him on the leg once in frustration from his crying. In those days, I’d wished I never had kids and cculd just have my old life back.

My dream of having a happy parenting experience was slipping away. However, knowing I was becoming my own mother was unbearable. I couldn’t live with myself.

So I got help.

What needs to be said

It’s not normal to hate your kid. If you hate your kid, please understand it’s not your fault. In my case, I had some growing to do. I wasn’t a hateful person inside, but I needed some better tools in my toolbox, quick.

Asking for help was probably the biggest thing I did differently to my mum and if she had been able to admit she was hurting me because she was lacking the skills she needed, I believe we would still probably have a relationship today.

Anyhow I found a child psychologist and read books like Boundaries and How to do the Work. The support and understanding of these mentors meant I was able to slowly untangle myself from the vines of my past.

It took about 3 years and was the best thing I ever did. It probably saved me from lifelong depression and divorce too.

Here are the thoughts, beliefs and the habits that slowly freed me from disliking parenthood and ultimately gave my kids the mum they deserved. I hope this will help someone.

• Your’e not destined to stay stuck or become your parents. Their flaws aren’t in your DNA, it’s in your nervous system.

• You don’t have to be present for your kids or say yes all the time.

• Full control is a lie. Children are their own person with their own choices and their own goals. You cannot force them to sleep, eat, sit in a seat or pram or stop crying. None of these things are in your control. The sooner you accept that, the better you can deal with not having those things happen.

• You can either embrace chaos or loose your sanity. Pick one.

• It’s ok to put the baby down somewhere safe, and let it cry.

• It’s better to leave the room for a bit than to ignore your warning signs then lose it.

• Parenting without help, good sleep, regular breaks, social interaction or regular time apart from your baby, means your nervous system is in a constant state of burnout. You’re not crazy! Your brain is just fried!

• Forget cleaning and forget “looking put together”. They’re not important right now. Replace time spent on these things with time for self care: have a proper shower. Journal daily. Speak out loud kind things to yourself. Create mental images of you parenting calmly. Sit with your eyes closed.

• Know your triggers. My trigger was noise. Sometimes I put earplugs in. Other times I embraced it, matched it, turned the music up, yelled along with the kids like a crazy lady. That lead to some super fun times I have to say!

• The moment you feel yourself being triggered, remove yourself from the room. Even just a minute of distance can help calm you down so much! If you’re in the car, there’s not much you can do. Once you can be alone, go do five big belly breaths or a grounding activity of your choice.

• Repair. If you yell at the kids, say sorry. Always say sorry. Proper sorry looks like this (don’t take shortcuts!): Acknowledge you made them scared / hurt them. Explain you don’t want to be angry, but you feel overwhelmed and tired sometimes. Explain that you haven’t managed your emotions as well as you should have. Tell them you are trying to do better. Their patient, loving response will heal your heart like nothing else.

• Reparenting yourself openly in front of your kids by talking honestly about your mistakes is the single best thing you can do to heal and is an incredible teaching tool, use it often.

• Boundaries + consequences. Enforce your boundaries with fair consequences. A boundary without a consequence is just a suggestion.

• Don’t let your kids be assholes because it makes it harder to like them. Understand what behaviour you can tolerate and you can’t.

• If you can’t tolerate something, apply a consequence. e.g. take away a favourite toy or privelage for a while. Or give them space from the thing that is challenging them. Always give a warning first.

• Remember: a boundary without a consequence is just a suggestion.

• Always enforce consequences but do it camly. Once you raise your voice, you’ve lost your moment and your child can’t learn. They’re focusing on their own fear of you. If you lose it, apologise and try again next time.

• Remember: you are not responsible for your kids emotions. It’s not your job to ensure they never cry. If you enforce a consequence, and they cry, let them feel what they need to feel. Comfort them if they need it.

Final Words

It’s never too late. My kids arte 6 & 8. I enjoy the heck out of them nowdays. Am I perfect? No. Do I still loose my marbles and let my kids down? Yes. Am I still learning how to parent everyday? Also yes.

We don’t have to be perfect. We can focus instead on repair. Put your energy into being a confrontable person. Someone who can discuss their own mistakes without shame or hiding. Practice having lots of open conversation with your kids about feelings and growth as it’s healing.

And start by loving yourself first.

^{If this article helped you, please share it with someone you know is struggling.}

^{If you want to learn more parenting strategies like these, I’ve written an ebook + workbook. Download for free here}

There’s a general perception around Autism that it comes with “antisocial” behaviour as somewhat of a personality trait: that the lack of eye contact, bluntness and desire to play alone is a preference.

What I want the world to understand is that what is often assumed is preference, is actually a protective mechanism.

It’s wrong to assume Autistic people “have” antisocial behaviour as a result of the disorder instead of as a result of experiencing rejection.

This distinction is one that we need more educating about and not enough voices are talking about it.

To give a quick example of what I’m talking about take eye contact.

Autistic children avoid it, but it’s usually written off as personal preference. But this is only half the picture, the full one being that if a child constantly experiences being misunderstood, eye contact becomes unsafe. It becomes tricky, scary. And it stops.

The logic follows: if something hurts you, you avoid it. You learn: don’t do that! It’s dangerous.

So fear, not preference is often the real reason behind the lack of eye contact. Can you imagine what that must be like? Yet I hear things like:

“Autistic people don’t like eye contact.”

“Autistic people prefer to play alone.”

The implications are that Autistic children are choosing disconnection.

That they are less interested in people. Less emotionally engaged.

This ignores the fact that their social needs are entirely similar to the rest of the population.

It minimises their humanity.

Autistic children are often simply doing the most logical thing and yet we are labelling them antisocial.

High Needs?

When Benji was three, we went to see a child psychologist because I was worried about him being so sad. Everything seemed to make him cry. We struggled to understand why.

I remember sitting there crying and telling her: “I just want to make him happy.”

The psychologist told us that for a high-needs child, the world itself can feel overwhelming.

He wasn’t high needs. The world was asking too much of him.

This is another example of labelling and how language shapes our understanding of a problem.

The Heart Balloon

A year later, when Benji was four, we attended birthday party with an entertainer. I noticed immediately Benji chose to play alone and not sit with the group.

He sat by himself, playing in the grass. I encouraged him to join the group.

Still he pottered around insisted on sitting in my lap, far away from the activity.

Then the entertainer started making balloon creations for the boys. He asked them to tell him what they wanted him to make:

“Sword!”

“Gun!”

“Spaceship!”

The boys named their choices and pretty much asked for the same things.

When it was Benji’s turn he asked for a heart. A pink one.

And something about that moment broke me. I truly realised just how differently Benji was experiencing the world to everyone else for the first time (I didn’t know he or I were Autistic then but began to suspect it). What mattered to him most, was connection.

Was a big old symbol of love.

Yet the big bright and bouncing heart he held was in stark contrast to his own, one struggling to stay afloat and in isolation of the rest of the world.

Benji didn’t prefer being alone and never had.

When I began to understand language was important

Since then so many parent / teacher interviews, therapy sessions and assessments have revealed the same thing: a deeply troubling language of Autism.

Statements like:

“We want to keep him from falling behind”

“How do we minimise the challenges?”

“How can we close the skills gap?”

It’s really another way of saying: How do we make this Autism go away? Autism is the problem.

But it’s not.

Language is the problem. Our inability to correctly understand the Autistic experience and use the right language to talk about it so that this understanding can be shared: it’s an environmental problem, not an individual one.

If our starting point is “eliminate the problem” instead of “understand the problem”, we will continue to miss the clues that matter most!

Instead the solution is painfully simple:

Stop changing them. Start by making them feel safe.

Safety Changes Everything

When eye contact becomes safe, they will make more eye contact.

When speaking up becomes safe, they will use their voice.

It makes sense.

A person (Autistic or not) would rather quietly withdraw rather than risk embarrassment or misunderstanding. I’m ashamed to think how often I misunderstood and didn’t try to understand.

Eye contact still becomes less used at home whenever he feels unsure of himself. When he is afraid of saying the wrong thing. When he worries he is demanding too much attention.

As a mother, how could I possibly think of reminding him to make eye contact when I know it’s not the issue? In fact it might be downright emotionally and psychologically damaging to try to force a child to do something that feels threatening to their safety.

I wish someone had explained it to me earlier. However, I’m grateful that I am also Autistic because I believe that is why I’ve managed to understand what’s really going on.

Autistic children don’t have less need for connection. They need a softer, more attentitve environment to find it. They need a world that is more patient, more warm and more gentle that the one they currently have.

At home, where we slow down and reassure him constantly, he blossoms.

At home he knows we will keep trying to understand him until we do. He knows his voice matters here.

Final Words

Autistic children don’t prefer disconnection! They withdraw because they learn connection is too emotionally risky, confusing, exhausting, or humiliating very early in life.

Many children are carrying the invisible burden of trying to minimise themselves. Thanks to language, they’ve internalised that they are the problem.

When we as a society can stop projecting Autistic behaviour as defiance, avoidance, selfishness, argumentativeness, or disinterest…the Autistic experience will be a very different one.

Therapy will focus on building confidence by starting with the environment and people around them. Their teachers. Their parents. Their siblings.

Not with them.

I didn’t cry in front of any one for about 20 years until a few years after I met my husband.

Once when I was 6 or 7 & sitting at the computer crying one day (I don’t remember why) my mother came up gently, smiled and held a small mirror in front of my face so I could see it and said,

“See how ugly you look when you cry?”

Fast forward to age 10 and I remember needing a hair cut. I asked to go to a hairdresser but mum offered to cut my hair instead. I asked her to cut it just below my mid back.

She immeditely cut it under my ears without asking permission.

“Why did you do that!!?” I cried.

