Katherine May: Passing as “Normal”
Katherine May is the New York Times bestselling author of Wintering, the book that spoke to so many of our souls when it came out a month before the pandemic: Katherine anticipated what all of us felt, which is that our way of living was not supportable, and that we needed retreat and rest. Katherine is a prophet for a number of reasons: Not only because she’s a stunningly beautiful writer and astute observer of the world, but also because she’s wired a little bit differently. Before she wrote Wintering, Katherine wrote another book, a memoir called The Electricity of Every Little Thing, about attempting to walk the 630 mile South West Coast Path in Britain before turning 40. But it’s not a book about a heroic feat, it’s actually about grappling with her late-in-life diagnosis as being on the autism spectrum disorder. Katherine always knew she was different, but she never knew exactly how or why, only that she found many parts of life overwhelming and chaotic. The book, which is stunning, explores the ways so many of us feel like we’re passing—picking up behaviors from other people in order to be accepted, or to fit in. I loved our conversation so much.
TRANSCRIPT:
(Edited slightly for clarity.)
ELISE:
I was so happy. A few weeks ago, or a month ago, when I went into my favorite bookstore, Diesel, which I haunt like a ghost, I'm there all the time. And I saw The Electricity of Every Living Thing. Because when I first read Wintering, I was like, what's more, and it was only available in the UK. But it predates Wintering, not by a tremendous amount of time, but now you're the Wintering person.
KATHERINE MAY:
I've been so glad that it's come out in the U.S. this year, because it's one of those books, it's maybe not for everybody, but it helps, you know, like it helps a lot of people to understand themselves, and who they are, and what they need. And it helps other people to understand the people in their lives who are maybe like me. So yeah, I’m always thrilled when people can get their hands on it.
ELISE:
I would argue with you that I actually think it is a book for everyone. I think it's a book for anyone, too, who feels just going back to what we were talking about, who feels highly sensitive or attenuated to the world, because the way that you describe—and two Katherines—but the way that you describe yourself, you know, and are situated on this autism spectrum disorder. But the way that you talk about your life coping. Or emulating, pulling strings from various people and how to behave in the world, it speaks to, you know, the way I think so many of us are, are conditioned, right? Like you are pulling little pockets of behavior from other people.
KATHERINE:
Yeah. I mean, I had to do that really deliberately, like through my childhood and my teens in order to like pass as normal. And, you know, we do talk about passing in our community, and we talk about camouflaging and masking, like all of those different behaviors that let us wear a more socially acceptable facade. I dunno if you've read your Erving Goffman, that the great sociologist Erving Goffman wrote about this. I don't know, like in the fifties and sixties and talked about the dramaturg metaphor and he felt that all human beings did this, they had like an outward facing self, and a backstage self. And that actually very few people ever get to see your true backstage self, if anyone does at all. And so it's an extension of, of normal life in lots of ways. But of course, for us, it's like really extreme. And it's also very damaging. I mean, like, you know, Goffman didn't think that that masking was damaging. He thought that was just a part of how we behave. But actually, when you talk to autistic people, the kind of levels of exhaustion that we endure and the fragmenting of the selfcomes from, if we can manage it, like trying to act normal, massive scare quotes there. Normal is a really important and interesting word in my life. Definitely.
ELISE:
Yeah, no, I mean, it's, so there's so many beautiful. I'm looking at my notes from the book and you are such a stunning writer. It is intimidating. And I loved actually hearing about the way that you absorb words, and the way that your mind works, and essentially your capacity to be a walking dictionary. It was so beautiful. But I thought the way that you write about wanting to be normal, but not even normal. I love this part, you wrote, “But I was a master by then of the surface appearance. I had watched carefully the way that other people behaved and mimicked it precisely. I had all the social errors and graces the encouraging smiles and the kind inquiries, and I could chase the lineage of each of them back to the person I stole them from.” So beautiful and exhausting, you know, I can't imagine your mind.
