Slowly shifting.
My child has asked me, more than once, in various ways, “Should I be going to the office for medication?” and “Do I have ADHD Mum? Do you think I have something?”.
He’s a curious kid, an observant kid and he has noticed. Over the years, in different schools, he has been noticing and making meaning. It’s what we do. It hasn’t shocked me. Of course, I’ve asked the questions too.
About him since he was a toddler and more recently about myself. His questions each time they come up, bring up a lot, of thought, of feeling, of stored, trapped, not yet processed energy and emotion.
Should he? Should I? Should we have back then? Should we now?
The past few days something big and difficult has been stirring, brewing, starting to form within me. I know that because I have found myself disconnecting, distracting, scrolling. Subconsciously noticing and following an old pattern of avoidance, of looking away, of keeping my mind busy so that my body has less space to speak and ask for what it needs.
I’ve been avoiding sitting still so that I wouldn’t have to sit with. Tricking myself into searching for something on the outside so that my eyes won’t rest on what is right here in front of me, on the inside.
It’s time. To revisit, to rebrand, to rework my website and in order to do that my why. It’s time to plant myself in my why and start saying it out loud. It’s time to be brave.
The way I feel, underneath what I think, when my child asks me those questions is my why. What I feel underneath his words is ‘Would I fit better Mum? If something helped me to be more like them? Or if I could call myself that? Would I get to join one of those big groups and fit somewhere that feels normal and safe?’
Without it being about anybody else’s experience and choices, only ours, something in my body screams NO to that.
Screams and cries in frustration and rage that this is what is offered to my child by this world. This is his choice, our choice- to struggle or make ourselves, in one of two ways, fit.
Little Wildflowers is about a third way. A way I’ve heard and read people at least acknowledge recently but only to say that the world isn’t ready for it yet. Little Wildflowers is about envisioning it, embodying it, bringing it into the world, whether it’s ready or not, one moment, one step, one response at a time. It’s about dropping stones throughout our days, in our homes that will ripple out into the world.
It’s about living in a way that says ‘fitting’ is not a top value of ours. That says I belong here, as I am, just because I am, here. That says, if I can be aware of my needs and communicate them clearly and calmly then there is no need for me to call myself anything other than I. It’s about me living in this way to show him that he can too, if he chooses to. It’s about supporting other parents who want to, to do the same in their homes.
We’re not here to fit into the mainstream box, nor are we here to create a second one alongside it. We are here to simply be, as complex and challenging as that can often be, so that we might be a part of slowly shifting and opening up what ‘mainstream’ actually is.