She replied with a smug grin “I wanted to see what you would look like. It doesn’t look good!” And laughed. I went to my room and cried.

I felt betrayed and heart broken.

My mother made many mistakes. Some cut deep. Today, I keep in touch through letters.

In the years after, when I was doing alot of re-parenting and healing work I had a moment of realisation. It was perhaps one of the most surprising discoveries and it significantly changed my own parenting style.

The truth about what broke our relationship was this: It wasn’t her mistakes that that eventually pushed me away. It was the lack of repair.

Without it, I didn’t have any humanity to cling to and I also internalised the rejection as “I’m a useless child.”

All I ever needed was to hear something like “Lydia, I’m sorry. I’m not well and I’m struggling a lot to be the parent you need me to be. I know I lash out at you unfairly. It’s because I feel like I’m failing. It’s not your fault and I’ll try to do better.”

And that would have healed so much of what was broken and importantly, it would have protected me from internalising her actions my fault.

What showing up looks like

Back to the present. You probably have had at least one of these thoughts in the last week:

“Am I doing enough?”

“have I done the right thing?”

“I wish I was more patient”

“I’m a terrible mum”

“I’m tired of being a mum. Today I wish I wasn’t”

These are reflections and the kinds of thoughts (especially the last one) that don’t actually stem from bad parenting but from mental exhaustion and often absence of a strong support system.

You are enough.

I bet that you have recently laid into yourself for losing your temper over something small. Even if you have made attempts to apologise to your child for not controlling your emotions as well as you wished, that is an incredible parenting moment that builds trust and a deeper relationship.

The effort we make to repair is truly one of the most precious gifts you can give a child. Just one sorry would have changed everything between me and my mum.

Mistakes are not failures. Our desperate cries of “why doesn’t anyone listen to me!?” are not doing the damage we think they are.

I became a silent child because I knew it wasn’t safe to talk. So perhaps, another way to look at it is like this:

If your child complains, cries or tells you things...it’s very likely that this is a sign that they feel safe enough to do so.

My belief is that if a child doesn’t feel loved to their core, connection requests like:

“Look at me mummy” or

“Can you play with me?”

begin to simply dissappear.

However, if you are still struggling with guilt, there is one thing you can do this year to be an even better mum! Pay more attention to your own wellbeing!

My belief is that if my mum had done this, she might have learned to love herself enough to ask for help.

I’m not just asking, I’m begging: mums please be kind and love yourselves.

Tell yourself kind things. Try to remember the moments in the day when you hugged your child and told them you loved them. Remember the times you did play. Remember that you read them a story. Remember how you put that bandaid on them and told them it was going to be ok.

Children don’t need us to be perfect mums. They won’t measure the depth of your relationship by how many perfect moments you shared. Instead, they’ll remember the times you let them talk openly about hard topics, confront you about messy feelings and the times you tried again.

You are enough. Repair matters more than perfection.

Content Warning: This post contains themes of child abuse that may be distressing to some readers. Reader discretion is advised.

....

A nightmare I had last night...

me being 5. him ‘A’ using plastic gloves. not asking for consent. not asking if i was ok. not asking if I wanted him to keep going.

+++

me being a mother. him ‘B’ (completely different person) talking about doing something similar to my daughter. me saying no you have to ask her. her saying no she doesn’t want that. me feeling relief that she would stay safe but being filled with disgust that I allowed the conversation to happen.

+++

driving into a carpark with him “B” and seeing him “A” there with a friend. Hiding in the car feeling hatred and disgust and loathing.

....

By the time I was around 4 or 5 I knew everything there was about sex. I don’t know how, can’t remember. Guessing it was porn. Interestingly, and perhaps thankfully, I didn’t know it was supposed to feel like anything - I just knew all the ways it could be acted out.

- Other memories from around that time were being forced to sit on the couch for hours while I was left home alone

- Getting third degree burns from a bath tub my mother filled up, didn’t check and left me alone with

- My mother raising a knife at my dad

- Stepping on an exposed nail and not being taken to a doctor

- A recurring dream where whispering gradually became louder it was screaming then I’d wake. Interestingly it always started with the image of a doorknob?

Anyhow things weren’t great at home so I believe it’s a good thing my parents split shortly after I turned 5. Dad decided to move 4 hours away for job opportunities which meant I’d visit once a month over the weekend.

By the time I was around 10, ugly feelings of hatred toward my dad began to fill my little heart just as it had for my mum a few years prior. I’m still finding my words and don’t know how to explain things well. It was the accumulation of a lot of small but consistent things.

I had began to dislike him because he openly (and often loudly in public) said racist, sexist, things. He was also a lecherous perv and often drove in a way that made me fear for my life (and ignore me if I asked him to stop).

At home he was also violent to my brother, not to me. I tried very hard to keep everyone happy but it never worked. I’d get tired of yelling “stop! stop!” and just walk out of the room or out of the house because no one would listen to me.

Boarders would stay which meant sometimes I’d be asleep in the loungeroom and a man I didn’t know would come in and start watching tv.

However the final nail in the coffin when I was about 12 and Aaron was apparently old enough to go out at night (he was only two years older than me), leaving Dad and I alone together. Dad started putting on porn for us to watch. Most were foreign films. But I still remember Boogie Nights because it was one of the few where there was also lots of acting and speaking.

All I wanted to do was leave but I’d just sit there, silent and terrified. I didn’t know what would happen next.

At the time I was also suffering psychological abuse at my other home (with mum). That was tearing me apart. I wanted to tell him but because of the porn that I felt too unsafe and decided not to. If I told him, it would mean living with him and I didn’t want to do that. In my mind I was literally afraid of being raped. I don’t believe he would have but for whatever reason that’s what I felt scared of at the time.

In the end I chose to stick with the psychological battering of mum over the physical threat of dad.

Over the years, my hate and my memories got so buried I wonder if I’d have ever dug it up again if I didn’t become a mother myself.

Seeing my children, looking at their faces ...all I wanted to do was love and protect them at all costs. I could not imagine hurting them the way I had been hurt....so what had happened to me?? This was my first light bulb moment and I had many moments of clarity after that.

Like finally understanding that my hatred had never been my fault. My anger wasn’t a sin or a character flaw, just was my natural alarm system going off.

For most of my life I had believed that all the anger in my heart meant something was wrong with mnot something trying to protect me. It took decades to realise that anger is not the enemy and you can’t fix yourself by silencing it.

Finally in 2020 I decided to confront the past. I wrote letters to my mum, brother and dad, sharing what I remember and how it had hurt me. By this stage in life, I had learned well never to expect to be seen or understood. I certainly did not expect reconciliation.

Dad had surprised me by responding without deflection. Instead he simply admitted what he did and said “sorry.” Because of that I decided to stay in touch with him. He still crosses boundaries from time to time but is significantly better behaved than before. We even have a somewhat normal relationship now. One I’m grateful for.

I’m grateful that having kids revealed I wasn’t ok. I’m also grateful for writers like Dr Henry Cloud and Dr Nicole Leperra who’s books helped me understand my anger. Also to and who I think of as my “trauma healing through writing” mentors.

We only hide the parts of ourselves we’re ashamed of. Today, thanks to these people, I’m finally starting to write about it and know I don’t have to carry it alone.

As a mum, I spend a lot of time educating my kids about tough topics. Things like equality, poverty, and racism come up daily, usually during car trips to and from school.

The way we parents navigate so many intense subjects without traumatising our kids should be a recognised skill set!

Though I admit, I often struggle to find the right words and don’t always feel that I have adequately addressed the issues they raise.

Take the opportunity to educate: Don’t just let things go

Correcting harmful ideas before they unconsciously sprout into something more sinister is like plucking weeds from a garden. It’s constant but oh so important. Each day, our children inevitably hear or see a multitude of messages as they interact with the world.

Some are great; some are ... bad.

I want to share one that at first seems harmless and discuss it because, as we unpack it, a couple of pretty harmful messages arise.

My five-year-old chose a book recently from the school library. The book is titled:

“What does your Daddy do?”

This seemingly warm-hearted question hides generations of harmful and outdated beliefs.

Let’s unpack it.

“What does your daddy do?”

The four main issues I have with this are:

1. It pushes men back into the “provider” box

2. It devalues mothers’ equality

3. It encourages comparison and societal ranking

4. It misses what really matters to kids

Issue 1: Assuming Men’s role as the main provider

It’s important to start using language that supports a variety of family structures. The idea of a traditional nuclear family structure where men carry the burden of being the main provider is outdated.

Men have felt the weight of this expectation for generations, and it has taken a toll on their health and wellbeing.

Instead, widening our thinking about what fatherhood looks like gives men the freedom to choose without facing negative social stigma.

Issue 2: Implying men’s and women’s roles aren’t equal.

For starters why isn’t the title: “What do your parents do?” Only mentioning Dads, excludes mothers from the category of people who work.

The book title assumes the following:

1. Men work

2. Women don’t

3. Fathers deserve admiration for their hard work

4. Mothers don’t

These enduring assumptions are mechanisms by which bias and inequality are allowed to continue to operate. Unconscious or not, the harm done is the same.

Issue 3: Comparing a person’s rank in society according to title

In a class setting, asking “What does your Daddy do?” would get some varied answers:

“My dad is unwell and stays at home.”

“My dad is a CEO.”

“My dad is in jail.”

“My dad isn’t around.”

Naturally, kids compare answers. It’s very easy for them to internalise shame from not being able to give an answer expected by the book. They might end up feeling judged, confused, left out, embarrassed, or “less than” their classmates.

That’s too much of an emotional burden for a child to bear over something they can’t control.

Issue 3: Kids don’t care about titles, so let’s not make them

I don’t believe kids care about what other dads do to put food on the table. Until they are asked, they probably never think about it at all.