KATHERINE:
Yeah, it's busy, you know, it's cluttered. And that kind of sense of everything being present all at once is I think one of the reasons why autistic people get overwhelmed, you know, like if someone has touched me in the last day and I wasn't expecting it, I'll be feeling that still for like the next 12 hours. And I will have everything on my to-do list at the front of my head, and everything I've said, like replay constantly and everything everybody else has said, and stuff from a few years ago and whatever else is going on. And actually one of the things that my diagnosis has, let me do is really consciously empty my head and reduce the stimulus. And I've become, I'm sure it's really annoying to the outside, but as a survival mechanism now I've become quite assertive about what I do and don't want to know, and what demands I do and don't want made of me, you know? So if an interviewer says, can I send you the questions in advance? I'm like, Nope, absolutely don't do that. Because if I read them, they're gonna be right at the front of my head until we talk ,and I'll be like winding through them endlessly. I work really hard to keep my head as clear as possible, but it's hard because I've got a head like a sponge.
ELISE:
And is that—and now post diagnosis, which was so fascinating watching you tangle with that because this desire in some ways to have a name for what you are. And then I know people don't say Asperger's, but I loved sort of that moment where you're like, people with Asperger's are typically geniuses. So I was excited for that label. U
KATHERINE:
Yeah. I probably told the truth too, too, out loud there didn't I?
ELISE:
No, it was perfect. No, I think it, we all wanna feel special and seen for who we are. And so I completely understand why this desire for someone to explain your world back to you felt good.
KATHERINE:
Oh yeah. Like to have an account of yourself. And I mean the thing is that the accounts that were available to me then, and it's only like five years ago, about what autism even was, were so imperfect and problematic. And I had to kind of pick my way through what I could find then and it has improved since then, but only because of the autistic community getting together and like working on this. But the research base hasn't really caught up with kind of what we are, and yeah, part of that is the obsession with genius and the way it's like used to mark out the good from the bad almost, and that's actually deeply, deeply problematic. Because when you look at how autism actually presents in people, it gives us what's called a spikey profile, which means that our abilities are unevenly distributed as compared to neurotypical people.
So we tend to be like extra-good at some things and extra-bad. And like, the word bad is not a great word to use, but, but you know what I mean at other things. Whereas when you look at a typical person, they tend to have an ability level across a range of things that is basically similar. And that's where you get this idea of like genius and savantism. But we've been a bit too obsessed with that. And that's all almost like a way of saying, well, some of these people are valid and some of them aren't. And in fact, I think, you know, I've had to think really hard about how I consider myself within this big mass of people who are all so different, but have these threads of understanding in common.
ELISE:
Yeah. Now I think to the way that you described, we're gonna go a little woo woo here in a minute, which I know is not your jam. But maybe more so now…
KATHERINE:
No, it's not a big autistic jam altogether, actually. I think there's a kind of like autistic aversion to woo slightly. Prove it!
ELISE:
But you write, and I think this might be, where you got the title of the book. “My world is made up of tiny electric shocks. Every living thing carries its own current. And this finds its earth through me. Every unexpected touch. Every glance has a charge. I am a lightning rod laid out like the red nose patient in the game of Operation, eternally braced for the metal on metal jolt of conflict.” And that intense sensitivity, that sponge-like capacity you have—the lack of a filter really. And I loved when you were talking about meditation near the end and how the one person, again, despite your aversion to woo, really seemed to understand you, was a meditation instructor who was talking to you about your aura and could see your aura and was like it is huge. And could you, he was like work with you where he would, he, he knew exactly where like the visible clench was for you physically, like at a certain point.
KATHERINE:
He deliberately crossed into my, like my massive personal space and let me feel that moment. And that was a really important moment to me because yeah, I mean, I wouldn't understand it in terms of an aura, but I would also say that most people in everyday life aren't really paying attention to how other people's, how the space around other people feels. And I can sense it in other people. Like I can feel other people's boundaries really clearly, they're like really manifest to me. Whereas I routinely get other people stepping into mine. And that's part of our kind of exquisite sensitivity in the world. Like we can feel the edges of people and they extend much further than our bodies. It's really, it's really evident. So, I mean, you can make that as woo as you like, actually, because I don’t think we are saying a very different thing in lots of ways. I just think that my community like massively tuned into that stuff. And I think everybody could, and this guy had, and he sensed the distance I needed and he showed it to me in a way that I couldn't have perceived at the time. Because I couldn't have been honest about it because I know that the region around me is way bigger than it is for other people. Like you know, it is, and I was embarrassed by that as I was growing up.
