I lost my grandmother, Loma, five years ago today, 5 March. Three years ago, also on 5 March, our incredible daughter was born in a powerful rush on a nature strip in suburban Brisbane, with the sound of the wind in the trees above and the roar of her mother bringing her out into the world, no pain relief available, just fully listening to her own knowledge and intuition because there really was nothing greater or better than that, in that moment. The ambulance sirens turned off just before she arrived.
In a few days’ time, on 8 March, it will be International Women’s Day. My Granny always celebrated it. She was an imperfect woman, a product of her own generation, experiences, personal struggles, and almost certainly, undiagnosed and not-understood neurodivergence. She didn’t get to have that revelation of understanding in her lifetime, but I see it everywhere in her now. Her relationship with her own children was not easy, but I got the benefit of her being my grandmother, her attention in her later years, and I bloody loved her, and I knew, always knew, she loved me, and that she had full confidence in my mind and my character. I spent time with her in hospital in her last weeks. When I had to say goodbye, because she was in Townsville and I had to return to Brisbane, she said to me, ‘Well? Any questions?’. I paused and asked ‘Do you love me?’. Without any hesitation, she replied ‘Yes, I love you. I have ALWAYS loved you’. It was a really hard goodbye.
I recently hit a milestone birthday, and to coincide with it, I had her engagement stone reset in a ring that I can wear, and I love the more tangible sense of carrying her spirit with me. I saw this ring on her finger all through my life.
Loma was a fierce advocate for women and a committed ally to First Nations people of this land. She was a grassroots campaigner, a community activist, a person incensed by injustice.
This may seem an odd or niche topic to segue to, but while my grandmother wasn’t around long enough for me to discuss all the revelations that have come with finding my own neurodivergence, I’m thinking about her today on the anniversary of her death, and the anniversary of my daughter’s birth, and on a day where autistic and neurodivergent people around the globe, particularly women, are collectively raising their voices, and building a powerful bloc of allies who are calling out abuse that exists within the neurodivergent community, and within the subset PDA community. There are many reasons why that abuse has been able to grow and thrive, some of which are the systemic and structural violence of the health, mental health, and education systems, as well as deeply ingrained ableism in society at large. There are good reasons why victims have been unable to speak up. I am not one of them, but I stand with all those who have disclosed abuse and I will play my part in saying THIS ENDS NOW.
You may not know the details, but consider whether it is necessary to. We’ve seen it before. MeToo. Grace Tame. Brittany Higgins. Institutional abuse. Believe women. Believe autistic people. Believe late-diagnosed neurodivergent people for the truth of their own lived experiences.
My grandmother would have stood behind every word here. I stand behind every word for the good of my children, and because one of those children is a daughter, which brings with it additional vulnerability in this life. I want her to be safe to be herself.
Details of specific stories are not mine to tell. But much more broadly, I know exactly what it’s like to be gaslit, disbelieved, invalidated, dismissed – about things and experiences that actually resonate loud and clear amongst late-diagnosed autistic and ADHD women. We have been told, in multiple spheres, not to trust our own perceptions and experiences. Over recent years, I have been reclaiming my own judgement, and I’m never letting it go again.
Let such a reckoning bring about justice for victims, protection for the vulnerable, and new professionalism and respect for autistic and PDA people within psychological, psychiatric, child development and mental health systems, in Australia and elsewhere.
A Thousand Thoughts 