You know what they do care about, though?

• Who helps take care of them

• Who plays with them

• What makes their family special

• What their favourite things are to do with their family

These questions focus on what matters: relationships, love, and belonging.

Final thoughts

Parents have the difficult task of correcting harmful unconscious messaging. These messages pop up everywhere and reflect the issues that were “normalised” in previous generations.

Books like “What does your Daddy do?” may seem harmless, but they unconsciously teach children to measure people by their job title, make fathers solely responsible for provision, exclude mothers from the conversation, and isolate children whose families are different.

As parents, we must learn to recognise these messages and actively replace them with language and stories that invite curiosity and inclusion.

Intro

Abū al-Rayhān Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Bīrūnī was born in 973 AD just outside ancient Kath, the capital of Khwarezem. A country who’s culture, cities and language are now lost to time. They would have been located in the place Uzbekistan is now.

His father died when he was very young, but his mother remarried a member of the royal Khwarizmian family, a man who loved science. He taught Al-Birani to love science too.

As child he began to be mentored by a Greek scholar, who further kindled his love of natural sciences.

Al-Biruni decided to devote his life to truth and learning. He eventually became an expert in astronomy, mathematics, physics, geography, medicine, history, philosophy and humanism and writing over 100 books in the course of his life, though only 27 of these survived.

His main interests were:

• Why do objects fall toward the Earth?

• How big is the planet?

• What can we learn from different cultures?

Paths Untrodden

He felt a calling to go seek out knowledge from other places so in his 20s, he traveled extensively throughout Persia.

Then at age 44, his country was conquered and he was taken to Ghazni (modern Afganistan). Despite being a hostage, he soon was apointed astrologer to the king and would travel with him regularly to India.

Al-Biruni became fascinated by India. At age 45 he decided to learn Sanskrit so that he would be able to understand Indian science and philosophy in it’s original language, just as he had done Greek and Persian literature.

He said:

“I have found it very hard to work my way into the subject, although I have a great liking for it, in which respect I stand quite alone in my time, and although I do not spare either trouble or money in collecting Sanskrit books...Hindu scholars who understand them and are able to teach me.”

His humility and respect allowed him to develop a relationship built on trust with the Hindu scholars. Because of this strong connection, they agreed to teach him their language.

Legacy

Al-Biruni lived during medieval period, which makes his discoveries all the more impressive. He challenged many assumptions of that time and made discoveries like:

• All objects are drawn toward the center of the Earth. This was the earliest recorded idea of gravitational attraction which Isaac Newton built upon later

• Discovered trigonometry as a way to measure the earths radius and the height of mountains

• Rejected the then held view that the earth stood still, believing the Earth rotated on it’s axis

• Rejected the common idea that knowledge be accepted based on tradtition and authority. Instead, he insisted on measurement, experimentation, and observation

• Invented “hydrostatic balance” as a way to measure density of metals and gemstones

• Predicted the landmass of America existed (this was proven 400 years later)

Humility in Scientific Method

Perhaps these are not the greatest contributions to science Al-Biruni made. He was also one of the first scientists to study other religions, cultures and beliefs.

He was not afraid of different religions and beliefs, like the other scholars of his time. Instead, he went out of his way to understand them. He carried an open mind, always ready to learn. He said, famously:

“We must not criticize a belief before we understand it.”

His desire to see things clearly, without being clouded by distrust or bias was his superpower.

He was also the easrliest recorded to remove astrology from astronomy and introduce empiracal observation and repetition into his scientific method. He wrote that these qualitites were what separated true science from mere superstition:

• Careful observation

• Measurement

• Reason

• Humility

This last one surprised me, and I’m sure modern day science would do well to add humility back into to their methodology, just as Al-Biruni did.

Closing

Today, Al-Biruni is recognized as one of the greatest scientists of the medieval world.

He didn’t achieve this level of genious through science alone, but through a deep desire to understand humanity. His life proves that a humble mind surpasses bias and overcomes fear of the unknown, including cultural differences.

He understood that truth is too large to belong to only one nation; it must be searched for everywhere. His determination to connect cultures through writing books about them, became a bridge between Greek, Persian, Indian, and Arab nations. He brought all of their ideas together and as a result, all of humanity learned from all of them.

Al-Biruni truly was a unique thinker. Thanks to this, he changed how we understand the world.

---

I hope you liked this story and got something out of it. I’ve been inspired to continue to re-tell the stories of amazing people across time. Re-telling these stories is important now… it reminds us who we are as humans, rekindles our hope in humanity, and inspires us to all think off script.

Leymah was a regular kid, growing up in Libera. She loved basketball and had dreams of going to med school, and becoming a pediatrician.

She was taught by her mentors, all humans were equal.

They always said to us was, “look at your five fingers, they are all not equal, but they all live on the hand together in harmony so and they need each other.” So that was the kind of lessons that [we] were taught.

Then the war came.

It was the first of two civil wars and it began in 1989. Suddenly, witnessing her teachers speaking so divisively and it seemed they didn’t really believe people were equal after all. This shattered her world.

At just 17 she saw the result of war. She wanted to make it stop, but doubted how one person could do anything.

She felt angry at society for lying to her, angry at the adults in her life for not protecting her, angry at seeing children eating from dumpsters.

First Steps

She allowed her anger to transform into determination.

While the war raged on, she studied trauma counselling and social work. Her first job was with a group of former child soldiers. Though she was relauctant at first (believing them to be part of the problem), she soon realised her first impressions about them were wrong.

The ability to see and understand people was her superpower.

She felt a call to approach their wives, hoping to help them heal too and see hope for their future. She felt a strong protective pull toward helping women.

Around this time, she began to see herself as an activist and again felt another calling, this time to quit her job, return home and launch a “Women in Peacebuilding Network” group there.

Gathering Hope

She began training women from all walks of life. She taught on everything from how to deal with conflict in marriage, religion, parenting, how to lead others to peace.

Her focus was on teaching women that by healing and teaching their families about peace, they were taking a political stance.

But first, she had to rebuild the women up and fill them with hope again. Many had been broken by the war. She recalls taking a group of women out for a social event to relax and have a good time.

…one time we said to them, “Dream of what you’ve never done that you’ve always dreamt of doing.” And, one Muslim woman said her dream was to always dress like a Christian and she always dreamed of wearing a blue dress, red shoes, and a red hat. We made that dream come true for her. We’d do fashion show, we’d do all kinds of things. Building their self-esteem.

The women who left her group, were so full of love and hope that it spilled out amongst the other women in their lives. This is how Leymah gathering more than 15 groups of women into her peace movement.

One day, the women came to her and asked to do a “Peace Outreach Project.” She supported them, and lead them. Soon after that, the women came to her again and said “we want to protest.” So they did.

Marching

They began protesting outside of the Embassy’s and parliment buildings. They also wrote many letters and wearing white clothes demonstrate their peaceful protest of war. Christian and Muslim women stood side by side. Leymah continued to train them, build up their self esteem and self belief.

Some people laughed at them. Others said women had no place in politics. But they kept marching, singing, and praying following the boldness of Leymah.

Perhaps the most daring of Gbowee’s actions was her direct intervention in peace negotiations. She and her fellow activists blocked doors to critical meetings, refusing to allow negotiators to leave until they committed to ending the war.

“We were determined to make our voices impossible to ignore,” she said. “If the men wouldn’t bring peace, we would not let them leave without it.”

Breakthrough

Their persistence paid off. In 2003, Liberia’s civil war finally ended, in no small part due to the courage of these women. Gbowee’s efforts were recognized globally when she received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011, becoming the first Liberian to earn this honor.

In 2012, she founded the Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa (GPFA), an organization focused on empowering women and young people to lead peacebuilding efforts across Africa.

Leymah’s story proves peace does not always have to come from higher ups. It can emerge from homemakers. Power can be found in unity, bravery, and persistence.

In her own words, “You don’t have to sit back and wait for the world to change. Sometimes, you just have to stand in the middle of it and refuse to let it continue as it is.”

Her determination proves that even in the darkest times, ordinary people, even broken ones, can change history.

I hope you liked this story and got something out of it. I’ve been inspired to continue to re-tell the stories of many amazing people that humanity has produced. I believe telling these stories connects us, rekindles hope, and reminds us to see the good in humanity again.

Coffee offer something else than a buzz, a better personality, or a way to tolerate emails. They also help your bowels get moving.

That’s because coffee contains a bunch of bio-active compounds that stimulate your intestines to move in a way that you would do if you were going to poop.

Let’s explore what these bio-active compounds are.

FUN FACT: Coffee “beans” are actually seeds

What’s Inside a Coffee Bean?

Coffee beans contains near 100 compounds. Thats too many to discuss in one humble post but for those scientifically inclined, the most important ones that help you poop are:

• Chlorogenic acids – “bitter” antioxidants that affect digestion

• Lactones - more bitterness caused by roasting

• Phenylindanes - caused by higher roasting temps

• N-alkanoyl-5-hydroxytryptamides – stimulate gastric acid

• Diterpenes – influence gut hormones

• Melanoidins – act like dietary fiber

• Magnesium – gently relaxes smooth muscle (including intestines)

• Caffeine – magnifies effect

The Real Reason Coffee Makes You Poop

Contrary to popular belief, it’s not caffeine.

The key lies in coffee’s bitter compounds that stimulate GRS: gastrocolic reflex stimulation.

GRS is the body’s coordinated response to make us poop. Basically, coffee tells your body the rumour that food is coming, even if it’s not. Your colon reacts accordingly, assuming it’s go-time, and clears the way for the non-existant food to arrive.

So it’s less of a laxative effect and more of a sly deception.

FUN FACT: Even decaf makes you want to poop. Thats becausue the effect isn’t actually caused by caffeine.