ELISE:
No, but it's clear you have extra-sensorial perception. And u I think it's interesting in this idea of proving it, you know, my view of the world is that, and I know so many, mediums, intuitives, people who perceive other extra information, and one of the woman, this woman Laura Day, who's an incredible medium, but she talks about how she has brain damage. And she has a traumatized brain and that that is why she's able to perceive this information. And that, but that she, um, you know, my perception is that, and I sense this in my oldest son actually, is that we we're these sort of energetic bodies really like we're energetic beings in a physical form that ideally is attenuated. Ideally we're designed to sort of process ourselves and express into the world, but we have varying abilities to do that. Like my son feels like this huge, energetic being who is in an eight-year-old body and like not quite always process at the rate. He is struggles to be in his body in that way.
KATHERINE:
I so understand that feeling as well. Like I think that is, I mean, one of the things that lots of autistic people will tell you is that they don't feel like they belong in their skin. You know, that they, it barely contains them. And it's an uncomfortable space to be in. Like, I remember the first time I watched Men in BLack and there's that guy that gets taken at the farmer that gets taken over by the alien. I dunno if you've seen it, but he's all like uncomfortable and it's all fitting wrong. And I just strongly related to it at the moment I saw it. That's how it feels to be me, you know, like everything is itchy and like almost painful to the touch. Like so many, I can't wear seats. I can't sit in noises. I can't be around. Smells.
I will always be baffled by people wearing perfume. I find that unbearable in my space. I often think that actually it's not that I have any extra senses. It's just that I'm not shutting any down, you know? And there's so much that our bodies are perceiving that we don't pay any attention to, and that we don't kind of acknowledge or process. I'm sure that everyone's got the capacity to sense to that extent. And we see it as you say, like people with brain injuries suddenly start sensing stuff they didn't notice before. What's that about? Is that because they've lost the ability to shut that input down? It’s a fascinating thing. And we don't have anything like a fixed understanding, because the research into autism has not been about sensory perception, and it's the overriding experience of autistic people, but we haven't been listened to in the research.
ELISE:
No, you know, in so many ways like you, for example, with Wintering, and re-reengaging culture with this idea of like, we are cyclical beings, like there's no way are we supposed to be engaging with the world in the way that we are, sort of this canary in the coal mine of. You write, I thought this was so beautiful, too. You write, “Meanwhile, I would not have been so strange in a previous era. In a quieter world, a less hurried one without the whine of mobile phones and the ceaseless electronic drone of voices from the radio and the TV. Without the noisy surges of hand dryers and the bleeping of train doors. Without the flat plastic unknowable surface and the dry air containment of office light. Without pulsing lights and the ceaseless sense of personal availability.” But it also feels like you are a, like the check engine light flashing for all of us.
KATHERINE:
Because I mean, I increasingly feel that modern life is becoming intolerable for everyone, whether they’re neurodivergent or not. I think we've noticed it earlier. I think, you know, we've reached our point of unbearable discomfort earlier along the line, but I, I just begin to think that the way we are living is generally hostile to our brains, and our neurology. We are all of us, completely overwhelmed all the time. And you know, like the idea that some people had a good pandemic, well that's because the world called a truce on some of us and we didn't realize we needed it until that moment. I mean, I don't know what it's gonna take for us to all pull the break on this, because it's not good. It's not good for us. I don't think.
ELISE:
It’s profoundly unsustainable on, on so many levels, so many levels. I want to talk about walking because obviously it's the backdrop to this book you're sort of at first. I was very proud of you for allowing a little bit of compromise for yourself in terms of what you set out to do, but you're walking, you're in rain and snow, and it seemed to me like an effort. I mean, obviously you're in profound nature, but that you just, as much as you might find your body uncomfortable, that you were getting into your body in some ways.
KATHERINE:
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think I had to go through a kind of pain barrier almost to be able to really inhabit my body. And yeah, my body is a space that I have so often I exited because the world has been so uncomfortable for it to be in. And I like I've lived in my head a lot. And the process of walking the Southwest Coast Path meant that I had to inhabit my body. It was impossible not to. And that it took me a good few walks before I started to actually enjoy it. I mean, for the first few, I dunno why I did it looking back, and I dunno why I carried on. It was vile. I got rained on a lot. And I was really tired.There was something about it that I knew I was walking towards something in a way that was beyond my grasp, but I just knew I had to do it. I feel like I called a truce with my body and learned a better way to be in it. And part of that was definitely being outside more. And definitely the rhythm of walking is, is very, very soothing to me.
