Before I realised I was autistic, I was very committed to setting New Year's Resolutions. I remember a few: write daily, keep up my morning and evening yoga routine and write in my gratitude journal everyday. It seemed like everyone else was doing it, and even posting their New Year Resolutions on their social media feeds. I never went that far, but wrote them down in the safety of my private journals.
As the year rolled on, my resolutions got harder and harder to keep. And each time I slipped up, I would feel like a failure.
For most of my adult life, I had no idea that I was autistic. I had no inkling that I needed sensory accommodations and executive functioning support. 'Simple' tasks like sticking to a new daily habit can be very challenging for me.
I have a demand-avoidant profile, and would be massively triggered by "to-do" lists and big goals, and my anxiety would cause any attempt to do these tasks to backfire. Even if the tasks I set out to do are tasks I enjoy, placing that kind of daily pressure on myself was an immediate way to set myself up for failure.
For most of my adult life, I had no idea that I was autistic. I had no inkling that I needed sensory accommodations and executive functioning support. 'Simple' tasks like sticking to a new daily habit can be very challenging for me.
I am in my 30s now, and burnt out from decades of pushing myself to appear neurotypical. Those to-do lists and goals got me through high school and university, but at what cost?
And then the pandemic hit, and everything got worse. Whatever buffers I may have had pre-pandemic - the ability to fly easily overseas to reconnect with family, being able to drop off my kids at daycare and preschool - evaporated. This is not the time to be planning lofty New Year's Resolutions. This is the time to survive the pandemic, as a disabled mother, raising a disabled daughter. This is also the time for me to better understand my neurotype, and work with it, instead of against it.
My favourite way to welcome in 2022 was my favourite way I welcome any other day - with the bleary hope that my kids sleep through the night, and for them to not wake up too early in the morning. I know. One can dream.
This year, it's different. Knowing my neurotype, I'm choosing the New Year Revolution - the pure and simple joy of surviving another revolution around the sun, with my sanity intact, my marriage sound, and with my children safe and well.
I already have massive anxiety being the main caregiver for my autistic daughter, and the joy and hardship that comes with that. I am her safe space, and her preferred person for all things, big and small. On her bad days, she will refuse to leave the house to go to preschool. School refusal is common in demand-avoidant children precisely because even a fun preschool is full of demands – listening to instructions, sitting down, eating her lunch, using the toilet, and so on.
I choose compassion instead of setting massive goals that will only crush me instead of uplift me. I hope to model to my children how living one day at a time, even if I'm not 'hitting new goals' is still worthy, and enough.
On her good days, I am honoured to be her favourite person in the entire universe. She loves sharing hilarious inside jokes with me, and invites me to join in her spontaneous pre-bedtime dance parties. I write down her rare confessions of love for me so I can cherish them after a tough day. My favourite has to be this line: “Even after I’m one hundred million years old, I’ll still love you.”
On my bad days, when the demands of mothering feel too much or my chronic pain flares up, I surrender to my girls watching their favourite Bluey DVDs so I can rest. On my good days, I take them to the playground and join in the fun.
This year, I choose compassion instead of setting massive goals that will only crush me instead of uplift me. I hope to model to my children how living one day at a time, even if I'm not 'hitting new goals' is still worthy, and enough.
*Name changed for privacy.
