Surprise! I'm autistic, and more...
Sharing my diagnosis and how we survived the holidays and what to expect in this space of ours online...
Vulnerability is hard.
Last week I set up a GoFundMe for our medical expenses. This week I shared publicly that I’m autistic. That’s a whole lot of laying myself bare on the internet.
As hard as it is to ask for help or to share a diagnosis that might lead people to assume a lot about me, I live in words. They are where I find peace and how I construct meaning. I love to play with words, to turn them over and over, to manipulate their order and combinations. Vulnerability is hard, yes, but for me, writing is life.
I’m finding myself wanting to write more. It’s time for a new online dining table, figuratively speaking, where we can sit with our favorite beverages and talk about what’s real.
“Can We Skip Small Talk?” is a both a newsletter and a new place for us to connect, conversationally.
How did you survive the holidays?
When most people ask about our break, they’re expecting an answer of “fine” or maybe a quick emotion-neutral anecdote. But as I don’t manage small talk well, I’m one of the people who answer with stories of snot, COVID tests (all negative), and trauma triggers.
Holidays were hard. We got sick. We couldn’t join Lee’s family, and I realized we need to host them here when we reschedule because I can’t bear to drive almost to the beach without feeling like one of us might die because Lee did there in 2019. (Trauma doesn’t always make sense, but it’s real.) How’d we get through? Together, me and my six loves, like we always do.
Shortly after Lee died, anytime the kids asked me a question that had no answer, not yet, I replied, “We’ll figure it out.”
And we keep on doing that.
1. Hopes and resolutions
I’m walking a new relationship with hope lately. By that, I mean I’m choosing to hold and be held by hope instead of trying to force it, like I’ve been doing since Lee died. Lee held hope for both of us, and I was held by him.
Hope has been elusive and fleeting until recently. I’ve been trying to chase and catch it, and now I’m letting it — and me — just be.
My newest resolution, a form of hope, is to build community. I’m not here for followers. I’m here to share my heart, skip the small talk, and offer space for you to respond, with a button like this in each post:
2. Expectations and exceptions
I’ll be writing at least once a week. Most posts will be for paid subscribers, as you support this community and my writing. I’ll play around a little before I commit to a format, but I expect to offer an essay followed with a few short thoughts or reactions to recent events.
When life is rough, when a child is in the hospital, when I am having severe PTSD episodes, I’ll still check in. Those check-ins will probably be brief, but they won’t be small talk. I can promise you that.
3. Welcome and belonging
I watched as my child slept aggressively, legs moving independent of each other, arms grasping at air and covers, body twisting in ways mine no longer can. Another child, in the same room, slept motionless, breathing in a barely audible rhythm, only moving by their eyes twitching under closed lids.
I’m sharing this because I know we aren’t all the same, even if we’re in the same room. I want this to be a compassionate space in which we all belong because of love, not because we all move or behave or exist in the same ways. I know belonging can’t be spoken into existence, though. It must be built, so all I can offer now is a welcome with a hope for something more and a responsibility to create a space for all of us.
4. An ask and accountability
I do have one ask for you, to hold me accountable to shaping this space. I’m autistic, which involves differences in how I process information and express the resulting thoughts. Sometimes I might not make sense to you. When that happens — and it will — let me know. I’d love to clarify, but I can’t do that if I don’t know what clarification is needed.
And now, let’s breathe.
This space is new. But? We’ll figure it out.