This week the weather has again been a bit of a see-saw. Today we woke to a lovely gentle rain but we have also had some incredibly hot days. Last Sunday and Monday it was crazy hot. I had been booked for drumming last Sunday but I just felt exhausted. I wanted nothing other than to lie in bed, be served coffee by a sexy Scots and play games on my phone. Eventually I got up and showered and went downstairs to lie on the sofa and watch movies with Norman. I am starting to listen to my body and my needs and to do what is right for me, rather than what I feel obligated to do. Hopefully it will help me with my emotional dysregulation issues to rather pay attention to my mental state and my energy levels prior to getting into the state of dysregulation and then have to try and get myself down off that ledge.
Norm and I watched two film length mediocre crime documentaries in the afternoon which was exactly what I needed. I could half listen, play solitaire and just be a zombie. Sometimes I need that after a day of intense emotional or mental interactions.
I think I was so tired because Saturday I attended a Manifestation Workshop given by my friend Tamlyn who is an Intuitive Healer, her website is here which provides a definition of what she does. She holds various workshops, does daily tarot readings via her social media pages and does private readings via WhatsApp so you can be anywhere to have a reading. She is very talented.
Even though I consider myself an expert in Manifestation I still interacted with other people and I did a lot of thinking. The way that Tam does her manifestations differs from mine very little in actions, she has just assigned terms to the steps which I do unconsciously. That makes it possible to explain it as I just know what I do! I really enjoyed the session and met a few new women.
I have now updated my own Manifestations Board and removed the intention for the windows being redone as they are now complete and I do not want any energy wasted on ambiguity. We just received the quote back on the next project so I have not bothered adding that as it already has momentum. Screeding the floors is after this next project so I want to keep that intention bubbling up to the surface.
Now I am trying to imagine how I want my downstairs bathroom to look. I am so far envisioning a little black cabinet and sink with gold taps, a shiny new loo, and tiles of an almost mother of pearl shimmer, those hand crafted ones where each is slightly unique? Imagining it into existence.
Tam had been doing a clear out and she gave me a new bed for Panda. He walked around it having a good sniff and Norm picked him up and plopped him in it and he settled down and went to sleep. It fits him perfectly.
Unfortunately for Panda, Lola seems to have decided it is a cosy spot that is a perfect fit for her too and she sleeps there often.
The timing was great as Panda’s old bed was in shreds, Finn would pull Panda around rather violently on it, then Finn chewed the cover off and the zipper got broken so the cover would not stay on. It is too shabby even for DARG as is Pixie’s old bed which baby shark Finn chewed the corner off of. So we chucked them out. It was sad but it is less sad than looking at Pixie’s empty bed every morning.
Last Monday was intensely hot so at 4pm on the dot I had an after work swim with Mr Finn. I am wearing my new cover up from the Woolworths sale.
It cooled off and rained a wee bit on Wednesday but Thursday was beautifully clear skies and the temperature stayed mild rather than the oppressive heat we had been having.
I think I have mentioned that Norm is doing my family tree? He did his own family recently and found it really interesting to do and so he decided to research mine. He has found so much information which I did not know, names I had never heard, newspaper articles describing events I was not aware of and he is slowly putting together a framework of my ancestors, their marriages, children, and deaths. It is fascinating. I also want to understand more about my Cherokee lineage if we can. I have always been told my mother’s father’s mother was full Cherokee and my father’s father’s mother was full Cherokee but do not really know names. I hope we can verify some useful info.
What we have discovered is that I have murder in my blood.
The story Norm uncovered is about my Father’s Grandfather (my great grandfather) whose name I had never even heard spoken or any info ever discussed about him. His name was Andrew Jackson Norwood but was commonly known as ‘Jack’. Mom and I have been pretty much estranged from Dad’s side of the family since my dad passed. Ironically they always acted like they thought they were better than my mom’s side of the family so it is quite amusing to read this bit of history that they (we) have a few skeletons in our past too.
Great-Grandpa Jack also declared bankruptcy the year following this incident and he died not much later at the age of 47. Jack’s son Conrad Booth Senior and his grandson Conrad Booth Junior (my father) also died before they were 50 years old. Men in my ancestral tree on my father’s side all had coronary issues. I am glad Trevor is now so healthy and active therefore less at risk of carrying on some of those issues.
I have been wanting to write a book for a while and I may just write one about my family history. “Memoir of a Redneck Cherokee Escapee” or keep it simple and only use “Cherokee Escapee” or something like that? Hit me up with any good title ideas, some of you are very clever with words!
This makes me wonder whether mental illness was responsible for that murder? Were my ancestors also Neuro-Diverse as it is usually genetic? I have several family members who were diagnosed as Bipolar, many of these people could have been ‘mis-labeled’ and could have actually had what has now been broken down into an alphabet soup of more specific ‘sub categories’, such as OCD, ADHD, ADD, AuHD, PTSD, etc. Back in the day there was little known about mental health in general, as opposed to our ability today to research and learn about our ‘idiosyncrasies’.
I just have to keep remembering that my brain is wired differently and therefore it is no surprise that it responds differently. For example, I have always called myself an empath. I have an actual physical reaction in my body if I view things that are really horrific so I cannot watch them. Animal cruelty makes me want to physically hurl. But what I have been reading is that empathy is a characteristic where the Neurodiverse score much higher than the Neurotypicals, despite the common myth around ND and lack of empathy.
