Oh look – it’s another haiku!

Hi. Welcome to a Voice Released.
I started this blog in 2009 to blog my creative writing. It soon became clear I was using it as a form of communication, for not only was I freeing the voices of the characters I created but I had freed my own voice and was learning to share my thoughts and feelings in a way I had found inexplicably difficult through speech alone.
Along with several tiny flash fiction and other short stories I have written over the years, I have blogged about the struggles with anxiety and the discovery more recently that I am in fact autistic.
I was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder in April 2014, and told that this was the condition formally described as Asperger’s Syndrome. Put simply I am autistic but in a less visible way. It is this very invisibility that prompts me to keep writing about the hidden struggles of Aspies, autistics and undiagnosed autistic people, and to share concerns and often very difficult moments and confusions that can hit us sometimes and leave us feeling all at sea and alone in the world.
I’ve always been obsessed with people, interactions and behaviours. I love to tell stories from the points of view of the characters who visit my head – particularly the misunderstood. I also like to have a rant now and then about society. Sometimes I combine the two!
Having autism and anxiety means that, even though it’s not obvious, I’m always working, always exhausted, always using too much adrenalin and cortisol, and always looking for ways to find peace, to reach out and to manage my health. Writing seems to cover all of these things and brings the satisfaction of creative production and a much needed release of creative energy.
In my other life I run a shop with my husband. He does the people stuff and I do the paper, organising and money stuff. I also have an organic vegetable garden and try to grow and cook as much of my own produce as possible and grow plenty of things for bees and butterflies, while trying to run a home and be a good enough mum to three children between the ages of 11 and 21. I insist on fitting photography into that mix too and force myself to take at least one photo every day. I keep a journal for that on blipfoto.

If you’re interested in my autism discovery and assessment, the blog entries between February and April 2014 would be a good place to start.