The Chain Reaction In Detail

From coffee cup to colon contraction, here’s how it works:

(TL:DR - the bitterness in the coffee makes your body want to get rid of it, and triggers your stomach to move as if it’s getting rid of poop).

Vagnus Nerve Stimulation - Pathway One

1. Bitter Taste Receptors (Throat)

   Before you finish swallowing, receptors in the back of your throat sense bitter compounds in coffee (chlorogenic acids, phenols and trigonelline derivatives).

   which sends a signal to vagus nerve.

2. Vagus Nerve

   The vagus nerve triggers the urgent release of Gastrin (a hormone that tells your stomach to make Gastric Acid).

3. Bitter Taste Receptors (Stomach)

   When coffee reaches your stomach, receptors detect bitter compounds which results in two things:

   1. Sustained Vagnus Nerve Stimulation tells your brain to make more stomach acid quickly and continue to release gastrin for a longer time

   2. Gastrin is made - Gastrin is a hormone that tells your stomach to make HCL

4. Hydrochloric Acid (HCL) Production

   The above two steps cause your stomach to make HCL.

   HCL is your body’s way of protecting you from potential threat found in foods. (It is thought that bitterness was once linked to potentially toxic foods. Back then, humans developed a way to protect from the potential hazard by releasing HCL and ensuring the food is moved through the body quickly).

5. The acid means pH levels in your stomach drop sharply.

6. Gastrocolic reflex stimulation

   A sharp drop in pH is detected by the vagus nerve and triggers the gastrocolic reflex.

7. Gastrocolic Reflex Stimulation

   The colon begins to contract, moving any contents forward quickly.

8. Caffeine Amplifies response - Caffeine enhances vagal and neural activity and makes your stomach cells more responsive (a more intense response).

FUN FACT: Your stomach has receptors for sweetness, umami, fatty acids and bitterness.

Timeline (Very Important)

• Seconds: Bitter taste → vagal activation

• 1–3 minutes: Gastrin begins to rise

• 5–15 minutes: Peak gastric acid levels

• 10–30 minutes: Gastrocolic reflex → colon contraction

This timing matches real-world “coffee urgency.”

Does Coffee Affect Everyone the Same Way?

Just like everything else in life, we all experience things differently. It comes down to habit, hormones and genetivcs.

Coffee’s poop power depends on:

• Genetics (your ability to metabolise active compounds)

• Gut sensitivity

• Hormones

• Habitual coffee intake

• Whether your stomach is empty

• IBS / high anxiety levels

Some people feel nothing.
Some people feel everything.

Other Things That Make You Want to Poop

Coffee is not alone in it’s ability to send you to the toilet. A similar gut activation response can be created through the following:

• Exercise

• Eating a large meal in the morning

• Bitter, fatty or spicy foods

They all have different reasons for producing the same outcomes. It’s not the same compounds causing you to poop every time.

Bottom Line

Coffee doesn’t make you poop. The bitter compounds in coffee beans/seeds are interpreted by your body as something that you need to “let go of” quickly.

I hope you learned something interesting. To close, here is a nice coffee dessert for you to try...

Healthy Esspresso Vanilla Parfait

Ingredients:

• 1 cup Greek yogurt

• 1 tsp honey or maple syrup

• 1 shot cooled espresso (or 1/8 cup decaf)

• ½ tsp vanilla extract

• Crushed biscotti / oats

• Dark chocolate shavings

Method:
Mix yogurt, honey, espresso, and vanilla. Layer with crushed biscotti and chocolate. Enjoy!

Once, stress served us as a protective state. Today, it mostly just gets in the way. Some of us (me included) are deeply conditioned to react intensely to stress. I am on a journey to change that.

In this post you will likely learn something new about stress because I have gone to lengths to explore the physiology. Progress and healing often require a deep understanding of something. You can’t master something you don’t understand.

Once we understand the physiology of stress I’ll share a few really effective habits that can help you get a hold of yourselves before you become like the lady below.

What Is a Stress State Really?

We often say “I feel stressed” but it’s more like a state. Stress literally affects every cell in your body and changes the way your body behaves.

It starts in the brain, then produces chemicals that swim around your body via your blood. These chemicals stick to various body systems using things called “receptors” (imagine little docking stations). Once the chemicals dock they change the way that body system behaves. Viola, stress state.

The two chemicals that drive stress states are: 1) adrenaline 2) cortisol

I’m not really as concerned with adrenaline in this article, as it’s more of a quick sudden response and this is about chronic stress. Instead, we’ll focus on cortisol.

Here’s how cortisol works step by step:

1. Amygdala receives raw sensory data from emotions like anger, fear, shame which are interpreted by the brain as danger

2. Hypothalamus tells your body to release cortisol

3. Adrenal glands (sit just on top of your kidneys) make the cortisol

4. Cortisol enters your bloodstream and travels around the body

5. Cortisol receptors bind the cortisol to body tissue

6. Body tissues begin to behave differently

7. Hypothalamus constantly monitors blood cortisol

8. A brain signal tells adrenal glands stop making cortisol once blood cortisol levels are “too high”

9. Balance is restored

STRESS FACTS

• Adrenaline is made from dopamine. Dopamine is made in the brain, your adrenal glands and in the gut.

• We all respond differently to stress. The intensity and duration of the response is unique to you. Often, it is based on genetics, trauma (especially in childhood), and environment but it can also be the result of habit.

• We can “train” our brains to respond more or less to stress.

Stress Response Behaviours In Various Body Systems

Cortisol affects every organ and body system because cortisol receptors exist in practically every cell in the body.

Here’s a diagram summarising the stress responses of each body system:

Modern Life and Chronic Stress

Our environment has stress built into it: deadlines, traffic, shorter sleep cycles (artificial light and screens), no physical demand for exercise, constantly being bombarded by everyones perfect life, mirrors to show us how quickly we’re ageing, exposure to disasters on the news (I do not watch the news personally but I understand sometimes you need to know whats going on).

Robert Sapolsky’s wrote a highly praised book called Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers and in it he explains how modern day life encourages stress.

Chronic stress is a killer. Literally, but also it’s a killer of your drive and your joy.

We can make it worse. Using our imagination or ruminating will create a stress response that lasts far, far longer than a typical “threat-triggered” stress response. That’s exactly why it is so damaging.

Just one round of rumination can make your blood cortisol rise for 1-2 hours. This resets every time you ruminate again.

If one wrong daydream can lead to hours of stress, we can see how easy it is to spend our entire day in a stress state. People who imagine the future a lot or ruminate about the past are especially high risk.

Unless we make a designated and prolonged effort to keep calm, we stay in a cycle of stress.

Surprising Results of Chronic Stress

Here’s some long term effects you may not know about.

• Hippocampal shrinkage - The physical size of the hippocampus shrinks after chronic stress and also results in poorer prefrontal cortex function.

• Lower back pain - caused by “muscle guarding,” an involuntary protective tightening of the muscles around your spine. Muscles contract as a way to prepare for impact, long after the danger has passed!

• Damaged teeth - high stress can trigger teeth grinding for some people which happens during sleep. It can also cause serious jaw issues from the clenching.

• Weight gain - cortisol encourages the body to store fat, especially around the liver and organs.

• Type 2 diabtetes - cortisol causes increase in blood glucose which in the long run can cause insulin resistance

• Eczma and psoriasis - cortisol slows processes like skin healing, collagen building and hair growth. Over time this means it can worsen existing conditions, and cause flare ups.

• Change genetic expression - There is growing evidence that shows stress chemicals can attach tiny chemical markers onto your DNA. Sometimes these changes are passed to children, making them more susceptive to stress.

I feel stressed just thinking about the effects of stress!

How To Break The Biological Loop

In paramedics, military and other high-risk professions, “Stress Exposure Training” is used to help individuals shorten their stress response.

Here’s a summary of what they do:

• Vagus nerve stimulation

• Tactical breathing (box breathing, 4-4-4-4)

• Cold exposure

• HRV biofeedback

• Progressive muscle relaxation

• Eye movement desensitization basics (bilateral stimulation for nervous system downshifting)

Explain why they work neurologically (parasympathetic activation)

Three Techniques You Can Do Right Now

I’ve gathered five lesser known but super powerful habits from different experts, all of which you can do right now.

Habit 1: Recognise rumination can destroy your life (Sadguru)

“Once you let your past decide how you experience the present, you have destroyed your future.” - Sadhguru

A book that really helped free me from rumination and anxiety was “Inner Engineering” by Sadhguru. He establishes very clearly how ruminating about the past, and worrying about the future are the same thing as trying to exist in your memory or your imagination. Neither are “real.” Neither exist. Come back to the “now”.

Habit 2: Physiological Sigh (Andrew Huberman)

Basically this is a double inhale, followed by a long slow exhale until your lungs are almost empty. Even three times is enough to produce results. The body naturally creates this exact type of breathing during a good old cry.

Deliberately breathing like this is a unique but powerful way to “force” your sympathetic nervious systems to shift back into a calmer state.

You can watch more breathing techniques from Andrew Huberman here: “How to Breathe Correctly for Optimal Health, Mood, Learning & Performance.”

Habit 3: Paramedics - “Glove Up”

In paramedic training, they are taught a repetitious action to create muscle memory which is stored in the basal ganglia and the cerebellum. This means they teach their body to “add” one extra step in their stress response. Here’s what they do: whenever they hear a crash / bang / scream they carry out the simple grounding technique of putting gloves on.

Done enough times, this becomes an automatic response, which interrupts their stress response. The interruption provides the paramedics time to think, take a breath and consider their next steps.

Additionally, “gloves on” provide sensory input that acts like a barrier between emotional reactivity and rational thought.

