It was so quiet. The kind of quiet when the house is empty, the windows are closed and you’re alone, just breathing. Only I wasn’t alone. He was there. All 6ft 2in of him with his strong muscles and broad shoulders. He was there, above me, around me, inside me and the only response I had was the slow trail of quiet tears falling down my cheek, onto the pillow. Seventeen years later I can still remember how the room looked. It was fairly big with large windows along one wall that looked out of a car park surrounded by tall dark trees. The sky was a dark black. I remember it as black, not as a d ..read more

In 2020 Rufus, who is autistic, struggled more than we could have predicted. This struggle with the lockdown, the structureless life and the uncertainty that we were all living with, took a major toll on his mental health. This culminated in him attempting to self-harm in a desperate cry for help. This was the worst moment of the whole pandemic for me and if you know what else was going on for us at the time, having my worst moment relatively near the beginning is quite shocking. I still have flashes of that moment in my mind to this day and I don’t imagine it will ever completely stop. Thankf ..read more

Over the last few months I have been volunteering at a primary school. As I am looking to train as a children’s counsellor I decided that while I waited for the day Martha starts full time (giving me the time to train) I would get some experience working with kids who have extra emotional needs. Honestly the time I have spent so far with these children has been some of the most wonderfully rewarding hours of my life. I volunteer three afternoons a week while Martha is in nursery. In that time I have the chance to work with 15 different kids. Their needs range from just needing a chance to move ..read more

It’s now the 3rd of December and I have not weighed myself at all this year. This may seem like a strange thing to state for many people but since the age of 14 I have weighed myself every week, sometimes even more frequently. Even when I was travelling in my late teens I would find pharmacies, shops, anywhere I could to weigh myself and keep track of my numbers. And that’s what it was. It was all about the numbers. If the numbers were low I walked with a skip in my step, if the numbers were high the anxiety swelled to a point where I couldn’t even watch other people eat. Those numbers on the ..read more

I have thought about writing this post for a long time but due to my love and respect for Nick, I have kept quiet and allowed events to play themselves out. However, I fear that my story, my words, are getting lost, misinterpreted and misrepresented, and I want to change that. I met Nick 12 years ago and we went from colleagues to living together as a couple very quickly. We are and always have been very sure of each other. Even when everything around us has felt incredibly challenging and mentally draining we have found safe passage through by sticking together. Nick has a complicated history ..read more

That’s right folks, we finally got a diagnosis of autism for Rufus. We have been fully aware of his neuro-divergent status since he was very young but our first attempt to get a diagnosis was back in 2019. At that time we couldn’t provide enough evidence to be seen by CAMHS. However in 2020 when the world began truly falling apart, so did Rufus. As an autistic person he thrives with structure, certainty and familiarity. These three things were suddenly completely gone from his life which resulted in huge meltdowns and eventually threat to self-harm. The day Rufus tried to self-harm was the wor ..read more

I am a problem solver. I see a problem and I work to fix it. I don’t mind failure because without failure we can’t learn and use that knowledge to improve, but at the end of the process I like to see a problem solved. However, despite my longing to fix the world’s problems like climate change, racism, sexism, homophobia, a worldwide shift to the political far right, the arrogance of the political far left (at least when it comes to their interactions with the right), the general lack of empathy and compassion in the world and the general pain and suffering of those that don’t fall into the cat ..read more

Today I was told off. It was fairly gently sugested to me that I should not wear clothes with swear words on them when I’m doing the school run. I haven’t been told off by a teacher in quite some time (apart from my mum, but that doesn’t count). At first I was embarrassed to have had the conversation, but then I got angry. As the day went on I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I understand that schools and other parents might be offended by words like ‘fuck’ or ‘shit’ but there are, in my opinion plenty of other things that are more offensive that we should perhaps tackle first. Swear words are ..read more

Before I get into this, I need to say that Nick is an awesome husband, partner and dad. He works so hard at his job and then on top of that gives so much of himself once his employed working day is done. This post is not about any perceived failings on his part but more about the observation of how mine and his minds work differently. I wonder if this can be seen as a common gender divide or just different types of people? The story starts three weeks ago when I got a nasty cold. As is often the case my cold became sinusitis and I was basically bed ridden for three days. In my case bed ridden ..read more

I have gone back and forth in my head over whether I wanted to write this post. Not because I think I’m wrong or that what I have to say shouldn’t be said but because I know that the tension in the world right now could cause me to be accused of racism, bigotry or any number of other untrue epithets. I am well aware that I have a huge amount of ignorance when it comes to the lived experiences of those who are not white, cis, straight and atheist. I appreciate that many will disagree with what I write here but while I acknowledge my ignorance of life experiences, I do listen, I do try to learn ..read more