Technicolour Wintering

A season of life that has become my entire personality

yours truly with a few canvases I’ve recently thrown paint at

Before I dive in: I’m trying to reach 500 paid subscribers so that I can cover my monthly expenses and continue making art + writing since I am no longer running my small business! If you can, please consider upgrading. Since first issuing this request I’ve gained 15 new paid subs, so thank you! Let’s keep it going <3

Also:

1. I am offering tarot + pendulum readings for a limited time! Come book with me, it’ll be fun!

2. The paintings you see throughout this piece - they’re all for sale via my shop!

3. I’m running a sale on my decks and paintings via my shop right now - 22% off with the code ‘vdayok’ at checkout! I mean, most of us don’t love V-Day, right? So it’s just V-Day, Ok.

4. 4. My course, Navigating Autism Late in Life, is also on sale right now.

THANK YOU for the support! (˶˃ ᵕ ˂˶) .ᐟ.ᐟ

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Let me tell you: it’s really fucking hard to not try and make every single creation (my art, my writing, my Substack posts, my IG posts while I was still there) the most amazing thing that’s ever sprung from my metaphysical loins.

We live in a world that pushes us towards perpetual summering - which is actually, factually, impossible to maintain. Could you imagine what earth would be like without the other seasons? I mean, the cynic in me wants to say, we’ll find out via climate change. But that’s not the thrust of this piece. I’m not looking to go dark here, except in respect to the long nights of winter, deep within the soul. Imagine, similarly, what it would be like if you yourself never went through seasons. If you were constantly productive, constantly shining brightly, constantly ‘on.’

I’ve been in a poetry mood lately so I’m going to share this one that is by James Pearson - I’m really loving his work.

Wintering

Now the leaves have fallen.

The trees have pulled their aliveness

back in from their branches,

down into their fortress trunks

and the dark, subterranean closeness

of their roots.

Every year they let go of

exactly what everyone says

is most beautiful about them

to save their own lives.

The time will come

when you, too, have to drop

all the ways

you’ve made yourself worth loving,

and finally learn how

to sit quietly

right in the center

of your own small life.

Only there can you cry the tears

your life depends on.

Only there will you find

the tiny seed

that holds the whole mystery of you

and cradle it

in the warmth of your body

until the spring.

some close ups of my abstract paintings, where I let reckless technicolour abandon fill me to the brim

“Every year they let go of exactly what everyone says is most beautiful about them to save their own lives. The time will come when you, too, have to drop all the ways you’ve made yourself worth loving, and finally learn how to sit quietly right in the center of your own small life.” I feel these lines perfectly sum up how I’ve come into being over the past two years.

Since learning I am perimenopausal + AuDHD, there has been much to ‘drop’ - similar to a canopy of my own personal tree, leaves of masking, people pleasing, burning the candle at both ends, being overly productive, pushing myself beyond my natural limits, saying yes when I actually want to say no - these have all been dropping down to the forest floor. At first there was resistance - a great deal of it. It pained me terribly to have to say goodbye (even temporarily) to these things that I thought were what made me lovable. Deep down, of course, I wanted to drop them…they were an enormous burden to carry. They were as a result of forcing upon myself perpetual summering - which I have now grown to understand as a kind of sickness.

You see, the thing is…a lot of people didn’t like me growing up, and into my twenties. Being autistic and not knowing it was, unfortunately, probably the culprit. Of course I’m not saying this to demonize being autistic - far from it. But needless to say, I was quite different from a lot of my peers and struggled with things they didn’t. I also communicated differently (sometimes I shared too much, sometimes I didn’t say enough - there was no goldilocks zone, evidently). I dressed differently than they did, I had absolutely wild hair, I was a punk, I was a starving artist who didn’t graduate high school - I was a lot of things that were easily misunderstood.

It is clear now that autistic masking (and being autistic in general in a neurotypically-dominated world) is essentially signing up for perpetual summering. Unwittingly, of course. Always unwittingly. But there it is, and you’re on the fast-track to growing out all of those big branches and shooting out those leaves of glory. The thicker and denser your canopy, the more glory you retain.

more closeups

I did my best at people-pleasing. I moulded myself into endless versions of myself to suit any given scenario. I’d received so much feedback that falling apart (which I sorely needed to do from time to time, due to exceeding limits of masking, pushing myself beyond my limits and the rest) wasn’t okay - and that I lost the love of people around me when I did. The message was clear: maintain perpetual summer at all costs. Well, the cost ended up being my health. The smaller bouts of falling apart that I sorely needed to do were neglected, and so much larger shutdowns began taking up residence.

It was during this last major burnout that I learned that I’m AuDHD and perimenopausal. As the poem states, I had to let go of exactly what everyone said was most beautiful about me to save my own life. When you’re that bottomed out, you have no other choice. It was a matter of survival for me - and so I dropped all of that effort, all of that massive, weighty canopy and what was left was a tree deep in the stillness of winter. This is who I actually am. Everything else is forced.

I’ve heard a lot of people suggest that a perimenopausal woman is in the autumn of her life. It follows that menopause is winter, but then post-menopause allows for gentle spring to arise again. I think that for the vast majority of undiagnosed neurodivergent middle aged women, we crash into the autumn of our lives so hard that we end up all the way in winter - at least for a while. The stark contrast to what we used to be - what we forced ourselves to be - is frightening to behold. It is so triggering to drop what we, and society, have deemed to be lovable. We feel we are in a free-fall with nothing to catch us. And yes, these are the leaves falling - but not the tree. I’m here to say that once the shedding fully takes place, what you are left with is real and unshakable - and that is the most important takeaway of all.

In this deep wintering I have gone fully inward. My mind and soul are still a riotous spectrum of vivid colour and imagination. The core of my tree trunk will spill forth these contents someday like the infinite bloom of a psychedelic lotus - but not yet. No, not yet. For now, and for the foreseeable and shrouded future, I stand outwardly dormant. I continue saving my own life.

Until next time,

Love and wolves.

D xx