You may want to think of your own way to “glove up” but here are some ideas: taking a ring off and putting it on again or putting on a pair of glasses. Or keep a kind of “token” like a small marble or sensory item in your pocket and take it out to fidget with it.

Final Takeaway

• Stress is a biological warfare waged internally

• Modern environments are built to drive stress up

• We can teach our body to stress less if we give it tools

We are not entirely powerless, but we are not in complete control either. The daily stress you experience is not a moral failure. It’s not by your design.

By understanding that stress is a nervous system pattern, we can make some adaptions. Over time, these adapations rewire our brain a little, and give us some power back.

References

Akça, Z., Chang, S. C., Goyal, A., Lazarou, M., & Sutton, P. (2025, September 3). Epigenetic Inheritance of Trauma Across Generations: A Review of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Epigenetic Mechanisms, Challenges and Implications for Today’s World. OxJournal. https://www.oxjournal.org/epigenetic-inheritance-of-trauma-across-generations/

Harris KM, Gaffey AE, Schwartz JE, Krantz DS, Burg MM. The Perceived Stress Scale as a Measure of Stress: Decomposing Score Variance in Longitudinal Behavioral Medicine Studies. Ann Behav Med. 2023 Sep 13;57(10):846-854. doi: 10.1093/abm/kaad015. PMID: 37084792; PMCID: PMC10498818.

Lucassen PJ, Pruessner J, Sousa N, Almeida OF, Van Dam AM, Rajkowska G, Swaab DF, Czéh B. Neuropathology of stress. Acta Neuropathol. 2014 Jan;127(1):109-35. doi: 10.1007/s00401-013-1223-5. Epub 2013 Dec 8. PMID: 24318124; PMCID: PMC3889685.

Sharma K, Akre S, Chakole S, Wanjari MB. Stress-Induced Diabetes: A Review. Cureus. 2022 Sep 13;14(9):e29142. doi: 10.7759/cureus.29142. PMID: 36258973; PMCID: PMC9561544.

Thau, L., Gandhi, J., & Sharma, S. (2023, August 28). Physiology, Cortisol. In StatPearls [Internet]. StatPearls Publishing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK538239/

Pictured above: How I visualise the relationship between curiosity, empathy and judgment

Word count: 1344

Buckle up! Let’s explore:

• The problem with modern relationship forming

• The role of curiosity

• How first impressions interrupt curiosity

• The problem

• What can we do to help ourselves?

The Problem

Relying too heavily on first impressions means bias over shrinks our social circles and contributes to social isolation which is a huge problem in today’s society.

Curiosity In Relationships

Humans have relied on curiosity for millennia for progress. It has an expanding quality. In relationships it’s the key that opens the door to understanding people.

Psychologists like Daniel Berlyne explain how curiosity is not merely an impulse. It’s much more primal, just like hunger. This indicates just how important it is …how big of a role curiosity plays in life.

Once curiosity leaves, need to interact further is gone. The more curious we stay, the more time we give someone and the more likely we are to explore people who are not like us.

First Impressions

According to mainstream psychology we use first impressions to answer two pressing questions:

• does this person have good intentions?

• can I trust them to carry them out?

But we end up concluding so much more than this! We build entire identities from a first impression.

In his Social Identity Theory (published 1978), psychologist Henri Tajfel said modern humans use identity to bolster self-esteem by identifying with “in-groups” and differentiating from “out-groups”.

Heuristic judgments might have been useful at some point. Perhaps when we first started moving into larger communities, and lost the luxury of getting to know everyone intimately. Perhaps back when identity a simple matter of man / woman, rich / poor, gay / straight.

Here’s a perfect example in a Facebook post I saw yesterday:

Pictured Above: This facebook post is a perfect example of what it means to rely too much on first impressions.

Today identity is extremely nuanced and complex — yours included. Thanks to the internet, each year new groups are formed stormed and normed… identity is not even solid anymore, but fluid and changing.

The Problem With Snap Judgments

Two studies done in 2006 measured it takes us less than a second to make a first impression: 10 milliseconds (Willis & Todorov, 2006) and 39 milliseconds (Bar et al 2006). That’s crazy. We call this “intuition” or “gut instinct.” It’s actually bias.

The speed of first impressions means we are relying on bias. Relying on bias comes with a number of problems.

1. It is inaccurate. Bias is too rudimentary for deciphering the complexity of identity we see today. Despite an abundance of confidence that intuition is pure, trustworthy and accurate, we really don’t know. Sometimes we see want we want to see. I’m not saying intuition isn’t necessarily all wrong, but if we don’t know how accurate it is maybe we should be more careful to rely on it.

2. It’s dangerous. Preferring what’s safe is not always harmless but if we’re not watchful, bias can become a gateway to darker social interactions: favouritism, prejudice, stereotyping and even racism. Is it really ok to stick with those who are similar and feel safe? The more I think about it, the more uneasy I feel.

3. It’s puts us in a position to be deceived. We didn’t expect that in 2025 deception would be monetized. We are constantly deceived by appearances online. Many have mastered the art of using first impressions to manipulate. Sensationalist news outlets, clickbait, ragebait, fake product reviews, lobbyists in disguise as health professionals and now AI….

Pictured Above: How first impressions work online.

Somewhere along the line we swapped truth for efficiency. Content to get it oh so wrong.

IT’S NOT WORKING.

The Cost of Getting it Wrong

Let’s return curiosity. No curiosity = no progress. No self-expansion. Our go-to methods for choosing modern day relationships are a death sentence for curiosity.

If you thought you were harmlessly seeking safety in the familiar, now you know the truth.

The more we rely on instinct, the more we tighten the fenceline around our own groups, the less we grow and the more we alienate ourselves from the rest of society.

Carl Jung said,

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”

Maybe the only way to find our true “self” is to let relationships that fall outside our circle of familiarity live long enough to reveal something new.

Maybe identity grown in comfort becomes stunted. Maybe we never fully mature until we are stretched beyond the confines of the familiar and safe.

If you only ever try on the colour blue, how will you ever know if you also love red, orange, purple, green and yellow? Ask yourself: is bias killing my curiosity before it does its job?

Why You Should Care

It’s not my place to make you care but you should know that the less we care about social issues, the more isolated and individualised (and boring) society becomes. Our actions don’t just impact us. Whether we like it or not, we contribute to what kind of society future humans live in.

Rant over.

The Case to Stay Curious A Little Longer

So we’ve established we need to adapt. Relying on first impressions isn’t working. Here’s what I suggest:

1. Know the true cost of bias

2. Don’t stop at a First Impression, give a Second or Third

3. Add a touch of empathy - it extends curiosity

Truthfully autism rescued me from the problem of “out” and “in” groups. Most women who look like me are not my safe group at all. Having highly sophisticated “instincts” women immediately sense my childlike-ness and swiftly (but gently) retreat. The result is no safe circles and with no safe circles, only the kindest hearts seem to find me! That’s a blessing, not a curse!

There are also many other groups who go overlooked by society: people with dual citizenships, foreigners, anyone who looks a bit different, the diabled, the older. Older people can enrich our life with stories!

By the way have you read ’s substack? He writes about how being French and American means he fits in with neither group. I wonder if people stayed curious a little longer whether his story would be written different?

How Empathy Extends Curiosity

Researchers studying empathy have seen how it can literally reopen information-seeking behaviour in the brain. (Ramsøy et al., 2015; Sherman et al., 2020 and Nazir and Lin, 2024).

By tapping into empathy we can literally reignite curiosity. This means less reliance on heuristic judgments and a widening of our “in” circles.

I’m not suggesting you try to be everyone’s friend. I’m suggesting that without empathy, curiosity is too short lived to even know who is a friend.

Holding a little empathy is not about being self-sacrificing. It is herd survival. It’s a useful strategy beyond lazy individualism. It wisely says:

“I don’t know everything yet! I’ll continue to seek the truth.”

Conclusion

For those concerned with truth and progress: when curiosity dies after a first impression, try holding a little empathy to give curiosity a second breath.

Side note: It’s worth being aware that not everyone you hold space for has the capacity to return it. Disappointment enters through the same door as opportunity. I’m calling out for a little courage!

One thing is for sure; those of us who choose to live curiously experience life very differently. More richly. Less comfortably. But we are all the better for it.

Thanks for reading.

Lyd

References

Bar M, Neta M, Linz H. Very first impressions. Emotion. 2006 May;6(2):269-78. doi: 10.1037/1528-3542.6.2.269. PMID: 16768559.

Nazir, Cassini & Lin, Meah. (2023). Beyond empathy: how curiosity promotes greater care. 10.26530/9789401496476-115.

Ramsøy TZ, Skov M, Macoveanu J, Siebner HR, Fosgaard TR. Empathy as a neuropsychological heuristic in social decision-making. Soc Neurosci. 2015 Apr;10(2):179-91.

Sherman, A., Cupo, L., & Mithlo, N. M. (2020). Perspective-taking increases emotionality and empathy but does not reduce harmful biases against American Indians: Converging evidence from the museum and lab. PLOS ONE. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0228784

Tajfel, H. (1974). Social identity and intergroup behaviour. Social Science Information, 13(2), 65-93. https://doi.org/10.1177/053901847401300204 (Original work published 1974)

Willis J, Todorov A. First impressions: making up your mind after a 100-ms exposure to a face. Psychol Sci. 2006 Jul;17(7):592-8. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01750.x. PMID: 16866745.

“Grounding” is an act of making physical contact with the Earth. People often do this by taking off theirr shoes and going barefoot into the grass for a while. It’s great! They say it helps calm the nervous system.

There are times when we need a little more than just physical grounding — a grounding of our mind as well as our body. When our mind is a little lost and a little disconnected a physical and mental grounding sometimes helps me remember how to be me.

