Learning through relational entanglement

reflections on three years of learning, on my daughter’s 3rd birthday

It’s the eve before we move house. It’s late and my daughter wakes to come into our bedroom. She nestles down with me and my husband knowingly moves down to the floor mattress. It feels apt that she should be here with me tonight. This house has many strong memories, perhaps the strongest being her tiny baby body nestled in my armpit in that same bed at 4am, watching the summer sun rise through the white slat blinds, as she fed and buried into me as though trying to get inside my skin.

It’s also the night before her third birthday. Three years ago I went into labour on the night of the snow moon and brought to the world a moon child so radiant and inspiring I have been changed forever since that moment. It was the birth that started it all. My first words on her arrival were “you’ve just been born to a goddess”. I felt fully alive and unstoppable. I worked hard for that experience. At the foot of the bed in our bedroom at home, she arrived pink and beautiful and I was in awe of myself for what I had done. The hard work and energy that I put in, spurred on by healing the trauma etched into my body-mind from the birth and subsequent cracking open of my whole world, when my son came along three years previously. I didn’t want to repeat that experience and I had been dedicated to the hypnotherapy process for months. I made birthing my special interest, prepared my senses with scents, vision board, plants to soften my space and bring nature in. In the end I didn’t want any of the sensory supports I had in place (I remember being so offended by the sounds and smells). I just needed quiet, calm, to listen to myself and feel totally safe. I poured attention into my body, turned up the dial on my interoception, and reclaimed my autonomy.

I didn’t know though, that the birth was only the beginning. This depth of healing has continued long after that incredible night of my daughter’s arrival. My understanding of who I am starting with unravelling the generational trauma and wounding that I still carry. The realisation of who we are, as a neurodivergent family of brilliantly different, complex minds. She taught me that there was so much complexity that I was not seeing. In the breakdown of our first six months together, she showed me that I was being called to make change.

It was in the contrast between my two children that I started to recognise need in ways that I had not been clear of before. With my autistic-PDA son, who has an internalised and anxious presentation, I had diligently attended to him and supported him through his sensory sensitivity, sleepless nights, and frequent meltdowns. I had nothing to compare this to and so I gave the entirety of myself to support him and had no way of knowing that this might be different to other mothers’ experiences. But the interrelational learning could only take place through the entangled dynamics between us as a family. My daughter was different, and helped me see things differently. Independent, clear of her needs, strong and determined in her requests even as a newborn, she knew how to connect with me and we had a very strong and clear line of communication. Even before she was verbal she was incredibly clear, and this was very interesting for me as a dancer with my deep interest in non linguistic ways of being. My son was hyper verbal, very bright, anxious and highly masked, but my daughter was quiet, observant, cautious and direct.

Her quiet and selective words only shared with those who are absolutely safe, showed me how to be more careful, and threw light on the deep masking nature of my existence before her. I recognised how hard I had been trying to be ok for my son, when I needed to give in to the exhaustion and stop.

Her explosive and physical expressions of nervous system overwhelm lit a fire in me and brought out memories of my emotional needs. I have had more insights and realisations about myself since she was born and have recognised my internalised PDA, highly masked OCD, and the neurodivergent trauma of not being seen for the wholeness of myself.

My fierce protection of her essence brought into full view how lacking in any kind of true champion I have been. Even as a mother, I have been fighting a battle supporting myself alone, I had no guide, no ally, I had lost friends, family, and home since my son’s arrival in 2019. But it was her fragility, her strength, this dichotomy, that I needed to show me how powerful I was, and how important it was to protect that power through rest and recognition.

The way others try to put their labels on her as behaviour and not as a whole human, reminded me that I have never been truly seen as my whole self. The essence of me has always been hidden in other people’s expectations. I began a three year (and counting) process of dismantling. The positive disintegration process that has me here now on her third birthday, wondering where the next three years might take me.

I continue to watch her with eager curiosity and awe. She has a fire that rages and a quiet detailed mind that searches and questions. She does not mask and prefers to be silent. She calls me to ask why…

• Why is darkness and subtlety in children feared?

• Why must we place our saccharine expectations on children?

• Why can’t we place anger on the step next to joy, and observe them both as part of our complex fabric?

• Why do we make children in an image that does them no justice as unique beings?

We seem to have socially constructed childhood to be something that looks pleasing for adults. But with both my children I have seen the price of this in different ways. My son has worked so hard to try to meet that demand that he entered burnout from masking his true nature by the time he turned six years old. My daughter in her wild and wondrous darkness is misunderstood and criticised by other adults for her few words and the rage in her expression. But she shares a truth about how adult led demands on her to “perform childhood” in a way that is palatable to adults, are affecting her spirit and ability to be free.

I continue the journey of being her mother and exploring the difference between my two autistic children. Both PDA, one highly masked and anxious, one externalised and full of fire. I wonder how these two brilliant and complex beings have come into the world so different and yet so similar. Both teaching me things I never thought I needed. Both cracking me open so that the light can get in.

Every year as imbolc arrives, with it the snow moon paving the way for my moon child’s arrival, I will be drawn to reflect on the years of unravelling and the deep learning that she has given me.

I have brought the sun and the moon to the earth and they have made me a goddess among men. Now I must tend their path into the universe, so that I might continue to uncover my own light buried deep under 40 years of other peoples expectations.

Happy 3rd birthday to my daughter, my moon of truth, the most inspiring girl I know.