ELISE:
I also thought it was so beautiful and brave and vulnerable. And again, it goes to this idea of no filter. There was this moment, right before you launched into this discussion where your husband, who I thought was, it was interesting that he also then took the test and is borderline. But where he and Burt are driving you, and it's gonna take them, it's like four hours of driving to drop you off, and you are using your weekends to do this walk. And I was like, that's so interesting because I would never, as a mom with so much dumb guilt, would never let myself do that. And then you sort of launched into that whole conversation, the ambivalence of parenthood, but also really hard conversations about like how being a mom, playing with your son, is not your comfort spot.
KATHERINE:
I found those early years of motherhood like incredibly boring most of the time. And that's not say that I didn't completely adore my son and like loved spending time with him, and felt deeply attached to him, and like loved the smell of him, you know? And whenever I was away from him felt bereft. But also, I hated those blank hours at home where you were really doing like nothing together. And I just, yeah, t didn't occupy my brain enough, it really didn't. And I found it hard and I like desperately needed that time. It's really funny actually, because since then it's bothered of me less. Like, I feel like I needed to process the truth of what I was feeling. And it made me want to be with him much more. And I mean, I've, I'm certainly enjoying it more as he gets older. Like just as all the other parents are saying, oh, it's so sad they're not babies anymore. I'm like, this is great, we’re having some really good conversation now.
We get to do really good stuff together. Originally, before I realized I was autistic, this was gonna be a book about motherhood. So there are the kind of vestiges of that still in there, but it's so vital that we start to talk about the different ways of being a mother, I think, and the whole spectrum of feelings and experiences that it entails. And, and that you are still doing an absolutely great job, incidentally, you know, like despite your complete bafflement by it. It’s time to crack that open. Which is why I edited an anthology about it incidentally, like, The Best, Most Awful Job, which came out last year was absolute, absolutely sprang from writing Electricty and loads of people saying, yes, thank you for saying that, you know?
ELISE:
Yeah. No. And it was really interesting just within myself to wrestle with, and it's part of the book that I'm writing too, but to wrestle with almost the anxiety, it provoked in me that your husband, you call H in the book was doing most of the heavy lifting and they would go to, you know, different do different activities during the day while you were walking. And that you were sort of oblivious to it until this point where you were like, wait, this is, I can't do this to them anymore. And then he's like, actually it's a lot easier.
KATHERINE:
I kinda like it, yeah. That was a really hard moment. I did feel guilty about it before then and knew that he was kind of carrying a lot, but I also, like, I couldn't see another way around it in lots of ways. It's so complicated, isn't it? I, I felt like I couldn't just go away for weekends and I felt like I could certainly couldn't go away and do like a long walk I was talking to Cheryl Strayed about this. I was like, I dreamt of doing the walk that you did, you know, but it wasn't possible. I had to kind of chop it up and everything was kind of compromised and compressed into weird amounts of time. We had to drive from up. And then there was this moment when I realized that they were actually really happy together and that I always ruined it because I'd always get uncomfortable in the places that they loved being like, you know, noisy family attractions. They make my skin crawl. There's too many people. It's always noisy. It's always weird. The food's weird. Everything's weird. And that was painful to realize that I, as the mother of the family was like getting in the way of them just being perfectly happy, quite a lot of the time.
ELISE:
But I thought it was beautiful and honest and obviously does I think, strike a chord, for what we can each individually tolerate, which is so hard always to hold that right. Particularly as a parent, your own comfort and preferences, and then the needs of everyone else in your life. And then social expectations about what this needs to look like. It is really hard to be a woman.