Here is a very short exercise I do to “get back” to my foundation / my “self” and find my sense of direction again:

Write down the following and fill in the gaps (thinking is too chaotic and fast, writing it down will help you think clearly):

The feeling/s blocking me right now is .....

It’s likely linked to my belief that....

One truth I need to remember right now is.....

Two actions I would do if I wanted my future self not to experience regret is:

Three things body needs so I can help it carry out the actions are:

Four core traits that make me “me” are:

What these prompts aim to do is help you reconnect you with your values then work out your next steps. The ones that are aligned with your values.

Very often in times of turmoil or disruption we forget to act in line with our values because we are so busy re-acting to our fears, our frustrations and more often than we realise — our shame. This is dangerous for a number of reasons, the number one being that when we habitually don’t act in line with our values we get depressed it’s so subtle that we may not even know why we feel so bad.

A little moment to re-calibrate can help immensely. Like a hiker looking down at their compass before moving forward again so they don’t get lost.

Whoever you are and whatever it is that you are struggling with right now, please know that you are never far off from where you are meant to be. Give yourself a little grounding (and a lot of self-compassion), and the path forward will reveal itself to you.

Lyd

I have appreciated and cared for my body better this year. Where last year I was frustrated by my sore knees or back seizing up... this year I have seen how well everything serves me. I listen harder to warning signals when I need rest. Eat only when I'm empty. I try not to push my body so hard anymore, and I say yes to it's requests for rest or more movement.

This year I learned to look in the mirror with a healthier mindset. I used to struggle to look without making big sweeping judgments. It was always "I look good today" or "I look ugly today" which was then followed by an application of makeup to rescue the situation. Instead, I cab look and say "I look exactly how I'm meant to look". I am how I am and it's fine. I still apply makeup but its more like a "zhuzh" than a rescue attempt.

This year I learned people continue to love me even when I don't always go along with everything they want from me. I surprisingly lost one relationship but that also taught me not much is personal when it comes to relationships.

Perhaps nothing is?

I still look forward to dying. Not in a morbid way. I am just tired. Rest is something I look forward to sing after my turn here is up. I still want to crawl into the comfort of letting go but a huge difference between this year and last year is that I used to wish for something to take me already. Lol… so dramatic that must seem to others (and I usually don't about to it) but since I was eight I've felt this place was a bit overrated so to me it's just another one of my funny traits not a cause for alarm.

Last year I had Faith in the traditional and biblical sense. This year there are question marks over heaven, good and evil, angels, everything. I pray / talk the same way I did before but I'm not sure to whom I speak anymore. My feeling is that we are created, along with everything else. But why…. I don't know why. I think about it alot, probably daily.

My greatest goal for the 38th trip around the sun is to live in such a way that expands me a little more again. Do things that make my heart grow a little bigger and my vision become a little wider. I hope to be kinder & more watchful for those around me. Need less caring for. Be more active, be less in my head. I want to see others unclouded by the fear of not being liked by them!

Finally, to continue to be a safe and happy presence in this funny little world.

Thanks for reading 🙏

5.53am My daughter (5) whispers “mama” in my ear just as a glimmer of light comes through my window. I take her little hand so we can go lie down in her bed. “Let’s go back to sleep” I say but she prefers to talk so I listen with my eyes closed until 6.30 then hand over her phone. I then must listen to the grating Peppa Pig theme song repeat over and over in her game.

7.10am Benji comes in and flops down on top of me and starts kissing my face. Time to get up! My right eye is bloodshot and hurts (I got poked in the eye by Izzy yesterday, during one of our dance parties). I need to hustle to make breakfast, pack lunches and get ready for school otherwise we’ll be late and I HATE being late because the school forces everyone to get a late ticket from the front office. It’s arbitrary. We just make it as the bell goes off.

8.45 Errands. I get excited because I get to be alone in the car and I LOVE driving an empty car. I sing reeeeally loud for the catharsis. I belt out Timber by Pitbull. At the shops my first stop is a large flat white from Foster Black. Within 5 mins I am PINGING because I skipped breakfast so it’s just the caffeine. Feeling great! I hum all the way to Best n Less for some ugly and cheesy Christmas outfits. Every year I force my husband and kids to take a photo all dressed up which I then turn into a christmas magnet. Next I go to coles to buy ingredients for a “Care & Concern” meal for one of the school’s families in need. Fourth Stop: Mecca, for a birthday gift for a friend. I pick a mecca brand tinted sunscreen called “To Save Face” as it’s one of my all time favourite products.

10.30 I drive home, a little too fast and singing Cass Elliot’s “Make Your Own Kind of Music” because I’m still high on coffee then I cook the meal and pack it into a bag with a little note:

“Wishing you a cosy meal and a moment to rest.
With love,
The Fox Family”

I drop it off at the school then drive to Sprout and Swap (no singing this time, just listening to a 10 hour long Lex Fridman podcast to drop off a big bag of pre-loved kids’ clothes which have been sitting in the back seat of our car for six months.

11.30 Come home, make a wrap for lunch and call my friend to organise our girls night away next week. It’ll be our FIRST night away from kids and husbands in 7 years. She said she wants to read so I decided that I’ll do a craft. Maybe I’ll buy air clay and make funny monster figurines for all the kids lol.

1.15pm Scroll substack and write replies.

2.05pm Fold and put away the washing.

3.30pm I head to the neighbours to deliver a Panettone (choc chip). They’re new - just arrived from Colombia. Their front door is open but no one hears me call out the first time so I try again. Still nothing. After a few more relatively quiet attempts I decide to try one super loud “HEY NEIGHBOURS!!” I was determined to give the cake. They came out and we had a nice little chat about the weather and our kids’ ages.

3.50pm Pick the kids up from school. Walk around the school looking for Benji’s water bottle.

4.30pm Clean out the kids lunchboxes and resist the urge to get angry. They didn’t eat their munch ‘n’ crunch again (that’s what the school calls snack time). Cheeky buggers. I put what I can back in the fridge to give to them tomorrow and throw the rest away. Don’t they know kids are starving overseas?? I clean up the house and start making dinner.

6pm Play Minecraft with the kids. At the moment we’re working on a replica of their School. I took some photos previously to help me because I have OCD and want it to be exact.

7pm Start the kids bedtime routine: brush teeth, shower, don pj’s, play a game or read a book, say goodnight.

8pm I sit down at my computer with a cup of my favourite Korean honey + yuzu tea and begin to create concept illustrations. Usually I build my app but today I thought “fuck it I’m going to rest”. The illustrations are inspired by a book I’m reading on Substack called “Hearts of Arkenston” by . If you love fiction and adventure, I highly recommend you give him a read, the first 19 chapters are fantastic!

11pm Head upstairs to brush my teeth, shower and go to bed.

You are so wonderful. I am so so lucky to be your mum.

You’re still too young for this conversation but I hope that when the time comes I have the courage to read this to you out loud.

Although you have so much joy, I know you also are suffering from a brain that sometimes serves you wonderfully, and other times makes the world confusing, overwhelming, and burdensome.

Some of these extra burdens you carry are small: lights that hurt your eyes, sounds that hurt your ears, people that dont believe you in those moments because you look “normal” and you are much better at hiding pain than other kids your age.

But other burdens you carry are heavier like your deep and persistent anxiety, your existential worries, and the way words refuse to come the way they should so you can express yourself.

None of it is your fault.

Although I am not at fault either, I feel responsible. You carry these burdens because I passed them onto you. I didn’t know that I carried them too until after your diagnosis. But I do know now that the weight you bear is my doing. I am so sorry.

One day, when you are grown, these burdens won’t feel as heavy. You’ll be bigger and stronger than me. Carry them more lightly than I do. But right now, you are carrying too much.

Please forgive me Benji. I haven’t always been the help you need. Sometimes you need to be left alone, to be. But instead I rush with my “doctor kit”, trying to mend you. The truth is, I’m not always okay with seeing you not okay. Instead of managing my own fears, I burden you. I’ve been try to mend everything broken - broken because of me. You don’t need mending.

Or, sometimes when you try to share a dark cloud with me, I try to offer a silver lining. I shouldn’t do that. I know can’t take it away. It’s not even my job - to take your sadness away. How dare I do that to you? Please forgive me.

As your parent, I often worry whether I’m doing enough — to help, to teach, to guide, to ease your load. I think about it all the time. It hurts to know that my imperfect understanding of what we share might sometimes make things harder instead of easier.

I should simply sit beside you so you know your not alone. So I promise from now on, I will do better. Please know that I never wanted a perfect Benji. I just want you, exactly as you are. I don’t need you to perform joy for me.

Let’s face the troubles together, hand in hand.

Please forgive me, Benji. It’s okay to be mad at me for the times I have failed to do whats best. And when you can, tell me how to do better — I will listen.

Benji, you are a such a bright and shining light in this world! I am endlessly grateful for you. Thank you for being you. Thank you for letting me be your mum, for the time we have together here on earth.

I love you. Always.

Mum

What if emotions are like states or “streams”, rather than something we have?

Like a current. Maybe strong feelings are like strong currents which is why they linger, and why sometimes we can “pull” others in.

What if emotions are sense….they allow us to experience what that is intangible? Just like how thermoreceptors are triggered by cold, and photoreceptors are triggered by light, emotions are triggered by beliefs.

That would explain why all emotions can be “real” and valid but not all can be functional. They are a correct response but can belong to an incorrect belief.

What if emotions are neither negative nor positive — but instead are shielding or amplifying.

• “Shielding” emotions like fear, anger, anxiety, and grief might be warnings: “This experience may leave scars on your sense of self — avoid it.”

• “Amplifying” emotions like calm, wonder, and joy may be the body’s way of helping us lean into an experience and enhance its impact.

What if we can understand emotions better by asking, “What is this trying to enhance or shield me from?”

