It feels as though I have two different selves; a desperate, animal self, emerging in chaos, and a calm, wise human, squinting to recognize her twin.” To say I recognize myself in Katherine May would be an exaggeration, but there were undeniably points in this book where I found myself saying "But wait, that's not weird. I do that." And I, too, have turned to walking to deal with things that seem impossible to deal with. So I was very ready to find out how walking worked for May, and how she coped, in the end, with her diagnosis and the new reality that created (and maybe if she got any brilliant insights or healing from the walking).

Nearly 40 years of learning to cope, to mask her distress, to pass as normal, results only in despair over her inability to be completely like other people, and it is that sense that she is somehow failing as a person that drives May to start her rather ambitious walking project. When she described hiding in a quiet corner of the cafe while her husband and son enjoy a busy, noisy science museum, I really wanted to reach out and tell her that's okay--heaven knows I did it often enough! Introversion, sensory sensitivies--those things are real, and what makes me sad is how little help we get in understanding them (I didn't recognize my own sensory sensitivies for what they are until my oldest child got an Asperger's diagnosis and I began to read about it). The book vividly (and humorously) describes battles in a world where Katherine often feels off kilter. And, at a point where she feels she’s lost a sense of identity, she escapes into the wilderness… Undertaking a series of intense, and very calculated hiking trips, allowing herself to bathe in isolation. Yeah, and you know, just to touch upon your relationship with your husband, which you write really honestly about, and you talk about, how am I going to share this new information with him. And you write about how supportive he is of you, and you know, throughout your whole journey and your goals with regards to walking the trail? And I’m just Can you talk a little bit about, you know, just sharing that information, which I imagine, even though you were married for many years, and you know, again, for listeners who are kind of figuring this out, it’s still a very vulnerable thing to do.The Electricity of Every Living Thing tells the story of the year in which Katherine comes to terms with her diagnosis. It leads to a re-evaluation of her life so far - a kinder one, which finally allows her to be different rather than simply awkward, arrogant or unfeeling. The physical and psychological journeys become inextricably entwined, and as Katherine finds her way across the untameable coast, she also finds the way to herself.

Yeah, and as I was reading that, too, I also related to that idea of so many listeners of this show, so many people in my community are working toward accepting and leaning into, you know, who their child is. And it’s that same kind of tension, that disconnect between accepting what is and leaning into that, and that the pain can often be caused by trying to, to avoid or deny or not really look at what’s going on. Yeah, I mean, because actually, the thing about being a masked autistic person is that you don’t get to just drop that mask, even if you want to, like the masking is so ingrained, it’s very, very hard to get rid of, and you’re not really sure who you’d be without the mask. And, you know, of course, the mask is also a privilege because it allows you to kind of pass in mainstream society. And quite often, I’ve learned that when I drop the mask, like because I felt like it would be the best way to meet my needs, my relationship with the people, I’ve dropped the mask to immediately changes and their tone changes towards me. And that feels very hurtful quite often, I think it’s really important to kind of talk about that as a, as a sort of baseline. I mean, for me, that’s changed the kind of minutiae of my life in a really significant way. And obviously, like, it’s been safest for me to drop the mask around the people I’m closest to, not everyone has reacted really well with that, but loads of people have, and I’m learning how to unmask and to sort of state my needs, you know, and that’s often showing up in really small ways, like being able to say to my husband, this music’s too loud, or you got this film on too loud, and I can’t cope with it, or being able to say, like, I just can’t, I can’t go to this event this afternoon, I’m already feeling overwhelmed, it’s going to completely tipped me over the edge or being able to say, Can we go home now, please, I have reached my limit. And to be able to say that really gently without it being a crisis, you know, because in the past, and like, partly because even I didn’t understand what was going on, I would often have to feel like I had to reach a kind of crisis point, before I got to do the thing that I needed to do, you know, like, I parties, I would get completely just spooked really by all the people of noise and the social demands. And I would end up disappearing off to the bottom of the garden or hiding under the coats, I used to do quite a lot. There was always a room of coats, and I’d kind of bury myself under them and go to sleep or like getting upset, I don’t need to reach those points anymore. Because I’ve dropped my mask. And I began to own up to what I actually need. And that’s, you know, that ‘s it, it takes little learning, it’s surprising, you don’t even recognize what your needs are, first of all. And this year, for the first time, like my dad loves to throw parties and I, instead of me kind of finding an excuse not to go out like saying yes, and then finding the excuse not to go last minute, he said he issued the invitation with the world’s that you might not want to go so it’s okay, if you don’t. And I was like, No, thank you. I don’t want to go. And he was like, Okay, no problem. We’d love to have you there. But we get it. And I just thought Allie Lou Yeah. I felt like finally I began to get the message across in my own very faltering rubbish way. But actually, that isn’t my ideal environment, thank you. And I love to be considered, but I love to be allowed to say no to. The Electricity of Every Living Thing: A Woman’s Walk in the Wild to Find Her Way Home by Katherine May Sure. Yeah. So Wintering is a book, I guess that draws on my kind of lived neurodivergent experience, really, to talk about the times in life when we feel kind of cast out in the cold. So those fallow periods in life, when we feel like, you know, everything else is carrying on around us. And we’ve dropped out, you know, whether that’s through mental or physical illness or through a bereavement, or you know, something like a divorce or a big life change. They’re these times that come to all of us, but we don’t tend to talk about them very much. And so in Wintering, I wanted to really kind of manifest them for the world and shepherd, so everyone that they have this thing in common, and also to talk about some of the gentle ways that you can enjoy them, I think is the best way to put that. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we’ve been together for more than 20 years, by the time I realized I was autistic. And that’s a long time to feel like you’ve been undercover, I guess. And, you know, hopefully people will discern from the book that he is just a basically decent person. And you know, we love each other very much, which helps not everybody gets that actually, you know, not everyone has that privilege of having someone that loves them for who They are. But when I realized I was autistic I, yeah, I got inside my head about it because I was so worried about telling him specifically and what would he think of me? And what would he think of his situation in that light? You know, like, what? What would it mean for us? And how do you break it to someone after all this time? When it came to it, he knew. I mean, he didn’t know the specifics, but he knew and he’d loved me anyway. And I think that’s kind of what we forget, sometimes we’re so we autistic people spend a lot of time noticing the way that the world has rejected us and the way that world has pushed us away and spat us out and made us feel small, we don’t often turn our attention to how we are loved and how we’re valued. And it turned out that I was loved and valued for me all along, and not for the pretend person I was because he’s the person that seen the real me the most, you can’t mask all the time. And he’d seen me a mask, and he loved me anyway, even when he found me frustrating and difficult. And of course, like what I don’t write about the times when he’s frustrating and difficult, because that would be incredibly rude of me because it’s not his book, and he doesn’t get to speak. So that’s, you know, that’s what love is, it’s not to perfect people coming together and adoring each other unquestioningly for decades. It’s actually like knowing each other’s difficult bits and caring anyway.Katherine describes her ‘adult self’ as a, “a parrot, a mynah bird”, having learned social nuances from observation. She ‘masks’ so well that, even when trying to seek psychiatric help, she isn’t able to let her guard down, When you’re parenting a neurodivergent child, you don’t get to just follow the kind of set pattern that everyone else is following you know, you have to think everything through and you have to learn different skills and different ways to do things. And that’s, you know, that’s a strain like it’s nothing to do with the child. It’s just that when you’re kind of breaking the patterns that are already set. It’s it’s hard. It’s hard work. And it’s you know, that’s it’s valid to find that difficult.