KATHERINE:
I mean, let's face it. So much of motherhood is a performance as well, isn't it? That when you're out of the house, you are supposed to perform this kind of Mary Poppins motherhood, where you're all like happy and lovely. I was watching a mother today with her two children in a cafe. And I thought, I recognize that act, you know, she was like talking them through everything real. And I thought, I bet, you know, when she gets home, her temper frays a bit more, and she's just a bit more abrupt. But we're obliged to do that. We're being judged all the time, and interfered with all the time. And there are so many different ways to express care and connection with your child. And, you know, like one of the things I write about in the book as well is that Burt hated a lot of the stuff that I was supposed to perform as well. Like he didn't wanna be carried around in a papoose, and he kind of wanted me to leave him alone a lot more than I thought I ought to, you know? There's so much that gets in the way isn't there, all the stuff we think we know, when actually our intuition's always better.
ELISE:
And each child is such a strange entity and a unique person, my kids in some ways are similar, but they're different and they’re attuned very differently. And I know you only have one child, but it's pretty wild to really see the impact of personality and like how we are built and designed.
KATHERINE:
And it must be this idea of temperament, you know? That we talk about in horses. But I think, I think humans have temperaments too. You know, what's the kind of pace that you work at. How quick are you to anger? Like all of those things, I think you, you can't predict what your child's gonna be like, and they're all so, so different.
ELISE:
And when you look at Bert, I mean, you, you write, and I guess he was probably almost, I mean, not a toddler anymore, but very young when you wrote that book.
KATHERINE:
He's like three and four.
ELISE:
I loved sort of the way that you wrote about him in Wintering, as well and how he needed to come out of school and you needed to show him that, that that's okay. And that then you, some things aren't right. And then you can reengage with the world in a different way, in the context of your own experience with the world and love too how you talk about like how he is not like his touch. Like he is one of the few people who can permeate your, your aura. We're just gonna stick with aura.
KATHERINE:
He can step in, he can step into my big space.
ELISE:
But what is he like in comparison to you? I mean, you talk about him, like in his trains and building and how, how alien it feels. It's so strange to be a parent, I think, and to be like, who are you?
KATHERINE:
I think, I mean, I imagine this is true for everyone. And as you say, I've only got one child, but like the experience of being a parent is to have this being who in so many ways is just like you, and responds in the same way, and thinks in the same way. And then in what, what feels like a sudden lurch is also incredibly different to you. And doesn't perceive things in the same way, you know? And that dance is so fascinating. And, and as he's getting older, his attention shifting onto different things, and I'm finding different things that I've got in common with him, and he's kind of reaching away from me. Other things it's like these it's like these waves. Ifind it absolutely fascinating. And he has his own way of moving through the world, but is so different to me.
But also I totally relate to some of it, too. And I mean, it's all a big meditation on difference really, and how everybody is so unique. And I, I just, we don't talk about that in nothing kids all together, we try and squeeze them into little, little cookie cutters. And I think modern schooling does that more than it ever has for a long time. I think we've gone back to those cookie cutters when we'd moved away from it in the like sixties and seventies and eighties when I was a kid. It's really, really, really hard to navigate that space for him. So he can just be him without having to like, change to fit. I worry about this stuff a lot, as you can tell. These are my themes.
ELISE:
I think it's so human, it's this, like, where do I fit? You know, you can think of it as the autism spectrum. You can think of it, of our sort of collective fascination with the Enneagram, or astrology or Myers Briggs, or any personality system, any way of understanding ourselves as part of something bigger and as part of an array of behaviors. Who am I in the context of everyone else? I think it's, it's consuming for, for all of us, where do I stand? What's my place? How do I rank?
KATHERINE:
I think like that's a also because everybody feels a bit like an outsider somewhere somehow. And I think that experience of outsidership, like, however it derives and arrives is quite common among all of us, actually. That sense that we are so conscious of our differences from the rest of the world, we find it hard to notice our commonality. And I think that leads to a lot of that seeking. So what is it, why, why do I feel different to this room full of people?
ELISE:
Or why do I feel incomplete? You know, or how do I, you know, it goes back to this, even the idea of like duality, right, as we leave, as we entered this world and felt bereft somehow, or separated, or like the way that we seek our other half. or our soulmate. It's like as old as time or the written language.
KATHERINE:
And how common addiction is, you know, and how that is often about trying to fill a void that we don't understand even what that void is, but we are trying to fill it in anyway, somehow.
