From the ground up, we all have a role: What is your seed?
Musings on purpose + belonging from a Neurodivergent Perspective
Photo by Benjamin Combs on Unsplash
Like so many of us, for years I’ve had fantasies of living close to the earth, growing my own food and being completely self-sufficient.
I’m pretty close to the first goal — I’m very blessed to live off-grid, surrounded by green on a friend’s beautiful, faery-like smallholding in West Wales. As for the second goal, I see food growing around me here. I’ve participated in work exchanges on others’ land in the past, harvesting tomatoes, picked berries and planted onions. I water the plants on this land when the landowner, my friend, is away on holiday.
But, when I attended a Summer Solstice celebration recently and admired the gorgeous display of colour that participants’ home garden produce created in the potluck dinner, my heart sank as I realised that I haven’t yet achieved this for myself.
It felt incongruent, and disappointing, and a bit shame-inducing.
Sigh. I have very high standards for myself.
But even though I adore being around plants and love the whole idea of growing stuff, when I try and do things like gardening, here’s my reality.
Scoliosis makes my back start hurting within about 15 minutes and my sensory issues raise their heads — I get too hot and sweaty or tired. My dyspraxia makes it really difficult to know what to do unless someone clearly explains and demonstrates it (usually three times). If anything doesn’t go exactly as it’s been explained to me, my brain hurts trying to figure out what’s next.
I struggle to manually manipulate things as basic as hoses and spades. This was demonstrated by a comical scene recently as, taking care of the garden and polytunnel here, I ended up spraying myself and accidentally detaching whole sections of the hose that I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to re-attach. (Thankfully, my now ex-partner was around to help later on).
Even once I get going, my ADHD mind wanders because of the lack of mental stimulation and it proves hard to stay focused. I feel really bad about this one. I look at my phone and think, ‘It’s only been 20 minutes?’
Finding the time is also a challenge — by the time I’ve done my hours-long self-care practices, online work and catching up with friends (usually by phone), and had enough rest between things, the day is gone.
Is it any wonder that I then retreat back to the safety of my laptop, much as I also regularly want to throw the thing into the river and quit social media forever?
Photo by Discover Savsat on Unsplash
This sits uncomfortably with me because, within my values system, I would ideally interact with tech very rarely and blissfully commune with the nature around me 24/7, crafting things by hand and drawing water from a spring.
(In reality, my attempt to be part of the decor team at a festival by ‘making things’ was an agonising experience I will not be repeating any time soon).
My imagination and desire is sparked by those homesteading Instagram accounts of complete self-sufficiency. The ones that evoke a romanticised vision of spending all day doing what our ancestors did, tending animals and land, deeply connected to our bodies and the earth rather than disembodied on a computer. That’s not to mention that knowing these things might well become a matter of survival in our uncertain future.
Photo by Zoe Schaeffer on Unsplash
Then, he pointed out something I’d never considered. (Thank you, Friend.)
What if, instead of being the ones who water and tend and grow plants, we are the ones who research where to get the seeds and which are the right ones to grow? The ones who connect and network online to find resources that support those who are doing the growing? The ones who use the knowledge and experience of food-growers to create online resources for those who want to start learning the same?
This is just as vital a part in the creation cycle.
And it’s so hard to see, sometimes, because we live in such an atomised, compartmentalised society, where if we don’t possess certain skills, we are deficient and unable to be ‘independent’. I explore this more in my article here.
For neurodivergent people and anyone who feels ‘other’ or ‘different’ in some way, it can be so easy to focus on the things we are less able to do. To ruminate despondently on how we don’t measure up to the ideals of our society and of our own longings.
It’s time to look up and look around at what our unique role in the ecosystem might be.
My role has so often been to connect up people, ideas and resources. My hyperfixations and special interests have inspired friends to try new practices and lifestyle changes that benefited their lives for years to come, from 5Rhythms movement practice to simply giving up the city life and moving to the countryside.
Through my painful lack of fitting into most conventional scenes, I’ve dug deep into alternative places of belonging, often introducing folk who’ve ended up being collaborators or supporting each other in some way (the less enjoyable manifestation of this was introducing my then partner to the woman who would be his next partner very shortly).
And then there are my books and articles. Based on the feedback I get (nervous moment — I’m only blowing my own horn to encourage you, here), they spark discussion, self-examination, validation of the struggles we experience, feelings of being-less-alone aka a sense of belonging, and threads of wonder about whether another way is possible. Who knows where things go from there?
It may not be as tangible as a vegetable harvest, but it could have as much depth as a sea of stars.
What about you? Where’s your ‘zone of genius’? Where do you thrive and what can you contribute? It could be something that’s overlooked even by your own eyes — but I am willing to bet that it matters and is needed as part of the larger cycle of creation we are all in.
Want to read more of my writing? You can subscribe to receive additional content for just £5 per month, and order my book, ‘The Wild Wandering Arc: A Journey through Vanlife, Nature & Love’.
You are also welcome to join me over on Wildmuse Portal where I explore how to live a more authentic, nature-connected life of freedom and creative expression.
Are you, or do you know, a neurodivergent woman? Together with a fellow ‘neurospicy’ friend and collaborator, I am putting together a supportive journey for neurodivergent women to create new foundations in their lives. If you want to be the first to know about it, visit here or follow us on Facebook and Instagram.