🛎️ Zoom Link for Tomorrow's Live Late Diagnosis Club 🛎️

Join us for an interactive session exploring challenges we have with our relationships with parents and other close family members and how

Tomorrow at 8am PT, 11am ET, 4pm UK, and 5pm Europe we will be getting together on Zoom for the Late Diagnosis Club Live.

My mom and oldest sister arrive early Friday morning for their first visit to see me in the UK. Our last visit was in the before times — 2019. Here’s a picture from that visit. So when a member suggested we talk about challenges we have had with close family and share ideas for how to approach them, I knew the timing was right for me to have that conversation ASAP.

Most of the months between this photo and the ones we will take this weekend have been spent in silence. It’s perhaps a longer story than I should be telling in a meeting reminder, but ours is a once-close family divided by an algorithm that showed us each very different things about COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, January 6th, and so much more that you don’t need me to remind you of.

If anyone was going to change their minds, it would have happened by now, and for a while, I thought that meant we would never spend time together again. For years, my burnout was so intense and my capacity so low that there was a simple choice between my own survival and the survival of these relationships. I chose to survive. But then something shifted in me. Well, a few things, really.

1. I read the book Careless People, and I realized many of the divisions in my family were orchestrated by governments, brands, and billionaires who benefit financially from hate. The attention economy thrives on propaganda, and as much as I think the propaganda I like is ethically correct, people on the other side of these divides feel exactly the same way because they are seeing completely different things. Trillions of dollars are made by all of us believing what we see is true and right.

2. The script got flipped on me when I was on the wrong side of the algorithm from someone as close to me as I was to my mom before COVID. I engaged, read, studied their side, and tried to do anything to get back into this person’s life, and have mostly failed to this point. But it made me realize that I didn’t want the algorithms to have this much say in my life. For people who have decided I am not a fit for their nervous system, it makes me sad, but I try to give them grace because I know what that was like for me.

3. Right now, my energy levels are better than they were in 2020. Not being in the US and knowing I have health care and live in a place with close to zero gun violence has been a massive boost to my ability to stay regulated. There are many things I could do with those extra “spoons” — because while I have more energy now, it’s not as much as it was when I was masking pre-burnout — what I want to invest that extra capacity in is relationships with family (even challenging ones). I am NOT saying this is right for everyone… Just what works for me right now.

For many people, they are at a point where there just isn’t any energy to invest in these relationships. For others, there are no alternatives but to figure out these relationships. The fact is, we are all in different places, and where we are shifts and changes. In this session, we will explore where we are at, what’s working now, and what has worked in the past. Tomorrow at 8am PT, 11am ET, 4pm UK, and 5pm Europe we will be getting together on Zoom to talk about all of this. This isn’t a prescriptive session, and no one will tell you what to do, but my hope is that by hearing where others are at, we all might walk away with new ideas for what might work for you.

Looking forward to seeing you there! Paid members will be able to see the link to join the call below. If you aren’t a paying supporter, you can UPGRADE TO PAID HERE: AutisticCulture.substack.com/subscribe

This meeting is for PAID members of the Autistic Culture Substack, HOWEVER if this is support you need right now, please know no one will be turned away and no explanation is needed.

REQUEST A FREE PASS: Email admin@autisticculture.co.uk