NEURODIVERGENT NARRATIVES - CHAPTER 15: FOR THE LOVE OF PETS

When Words Run Out, The Animals Stay.

By the time you reach this chapter you have walked through diagnosis stories, culture, anger, relief, cleverness, exhaustion. It feels right that we end somewhere quieter, somewhere with muddy paws and shed fur and the steady rhythm of a shared routine.

When everything else fails we still have our animals. These last pieces end the book where many Autistic days actually begin and end, in a field where dogs wordlessly broker a new love story, in a kitchen and garden where a cat and a dog anchor two people to the small rituals that make life livable. After all the theory, this is what remains, one human, one animal, and a feeling of being held in a world that often refuses to hold us.