ELISE:
Yeah. And that warmth of belonging and that warm hug, which is ephemeral. Because as you say, I think even, you know, quote unquote, people who seem well-adjusted or normal, or, you know, they're, everyone's an imposter. We are going back to the beginning of our conversation, all performing, being well-adapted, or quote unquote normal, or all of these things like we are learning from each other, what it is to belong. It's why culture is so contagious. It's why behavior is so contagious. It's pretty actually kind of overwhelming and wild to think about.
KATHERINE:
Yeah, it is. Is. And I like, I, you know, what always really interests me are the people that I understand the least who are the people who confronted with that, like decide to enforce a culture, like decide like, right, we are clinging really hard to what we consider to be normal. And we are gonna, you know, these are the, these are the bullies that everyone met at school. They're the mean girls and, you know, the people that we see in our media destroying anyone who's trying to reach out and find an identity outside the mainstream. They're the people I understand the least, you know. The people who drill their kids to be accountants, whatever, they're the ones that mystify me the most. I think I feel great affinity with anyone who feels on the edge or the outside and who steps into that. That's always earns my admiration, I think on some level.
ELISE:
It's like this part, I hope you don't mind, but I'm continuing to read to you something.
KATHERINE:
Please do. It's quite nice to hear it from, from you rather than me. It's really good.
ELISE:
You write, “But for me at my place in a very big spectrum, I think something else is going on. We've always been here. People like me applying our detailed brains to problems that need precise solutions and noticing things that would lay outside of neurotypical fields of view. We're not an evolutionary accident, but an adaptation. We are not what you think we are. We are useful, valued, loved. We’re the scientists and artists, the dreamers and the engineers. We’re vital to all of it. We've been pushing it forward and holding it together while the extroverts take all the glory.” That made me weep when I read it, I almost just got teary-eyed. I thought it was so beautiful. And it's, it is interesting. Like if you think about sort of the core of culture in, in nothing against accountants, lawyers, et cetera, but you, you think about that as sort
KATHERINE:
I’m grateful to my accountant this week is tax week in the UK. So, uh, you know, big up to the accountants.
ELISE:
But when you think about the people who are pioneering, right, or the people who are on the edge of experience, who are more, maybe potentially more attenuated, less bound to see things as they have traditionally been seen, like you guys are you're in a way, a little bit of a prophet. Sorry, a woo woo idea again.
KATHERINE:
No I think, I think the, the seers of history were probably autistic, you know, with the, these are people that perceive the world differently. And, you know, when you look at William Blake seeing angels in the trees at Peck and Rye, like I recognize that as an experience for far more than I recognize normality, as it's described to me all the time. Like in a way, I was teasing you about being woo or whatever, but a lot of what you're talking about just seems normal to me, that's normal perception. And I interviewed Michael Pollan last week for the On Being podcast. Because I really wanted to talk to him about psychedelics and like what that means in our world. And like, one of the things that I think about the rise in psychedelics is that actually autistic experience is pretty psychedelic in the first place.
Like, I really think that the stuff that other people are seeking about the kind of sensory perception and the kind of the weird edges of reality, like are actually part of my every day, like my sort of very luminous every day. We are a group who've been defined from the outsiders, like weird and annoying, and like brittle, and like uncomfortable to be with, an undesirable. And nobody stopped to check like what we were perceiving that was, you know, on the inside all the time. And that's like where we've been, that's the world we've been inhabiting all along.
ELISE:
I'm dying to interview Michael Pollan, and I, of course like everyone else in the world read his book and am keenly aware, I'm keenly interested in psychedelics and psychedelic experiences, even as so much as I find them. I haven't done that many, but I'm so sensitive. I was laughing, laughing with someone last night that I was working on a particularly hard chapter in my book. And I was like, someone had given me a bar of mushroom chocolate, which is, I don't know how long it's been in there Katherine. And that might have been part of the problem, but I was like, you know what, I'm gonna take a tiny micro dose and see if it helps me calm down about this chapter and deal with some of this, like some of this traumatic processing that I seem to be having. And so I took like a tiny part of chocolate, and my husband came home, and I was in a hoodie with it pulled tight around my face, under a blanket, listening to music, crying. He was like, what's happening. I was like, I need you to pick up the kids from school.
