Autism Answer: A Lifetime of Adapting

 From our New Year edition of The Loop (Follow THIS LINK to read the full edition)

 

 

A Lifetime of Adapting
(also, adopting)
 

                                                             

I am not special, yet I am special. This is true of us all. 

My mom, Lynette Louise (The Brain Broad), steps into the lives of people around the world - via film, book, interviews, speaking engagements, and as a practitioner in our homes - and helps us explore the dynamics existing in this paradox: we can honor our special-ness while learning from others who have experienced it before us. 

Also, we can honor our special-ness while adjusting our behaviors along the way in order to thrive in existing environments. 

She herself has done this more than many. As a child she wanted to become a mom (or a missionary) to save children. As many as possible, at least twelve. She became a mom, but a hysterectomy meant adopting in order to become a mom to so many. Eight of us kids were legally hers, but she also invited others to stay temporarily along the way. Others who needed saving. Eventually she adapted that desire: instead, she wanted to help children, in order to stop seeing them as needing to be saved.

She had careers and businesses, they were successful in her mind so long as they were good for her and us kids. When they weren't, she changed them.

Everything mom chose to do incorporated her special-ness, as well as ours. But, also, we all had to transition and change to make them work in existing environments. 

Mom is now retired from her most recent work as a neurofeedback & BioPlay practitioner in homes around the world, but she still speaks and writes. 

(In fact, she will be speaking at the upcoming YOUniquely YOU women's retreat in Bermuda - April 23-26 2026)

But, she is retired. And this has led my wildly busy (some might say - okay, I might say - inexorably busy) mom to reinvent and rediscover.

As all of us in The Loop know, that has included spending more consistent time with my brother, Dar. Together they have worked creatively on communication and shared some videos with us. 

[follow THIS link to revisit our communication edition of The Loop]

For me, as mom's personal assistant, her retirement has given me reason to transition deeper into my writing self, which in turn has transitioned into diving deeper into my personal self. Who I am, who I want to be now that my children are adults and most of my family lives faraway. 

I am not special. People my age (in our 50s) are similarly engaged. If I narrow it down further, women my age who were stay-at-home moms who now have adult children, we become even more similar. Yet, my journey, my biology, myself is unique. 

As we move into this new year I hope everyone will find the type of courage and beauty I see in this paradox: We are not special, yet we are all special. Our struggles are not unique to us yet we do experience them uniquely. Hence, we have unique insights to share.

This, I think, is why I keep discovering there are places to go when we choose to leave where we are, and those places are prepared to welcome us. 

Sometimes this will mean adapting to a retired lifestyle, or adapting to a home with no small children requiring all encompassing focus; sometimes it will mean adopting new beliefs, adopting new habits, maybe even adopting children. I do not know where you are in your journey, but I do know there are others who have been similarly where you are, where you've been, and where you're going.

I do know transitions and transformations are in your life.

Because they are in all lives. 

Happy new year wonderful friends in The Loop!

I hope you are finding pleasure on your path. 

Hugs, smiles, and love!!

________

Tsara Shelton (X) 

 

Autism Answer: Different By Degrees

 

DANE

feeling like himself in a dress

feeling lovable when feminine

feeling loving while nurturing

feeling envy for the ones born with it

seeking fabrics and surgeries

avoiding past acquaintances

comparing herself to the ones advocating for it

being different by degrees

becoming different by degrees

 

DARLA

feeling like herself when youthful

feeling lovable when vibrant

feeling loving when energetically attentive

feeling envy for the ones not yet grown out of it

seeking moisturizers and surgeries

avoiding reflecting mirrors

comparing herself to the ones budgeting for it

focusing different by degrees

fighting becoming different by degrees

 

DEBBIE

feeling like herself while stimming

feeling lovable when praised

feeling loving while assimilating

feeling envy toward savants

seeking sensory pleasure and protection

avoiding social scenes

comparing herself to siblings

asking for different by degrees

being different by degrees  

 

Different

 by degrees 

_______

Tsara (X.com)

Review of The Pornographer: Irish Novel by John McGahern

 Originally written for my column at SexualDiversity.org

RANDOM: I have not been seeking it out, yet the Universe keeps plopping Irish literature into my hands. I have no follow up point, just thought I'd share that random fact :D 

____ 

The Pornographer by John McGahern is a novel about a writer named Michael. When we meet Michael he's living in a Dublin apartment making decent money as a writer of pornography, visiting his dying aunt regularly in the hospital with gifts of scotch to ease her pain, and going out dancing, hoping to meet women to have sex with.

We are invited along and introduced not only to Michael's attitudes toward this dance between the sexes, but also Josephine. They meet, she agrees to come home with him, they discuss with refreshing honesty their beliefs about what they want and why they want it.

They have sex. Josephine falls in love. Michael does not.

The rest of the story unfolds as each character and their ideas of love, sex, family, and death are brilliantly revealed, explored, and considered.

The diversity of characters and genders in this story, in the hands of this author, allows for an honest consideration of the different ideas and desires between genders, as well as the separate obstacles and expectations experienced by each.

Throughout the novel we are equally gifted with different interpretations, opinions, and actions of each person as individuals.

I love when storytellers give us space and reason to agree with and understand clashing perspectives. John McGahern is one such storyteller. (Amongst Women is another novel by John McGahern that I have read and he does an equally good job in that book.)

The protagonist, Michael, isn't cruel, but he is callous. He is continuously clear with Josephine, telling her he does not love her though he does enjoy sex with her. Meanwhile she feels as though she's in love with him and that he could, were he willing, learn to love her in time. Although she is a little older than Michael, he speaks to her as though she is a student and he is her teacher in all things love and sex. Michael is didactic while Josephine is romantic.

Even though Michael makes it known with clarity he could not love Josephine, his relationship with her continues because, after insisting that according to the calendar they did not need to use a condom (It makes a farce out of it, doesn't it? It's just not natural~Josephine) she becomes pregnant. Michael does not want to be the sort who would abandon her, but he is also unwilling to be a family. There are many revelatory conversations between Michael and Josephine, as well as with other characters who are invited to weigh in, while ideas of what to do are explored. The conversations reveal more than only the complexities of Dublin life in the 1970s, but the complexities of relationships in general.

Throughout the book Michael continues to care for his aunt and his uncle and write pornography; he meets a new woman who is quite independent and wonderful; he discusses life and death with his employer; he gets help and advice from his doctor friend and her wife. The diversity of beliefs in each character is well examined and fantastic to explore.

The story explores sexual behaviors and beliefs, which I expected from a novel called The Pornographer, and does so brilliantly, which I'd hoped for. The differences between the way sex is written in Michael's pornography (yes, we get to read some) is drastically different from the way sex is thought about and experienced in Michael's life. But each, of course, influences the other.

This is a great book, written by an author who is wickedly insightful.

With, perhaps, the greatest ending scene I've ever read in any book.

If you love to explore perspectives, as I do, I recommend The Pornographer.

"By not attending, by thinking any one thing was as worth doing as any other, by sleeping with anyone who would agree, I had been the cause of as much pain and confusion and evil as had I actively set out to do it. I had not attended properly." ~Michael, pg 251 of my copy

Hugs, smiles, and love!!!

(X.com @TsaraShelton)