Just as destroying cold thermoreceptors destroys our ability to feel both cool or cold, what if attempting to deny ourselves ever feeling undesirable emotions like anger can have unwanted side effects?

For instance if we try to shut down anger, what if we also inadvertently shut down our ability to care at all? Can we care deeply without anger? Can we be vulnerable without shame? Perhaps functioning demands both.

What if our environment rarely offers only binary selection of experiences. What if it’s more like a buffet?

What if we don’t usually notice all the options because some are much quieter or smaller than others?

Like, if we were late in traffic maybe our “experience buffet” would look like:

• A music track or podcast playing → calm / curiosity

• The fact that we are alive, breathing, able to hold a steering wheel and push a pedal at the same time → joy

• The fact that our lateness might make someone wait → embarrassment

• The fact that we are not in control of how long the journey takes → frustration

+ + +

What if joy is actually on offer most of the time (not always) but it is just quieter, smaller or furthest from our line of sight?

If we are hungry for more joy, what if we can find more just by realising we have a full buffet at our fingertips, instead of merely a plate?

Maybe going gently down the stream just means using discretion when making a selection from our experience buffet.

“Letting go” is very often used to describe what emotional healing or maturation looks like. You may have also heard “let it pass” , “move on” , “water under the bridge” or “bury the hatchet.”

“Let it go” holds a certain appeal. It’s reminiscent of the nike slogan “just do it,” sounding wise, sage like; resilient and enlightened.

I take issue with it because it’s used as a cure-all and reveals a deep misunderstanding of the way humans heal.

First, let me distinguish between indulging in memories and having them resurface without our willing participation.

It’s a very human thing to indulge in memories of past hurts from time to time. We all do it - donning our little pity party hats, blowing on the party blowers of sadness and enjoying the tasty treats of sympathy. Most of us (hopefully) don’t do this too often.

However, this post is about validating those who are deeply wounded and told to get over it. Because it happens too often. I’m saying that not all hurt is the same, not all pain heals the same and not all pain can be “let go.”

Oasis or Mirage?

Many a self-help snake oil salesmen offers us the oh-so-simple “let it go.” Or perhaps it was a family member. In their defence, they probably meant well. But just because someone means well, it doesn’t mean they know what you are going through, or what you need.

It won’t usually stop them from trying, though.

Moving on from the salesman to the snake oil: let’s examine the statement to understand what it implies so you can see why it is so toxic.

Beginning with the metaphor — what is the opposite of letting go? It’s holding on. If a person holds onto something two things can be assumed: 1) they hold it by choice and 2) if they open their hand, whatever is inside will effortlessly fall out.

Secondly, what does letting go literally mean? It means to stop thinking or talking about something.

Going a little deeper into the metaphor of the hand...

A closed hand, like one holding onto something, forms a fist. The fist often represents resentment, begrudging, nursing a grievance, and bearing ill will.

The term “let it go” requires a toxic assumption that the wounded have an unhealthy, almost aggressive dwelling on their injuries.

The statement isn’t sounding like sage advice anymore. It’s sounding like an accusation.

The Myth of Choice

Let’s pretend we have done what was asked: we have stopped thinking and talking about the problem. Maybe we successfully stopped for years.

Anyone who has tried it knows emotions don’t just disappear. They may fade a bit over time. But they don’t simply vanish because we stopped paying them attention.

We can force and force ourselves to ignore pain. We can silence ourselves. But the wound will still remain, unhealed.

For someone who has tried and failed to let it go, what are we to think? What does it mean, if we can’t let go? Here are some of the messages implied:

• “If the pain is still here, I have failed to let it go.”

• “Maybe I’m just too weak / bitter / avoidant / unforgiving or self-indulgent - that’s why I’m not able to let go”

• “I am the cause of my own misery”

Not only is “let it go” a misguided approach to healing — its effects can be quite poisonous. Dr Gabor Mate speaks about how supressing emotions, especially as a habit, can lead to chronic illness.

We may go years and years suffering silently, unable to crack the code and move on. Finally, guilt and shame about our failure to heal arrive, joining the already too heavy burden we carry.

If this has been you, please know it’s not your fault.

Healing as Consequence, not Command

The good news is this: we cannot force ourselves to let go of wounds. It’s not a choice to “hold on”. So we’re not failing. It’s just not how healing works.

If healing doesn’t happen by letting go, then how does it happen?

I am no psychologist but after getting quite good at healing what I have learned about healing is that it’s the natural result of what happens when we get clarity.

What really happened to me back then, and why?

Hurt continues to hurt us until the things that didn’t make sense, that were confusing, misunderstood or missed, become known and understood.

Let me share an analogy to help illustrate.

Imagine you are in yoga class. The teacher tells you to breathe out. You can’t breathe out first, so you first take a breath in. That’s because breathing out isn’t a choice, it’s a direct and natural result of breathing in.

Healing is a natural result of getting clarity. Like breathing in, clarity must come first. It is a step that cannot be missed.

Tara Brach who’s psychology is heavily influenced by Buddhist philosophy talks about this “radical acceptance.” We must be eager for truth.

I won’t go into detail here — but being able to accept the answers is where the battle is. We get to clarity by doing the opposite of “letting go” and think more deeply about the things. We think about the pain in a purposeful way and explore it by asking thoughtful, curious questions.

The Rooster Prince

One more thing on this topic of healing and this is likely going to be unpopular but it is the truth.

The people in our lives impact our healing journeys. This is different from dependency. This is humanity.

People can love us and not be able to sit with our pain. They may feel obligated or even responsible, even though you do not ask. Once they realise they cannot help, they feel discomfort. Their discomfort materialises into advice, dismissive statements or minimisation. It isn’t personal, of course.

Perhaps you have felt uncomfortable with pain a friend shared with you. It’s not your fault. The truth is your friend doesn’t need anything from you. They only need you to let them be. Like the Rooster Prince:

• There is a story told by Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, who was born in 1772. The general story is about a young prince who behaves like a rooster. It is not befitting a prince so naturally, people try to fix him, shame him into behaving. Nothing works until “a wise man” sits with him — and accepts him where he’s at without trying to change him. Only from that place of acceptance does the prince begin to become functional once again.

The prince is ultimately responsible for his own behaviour, but his capacity for change was quashed by their rejection of him until he could be accepted as he was.

Conclusion

• Letting go means to stop thinking and talking about our problems. Healing cannot happen here. Supressing and ignoring pain can have long-term harmful results.

• Instead, healing happens as a natural consequence to gaining clarity. We must dig deeper with thoughtful enquiry until we understand what was not understood.

• Perhaps knowing that “not thinking about things” is a simple misunderstanding of how healing works. Perhaps knowing this will cause us to let that statement go (wink).

Today I am combining my love of science with my mission to understand how the brain works to explore if and how absence of quiet impacts us.

Here’s a kid’s version of Starry Night which I illustrated it for my son’s bedroom wall. If you want you can download it here:

Download Starry Night For Kids

Grateful for the net

Since humans’ recent gift to ourselves of the net, we have enjoyed persistent and instant access to information & entertainment. The resulting by products:

- Vast and speedy spread of ideas

- Birth of our digital personas (may they live long after we die)

- Multitudes of new ways to make a living

- An absence of quiet

I’m going to talk briefly about the last one: an absence of quiet. It’s important to consider whether it plays a role in our lives, what that role is, and how we might be impacted by its absence.

Is quiet gone?

Firstly - if you are someone who actively pursues and enjoys quiet time, skip to the next article because this one won’t be useful to you.

Now that those hippies are gone, let’s try to get an idea of how much quiet time you experience daily by thinking about it. In the interest of efficiency, I’ve made a quick quiz to assist. Answer the following (not out loud or you might make someone uncomfortable):

• When you drive how often do you listen to something?

  a) sometimes b) often c) always

• How often would you put music in your ears if you were to hypothetically go for a walk/run/cycle?

  a) sometimes b) often c) always

• Which of the following does your form of preferred entertainment use?

  a) just words on a page b) visuals and sounds c) interactive / responsive visuals/sounds

Results time!

If you answered mostly a) you probably still experience a smear of quiet a couple of times a day.

If you answered mostly b) you probably rarely experience quiet times - maybe a tiny dab

If you answered mostly c) you probably almost never experience quiet - not even a scrumbit

What does it mean for quiet to be gone?

Let’s not jump into judging ourselves or making drastic changes yet. We’re just thinking about what has changed in the absence of quiet so we can be aware of it.

The most obvious thing to notice is that we have almost constant input: sensory information (sounds and images) and information (knowledge and ideas) going in.

Podcasts, most music and video are all considered “input”. We might be focused on it, or even just semi-focused on it but the input isn’t being passively absorbed. Even when we’re just listening we are making connections, understanding meaning, identifying beat/ tempo/tone, thinking about which song to play next, maybe considering new ideas, deciphering anything untrue or confusing, and saving new information to our memory bank.

So this processing — this type of active thinking time — is often referred to as “task mode.”

Different Networks for Different Tasks

When we are in task mode, our brain activity runs on a the Task Positive Network (TPN) or the “Executive Control Network.”

Most digital media keeps us in TPN mode, because it constantly gives our brains something to do. Some music is designed specifically to put us into a resting state and can be very effective.

If we are concentrating hard, like when we are writing a new post for instance, we also engage the Central Executive Network.

So there are different networks for different needs.

When we are not in task mode — our brain enters a different '“state” known as a “Resting State Network” - the most widely known of these is the Default Mode Network (DMN). The DMN becomes most active when we are empty headed, daydreaming or meditating.