He was like, what? Like, you're not supposed to be inside. You're not supposed to do that on a Tuesday. Like, what are you doing? What were you thinking?
KATHERINE:
Ohmigod I love this.
ELISE:
It was a really hard day. Of course, was like, I'm gonna write 3000 words today instead. I was a fucking mess.
KATHERINE:
I love that you said that. And sorry. I'm just laughing so hard now, but like all these, I mean it, but that's, isn't that supposed to really be what happens, like, rather than all these people, like, oh, I took someone I was hyper-efficient for the day. Like screw that, take some and cry pn sofa, like, that's awesome. So I think that's just exactly how it should feel. That's, that's what it should do for you. Like, it's a great thing releasing of the floodgate. That's brilliant.
ELISE:
But it was, to me, you know, like so much of what was coming up was like, oh, wow. I just let this stay in my body. And I am not processing any of my feelings out of that guise of efficiency. And like, the minute I let them come up, it was like being swamped. It's like the being on that trail and the rain and the mud, like clamoring. It was like, it is coming down on you like with a fury.
KATHERINE:
It's, I mean, it's all good in the end. It's not that productive on a day. You're trying to write a chapter. Sure.
ELISE:
I'm very productive. So it's good for me. But pushed into a cul-de-sac sometimes.
KATHERINE:
Maybe you needed that disrupting, maybe that, I mean, it gives you what you need, doesn't it. Those substances. Do they give you what you need at that time? And you needed to be disrupted rather than to work any harder.
ELISE:
Oh yeah, exactly. So Katherine, as one of our modern day wise women profits, what do you, what do you see for us? Like what do you, I know that's a hard question, but what, what's your instinct?
KATHERINE:
Yeah. I mean, I am a basically hopeful person. I think it's really interesting that lots of people are discovering their neurodivergence at the moment. And I think it's much bigger than we ever realized. I think the spectrum contains a lot of different people, and this is all about the world differently. Like this is not about like, I don't know, it's not about some kind of technical class arising, which I think is how we've often thought about neurodivergent people that we talked about that as logical or kind of, you know, able to, to, to calculate in a very cold way. This is about a flood tide of creative people emerging and understanding their creativity because that's always been a huge part of neurodivergence. And the fact that we are learning about ourselves at this moment in time when incidentally, like it's probably quite a dangerous moment in time to learn about ourselves, because there are plenty of forces in politics that are pushing back against disability and other ability, like some people consider themselves to be disabled if they're autistic, some people consider it to be a different kind of ability. Like there's there's room for everybody.
It's really interesting that we're emerging despite those pressures to the contrary, and despite the kind of huge economic pressures that are cut here and, and coming in, you know, in even greater mass, because this is where I, you know, begin to see us as like an adaptation. Like we are, we are here because we are needed, because we are like, great randomizes. We're great intuits, we are great perceivers of patterns that other people don't recognize. We are full of almost agonizing levels of compassion and sensitivity and just general huge lantern consciousness. And I like, we are massing at the borders. We are here because we're absolutely needed, and we need to be listened to because actually, we are picking up on the way that the world is going in the wrong direction, and we can show you all the way back home.
I don't wanna make that sound too grand, but I really do believe that that people like me are so needed in this world. And like, one of the big things about us is that we don't really care about going along with what everybody else says. That's one of the things that makes us so awkward, is that if someone says something I disagree with, I don't want to do, I can't help go, oh, no, that's all. Or, you know, like, no, I'm not doing that. That's apparently my catch phrase. Like, no, I don't wanna do that. Like neurotypical people find really hard to say, like, because they're much more bounded by social convention quite often. Um, the world needs people right now saying, no, I'm not doing that. Like, no I've reached my limit. I can't do that. I won't do that. Don't agree with that. And I, yeah, it's really time for the odd, awkward people of this world to, to step up now, I think.
ELISE:
That's so beautiful. I even, I hate to like, not end on that note, but I have one more follow up question to that mic drop. What would it look like if sort of within the autistic community? What do you wanna see?
