Speaker: [00:00:00] I was thinking this morning about when my children were younger, all four of them. Three of them were at school and one was still in a sling attached to my body. All four of my children are autistic, PDA, ADHD. There's Tourette's, we have, uh, one of us is non speaking, apraxic, dyspraxic. We have lots of forms of neurodivergence in there.
And I was doing my very best to be the best mother that I could be to all of these beautiful, incredible children that I was madly in love with. And it was hard. It was so hard. It was isolating. I was on my own most of the time because my husband worked. And the [00:01:00] way that systems keep us separate is that when I would call him for help in desperation, either crying, sobbing into the phone or raging into the phone about another situation, I didn't know how to intuitively work through, he would become angry with me for needing him to leave his job because of his panic that he would lose his job and therefore we wouldn't be able to pay for our home or basically survive.
And this is the trap of most of our families and our lives. I was carrying such an incredible As a parent and carer, I did not have any family around me and I came from really troubling beginnings in my family of origin. So, there I was, winging it. Completely winging it. I didn't feel like I fit into the community [00:02:00] of parents raising autistic children because I didn't want to be suspended in doom and gloom narratives.
And I didn't yet know that I was autistic. I felt that there was something deeply inherently wrong with me, that I was a broken version of a neurotypical. And one day I overheard my husband sharing his concerns with his parents that I wasn't coping with raising our children. And I'll never forget what that felt like.
I'll never forget how it landed and how angry I felt righteously as well. And I look back at how I brutalized myself as a mother as well. Every single time my children struggled with something, I blamed myself. And that's because I was navigating a society that blames parents [00:03:00] and carers when their children are challenged or struggling in any way, shape or form.
But this is the problem. When we take neurodivergent children, and we see them through the lens of neuro normativity, we only see disorder. We only see challenges. We only see parents who feel they're failing, as opposed to parents who are being failed. I look back when I think about the woman that I was.
And the terrible time I was giving myself, cooking all these things from scratch, gluten free, dairy free, following all the latest research, and just venturing into territory that was excruciating and so misguided. Just so misguided. I think about her, I think about how [00:04:00] she never slept, and she stayed awake late every night researching and trying to connect with others and never feeling connected.
And just constantly feeling like she was failing everybody.
But nobody was noticing what she was doing, and what she was getting right.
But I notice now. And I wish that every parent and carer would notice now. I lay all the flowers at the feet of the woman and the mother that I was then, when my children were exceptionally young and really struggling in life. That woman that I was carried loads that I don't think would be fair or reasonable for anybody to carry.[00:05:00]
What a phenomenal woman I was, what a phenomenal mother I was, what a phenomenal woman I am, and what a phenomenal mother I am. Every waking moment that I put into making sure my children would have a better life than I had had, made it all worthwhile. Every ounce of love I poured into my children, reminding them of who they were.
And what made them incredible and unique, celebrating their neurodivergence as identity and culture and never ever disorder, made it all worthwhile. It was healing for me as a mother to be able to dote on my children the way that I did and I don't regret for a second. The amount of professionals who [00:06:00] disapproved of me and told me I was causing my children's problems because I rejected and resisted their disorder narratives about myself and my children.
What a phenomenal mother and woman I was and am. And I hope that all parents and carers can see this about themselves today, instead of looking back and seeing the ways that we struggled and suffered in isolation, while also brutalizing ourselves. We deserve all the flowers in the world, as do our children.
And my wish for you is that you are deeply connected, not only to your children, but to yourself. Because we are so worthy and deserving of our own compassion and love and acceptance.