Although we don’t need to remember the technical names of the Networks, we benefit from having the awareness that

1. Almost all digital input requires processing

2. Our brain uses different networks when we are processing input vs when we are not.

NOTE: Even when we switch off external “input” we can still force ourselves to stay in the Task Positive Network by thinking about all the tasks we need to do, or the problems we need to solve. In this sense, even if we try to do the right thing by turning off external noise, we are still creating internal noise and depriving our brain of rest.

Is too much Task Networking bad?

Short answer is science doesn’t know yet if too much input leads to a reduced cognitive function or burnout.

We are allowed to speculate if we want. In times when facts are absent I find it helpful to experiment on what works for me individually and that starts with listening to your body.

However, there is good evidence of a link between depression and cognitive fatigue and an inability to switch between the TPN and the DMN.

I’m going to speculate here and ask: what happens to a muscle when we don’t use it enough? It becomes weak. And maybe, just maybe, is we don’t have “enough” quiet in our life we don’t get a chance to enter the DMN and practice being at rest.

I look forward to science figuring out for sure.

How much quiet do we need?

Who the hell knows. Even if/when science confirms too much input causes burnout, it’s my firm belief that no one can tell you exactly how much quiet time per day you need because it’s been my observation that we are all very different and come with vastly different needs.

The best thing for us to do from here is perhaps decide not to completely hand over our wellbeing to science yet. Consider taking a more active role in our own health by exploring types of rest and finding the ones that suit you. By the way, explore if you even can rest, when things are quiet.

For me (someone who is still working through trauma from childhood and being autistic and a bunch of other shit I won’t go into) that is the problem. So if you are like me, you might find it natural to put away devices and get the outside world quiet BUT…but getting my internal one to SHUT UP long enough give itself some rest is a major challenge (tip - not a plea for advice). When I am in a quiet space, my internal world starts throwing loose items around, spitting, crying and yelling about existential problems, dinner, about the mum I never had and that I’m not smart or pretty etc etc

You didn’t need to know all of that so now that I am experiencing severe verbal diarrhea it’s time to finish.

Conclusion

• Humans today don’t experience quiet time

• We don’t know if too much input causes burnout

• An inability to switch between TPN and the DMN is linked to depression

• Listen to your body, figure out if quiet time can offer you rest and if it can - great! You’re in a good place.

Here’s a cat I illustrated, enjoy.

I’m writing this chapter as a vomit of disjointed memories from my childhood. It’s not going to be written well because this is not intended for general consumption. It is an exercise in releasing shame by sharing memories I’ve avoided thinking about).

For those who’s pasts is riddled weith trauma, we must whittle our stories out of a hardened block of memories, until a beautiful shape begins to grow. But right now, I don’t like looking at the words. Everything is rough, unsightly. My instinct is to skip it and write about positive things.

Content warning: The following post mentions subjects that may be disturbing or upsetting like sexual abuse, physical violence, animal cruelty and animal death.

My brother visited once a month. “My golden boy!” mother called him. She loved him dearly. She took to playing a game during his visits where she’d tease me, and get my brother to join in. Finally, after having enough, I’d cry or storm out. They’d both laugh. I guess it was sport to my mother, and aided her in her goal to be unified with her favourite child.

‘‘“

My hair was long, almost down to my hips. I’d always loved it long. I asked my mother to trim the ends just a bit. She obliged and took the scissors to my hair and raised them to base of my neck. SNIP. Before I could stop her she’d made the cut. ‘What did you do?” I asked. “I wanted to see what you looked like with short hair…well…it doesn’t look nice. Haha!”

‘‘“

One day I was crying at the study desk. I don’t remember why. Mother came to me and placed her hand gently on my shoulder. “Don’t cry love. See how ugly you look when you cry?” She held up a mirror so that I could see.

‘‘“

When I was about 7 I began to visit dad on a monthly basis and discovered it wasn’t that much better than being with mum. He would leave me alone all the time. He had strange men boarding in the only spare room - which meant I would sleep in the lounge room. At night, he would put movies on. The movies always contained explicit and often uncensored sex. Sometimes it was outright pornographic. I didn’t know I had a choice. I had no voice until years later, when I was 13. He also constantly made filthy comments about womens bodies. I never felt safe.

‘‘“

Nightmares every night. One of them my family were journeying accross a swamp. My father fell in, and emerged a green swamp monster who wanted to eat us. I ran but he grabbed my ankle and pulled me down. In another dream, I was walking past a small pottery shop at night. Filled with large clay jars and pots. Suddenly I knew Satan was following me. I ran inside and hid behind a particularly large pot. The shadow of my pursuer fell over me and I knew, he could see me. I screamed and woke to shadows on my walls.

I’d have dreams like these almost every week. Never would I ask for help. I’d stay awake for hours.

‘‘“

I came home from school one day to find my mother with a note in her hand and a very displeased look on her face. The note was a letter my “boyfriend” had written to me. We we in grade 5. He told me that one of his other friends told him that we should go behind the bushes and kiss one time. She told me that the note was innapropriate and to teach us all a lessson, she would be calling him and his parents over to our house shortly, make me read out the letter, discuss the letter contents with the parents and then and force the boy to apologise.

‘‘“

One day I walked to to the playground situated at the back of my house. The neighbours, my friends, were there playing. “Let’s" play at my house” Samantha had said. So we went. Their parents were not there. Samantha’s older brother told me to take my pants off. I said no. The younger brother tried to lift my top over my head. I ran away and never played with them again.

‘‘“

When is this dumb game going to end? I thought to myself as my brother lay on top of me. He had made up a “fun” game for us and forced me to play when mum wasn’t around (which was almost always). He’d just lay on top of me. I was too little to stop it or understand why I hated it, I just knew I did.

‘‘“

I recently quit my Taekwondo lessons because I could not compete. I was too shy to demonstrate my skills and level up. Also I was embarrassed because I was the only kid who needed 1:1 support. My brother still attended so mum would drop us off and leave for the hour and I would wait outside by myself. One day a boy, perhaps a few years older than me, came up and out of nowhere, said “I love you” and tried to grab me in the privates. I ran away, embarrased that I didn’t have a technique or the courage to do Taekwondo on him. And laughed at the irony of being attached outside of self defense class.

‘‘“

Alone I sat on the edge of the school oval again, watching the other kids play and laugh. I never joined in anymore. This place, had become my hiding spot and a metaphor for my life. I was both physically and mentally outside and invisible to all. I both hated the isolation - and craved it.

‘‘“

Itchy. My toes were so incredibly itchy and it was driving me insane. It had been a few months since I’d woken up with many bites all over my toes - about 8. The itching had not subsided. I asked mum for help and she had replied, just put some vinegar on them. They continued to itch day and night for the rest of the year. Making it hard to concentrate at school. 20 years later I still have the scars from itching those bites.

‘‘“

Lifting up the corner of my bedsheet, horror swiftly crept over me at what I saw. Thousands of tiny black bedbugs were sitting all around the seams of my matterss. They had been feasting on me for weeks. Mother did not call an exterminator. She wrapped the mattress in plastic and left it out in the sun all day. The trick did not work. I slept on the couch and stayed there God knows how long.

‘‘“

“Close the curtains Lydia. The neighbours are watching us!” My mother would always say. Paranoia was starting to rear it’s ugly head in her and as a result our curtains remained closed most of the time.

‘‘“

I was alone, always alone. Not a soul to talk to. To confide in. To laugh with. So I just talked to Jesus. And prayed and prayed for a friend.

‘‘“

It seemed my prayers were answered because mother bought a dog, a tiny beagle named Abby. I loved Abby more than anything in the whole world. I played with her, fed her and even napped with her. Like me, she was neglected by her primary carer - only home brand dog biscuits to eat and she was often beaten. Abby hated those dog biscuits.

One day I tried feeding them to her one by one (she’d stopped eating). She’d responded by showing me she had been hiding them under a pile of tree mulch. Poor thing, I wish I could feed you better food. Im so sorry Abby. I had told her.

Mother thought she could make a bit of money out of Abby through breeding. Abby became pregnant and tried to run away. Mother beat her until she was bleeding from her nose. As I tended her wounds I said I know Abby, I wish I could help you escape, I want to escape too.

A few months later I was away, visiting dad. He got a call from my mother, and it turns out Abby had died, her three unborn pups along with her.

Ofcourse, it was my mothers neglect and abusive treatment of Abby that had lead to her death. I didn’t cry until I could do it alone that night. And as the bitter tears flowed I vowed I would never forgive my mother for taking my only friend away.

‘‘“

Next chapter: Dawn, delayed

In stark contrast to this I'm able to handle myself extremely calmly in situations like car accidents or helping a person who has hurt themselves etc.

This isn't well researched so I'm curious to know if this is a common pattern in Autism.

I asked Chat GPT to help me theorize some answers as to what might be going on and found it's response interesting. I'm curious to know what others thoughts and experiences are too:

Here's an excerpt:

Clear rules vs. unspoken rules

In accidents / crisis: There’s usually a clear chain of action—check for danger, call for help, follow steps.

• In social situations: The rules are invisible, ever-changing, and full of grey areas. There’s no script, and the uncertainty itself is the stressor.

I want to add here: the cost of failing to read the situation accurately is high, adding to stress

Different stress pathways

• In immediate danger, your system may switch into hyper-focus mode (a survival response). Many autistic people report being calm, logical, decisive in emergencies.

In social situations, the stress is chronic and ambiguous: reading faces, tracking tone, guessing hidden meanings, monitoring your own behavior. That constant multitasking overloads executive function, leading to panic or shutdown.

• Masking cost

Social stress often comes from trying to mask, interpret, and perform “normal” all at once. It’s like running multiple programs on a computer until it overheats.

In an accident, there’s no need to mask—you just act. That frees up resources

Id like to ask others to weigh in with your own personal experiences. How do you respond to stressful events vs high demand social situations?