KATHERINE:
Yeah, I think that this is where the true diversity comes in and also like the intersectionality, it's so important to talk about intersectionality within neurodivergence, because actually know like the, the image we have are like white boys, you know, that's, they're the only kind of neurodivergent people we often see. And there are so many different emerging experiences of being neurodivergent and like looking at indigenous communities. It's absolutely fascinating to see how we are perceived in different social structures. So like in the Mauri, autism is, I'm about to mispronounce it badly, but it's called Taki Tawanga, which means, in your own time and space, like it's honored as a different perceptional state. I was reading today about Indigenous people in Canada. And forgive me, I forget the name of the people, but how autism is absolutely not seen as a deficit in their community and seen as again, like a clear difference and a valuable difference.
And I like the more I've got to know other autistic people, the more I've realized how relaxed we are with difference, like genuine difference and genuine diversity. And that's a model for how we need to continue as a whole, like, we are never all gonna be the same. We're never gonna feel the same about everything. We're never gonna need the same things. And it's possible to be really compassionate and tolerant within that massive diversity. I just believe that it is a sort of falsehood that we have to find one way of doing things, and that we just have to find the right way and like impose it on the stragglers. That’s not how this is gonna work going forward.
ELISE:
Just that equity somehow is synonymous with being homogenous and that people think they complete is quality with being the same. And no, actually it's all of our differences that make life really, really interesting. Um, and we're not all this supposed to be doing the same thing here, serving the same function.
KATHERINE:
And like equal respect. That's the thing that drives this. And like, if you get a community of autistic people together, what I find really fascinating is that everybody in that room will have like quite definite different needs. Like, so for some people, too much light will be a problem. And for others, they'll crave loads of light, and you'd think that would lead to conflict, but it doesn't tend to, it tends to lead to negotiation and people respectfully finding their way to do it and, and, you know, trying to facilitate what other people need. And like, I don't wanna pretend we're utopia, or anything like that. But I do think that we could do with a lot more of that in mainstream life. You know, it's often seen as so difficult to make accommodations for people. And I see my community make accommodations in like the most natural, compassionate, simple, generous way. And I don't understand why that's supposed to be so hard.
Well, it's interesting too, and you were sort of speaking to that at various points, this idea of being crystal clear about not only your limitations, but your needs. So I think so often we don't maybe don't know our needs, or we don't know how to articulate them, but once those are established, then it becomes something that can be met. But this idea that we just don't even, we don't even have that conversation.
KATHERINE:
And that I, like every other autistic person every now and then gets this, like receive this flare of anger from someone online, because they're like, well, my needs aren't being net. So, so why should yours be? Almost like they don't say that out loud, but that's kind of what they mean. Like, well, I struggle with this stuff too. So you know, how, how dare you make a demand and they're right. You know, like in a world that doesn't let them meet their needs. I can see why they would feel so resentfully about people like me stepping forward and maybe having more rights under kind of disability legislation to demand those needs. Although honestly, it's not that straightforward. But we need everyone to be able to meet their needs. Like, that's the truth of it that, you know, nobody should have to feel that life is a massive struggle every day, and nobody should have to feel that their basic needs are on there. And that's, yeah, that absolutely goes for everybody.
ELISE:
Oh, Katherine May. If you haven’t read Wintering, I loved that book. I’m sure it rippled through your awareness, even if you haven’t yet read it. It’s such a beautiful love story to those moments of time when we need to retreat, go inside, be quiet. And I know Katherine mentioned that she doesn’t think The Electricity of Every Living Thing is for all people, but I assure you, it is. And, not only to give this incredibly beautiful heightened awareness of what it is to be her on the autism spectrum, in the way she perceives the world, but I do think that it has lessons for all of us. And going back to that scene that she writes about, where she’s with the man who taught her to meditate, and talk to her about her aura, I just wanted to read a bit from that section because it’s so beautiful: “It’s an uncomfortable truth for a materialist like me, but through this man’s eyes, I found the kindest account of myself I have ever been offered. Not prickly or awkward or difficult; not over-senstive or afraid of intimacy. Instead, queenly. Instead, having a sense of personal space that required respect. It’s funny, isn’t it, to flip that on its head? Imagine if the responsibility didn’t fall to people like me—people with AS, women—to modify our reactions to the intrusions of other people. Imagine if, instead, it was considered a basic politeness to observe other people’s responses to our social overtures, and adjust accordingly. Imagine if we accepted that there are a whole range of personalities out there, and that one size does not fit all.”