I also discovered a new brilliant blog on neurodiversity by Jeanie Gee and she wrote that there are multiple types of empathy and that it is not a binary concept. “Each type of empathy corresponds to different neural pathways and experiences for the individual.”
According to Jeanie these can be defined as follows:
“Cognitive empathy: This is about understanding and identifying the emotions of others, and includes being able to figure out if someone is being sarcastic or joking.” There is a myth that the ND struggle with this type of empathy and as society generally see ‘having or not having’ as the only options with empathy rather than what characteristics of each type apply there is often a lot of confusion.
“Emotional or Affective empathy: With this type of empathy, you’re feeling and sharing the emotions of others. You’re picking up on their emotions and experiencing them yourself. People sometimes call it “emotional contagion”. Affective empathy is related to the activation of mirror neurons in the brain, which mimic the responses of others. In this sense you are experiencing emotions vicariously through others.” This is a bit like twins feeling each other’s pain if one of them breaks an arm or has anything intense happen to them physically. I can often ‘read’ the feelings of those I am close to, remember my Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria posts? I can pick up on negativity quickly. I have often written about people sapping me with their negativity and how exhausted and depressed it makes me.
“Somatic empathy: This is when you feel the physical sensations of others. For example, if you see someone in pain, you might feel a similar sensation in your own body. Watching a documentary on Everest might make you feel chilly if you have high levels of somatic empathy.” I am not temperature sensitive myself but I do feel other people’s pain sometimes. I have a friend with stomach issues and my stomach mirrored hers for a week at one point.
“Compassionate empathy: This type of empathy is when you overwhelmingly need to take action to alleviate the suffering of others. It’s not just about feeling their emotions – it’s about feeling that you absolutely must to do something to help.” This falls into the strong feelings about justice and equality that drives the way I think and so many things.
Therefore I find it interesting that the ND community are incorrectly branded as being without empathy when sometimes we are so deeply empathetic it can make us ill!
I also discovered that there is a link between my colour blindness / colour confusion and my ADHD. My Dad had the same issue I have, we can SEE colour we just cannot distinguish the same colours that everyone else does.
I feel it is almost as if I can see an extra colour that everyone else cannot. As you know a colour is made up of a little dash of this primary colour and a little dash of those primary colour to get a new unique colour. Like in MS Word?
I always felt like I just have an extra prism or something *she says knowing nothing about the science of anything being discussed*. So where you see brown, I see green because it is a greeny shade of brown. I see all the colours, I just never align with what anyone else sees and often wear things which do not match at all because to me they are both green or brown or whatever. Meanwhile apparently they are not. People think I am some eccentric geriatric American and meanwhile I think I am chic.
Even my clumsiness is related to being ND. This week I had made a huge amazing salad for our dinner and I should have put it in a bowl but I put it on a plate. I was sitting down onto the couch and had my food on a tray when it slid off and crashed onto the couch. I managed to catch some of it in my hand and I just swept it back onto the plate, had a laugh, wiped the couch down and carried on eating. If I were dysregulated I might have a breakdown but I just let it go. In the words of my beloved Jinkx Monsoon.
Every little bit I learn about neuro-diversity takes me closer to knowing and understanding myself and hopefully towards loving and accepting myself or at least not caring what anyone thinks about my quirks.
For example, I had never thought that some of the topics I know a million facts about is a neurodiverse hyper-fixation until I say something to someone and they look at me like I am Rain Man. As a child my grandparents had Encyclopedias. It was my childhood version of Google. I looked up everything and read everything I could find on a subject if it piqued an interest but I read the entire set of books end to end over the years multiple times. I know everything imaginable about dog breeds prior to 1960 but regarding, for example, any of those Frankendoodles created after the encyclopedia went to print my knowledge is sporadic. Now I might spend hours going down a rabbit hole on YouTube etc. to investigate various topics, but I LOVE researching things which is also a ND trait!
I especially love to research anything to do with my health. I do not eat healthy or exercise but I read about food and nutrition and research every little ailment I have, or think I have.
A few weeks ago I noticed that I had been waking up soaked in sweat that smelled like vinegar. I found it odd and of course assumed it was the sign of something dreadful going on in my body chemistry. We had to start washing our sheets more often to deal with the smell. Eventually the smell went away.
Yesterday as I was chewing my daily Apple Cider Vinegar gummies I realised I started taking those about the time my body started smelling of vinegar secretions. Rabbit hole averted (yes I know I have already been down it, take this as the *beep beep beep* of me backing out of said hole, giggling all of the way out.
I wrote recently about the Universe sending me a feather as a message and it happened again this week. When I pray to the North I always express my thanks to my elders for becoming a grandmother and I ask that I will be blessed with grandchildren multiple times over. When I opened my eyes these little guinea fowl feathers were blowing around at my feet.
We have had so many animals about in the garden and I asked the guinea fowl to please come back but I told them that they are not allowed to mess up Norm’s grass. The next day they were back and roaming along the flower beds where the seeds from the feeders will land and not digging up Norm’s grass under the center feeder. As the feathers I found are from a guinea fowl, maybe they were just a ‘thanks for the grub’? You can see one of them at the gate below and you can also see a squirrel at the top of the right gate pillar. He ate all of the nuts from both of the nutty feeder. (Yes I know it is a dreadful photo but it was a quick moment in time and a lucky capture at all!)
We have had so many different birds bouncing around the garden and I still use my bird book to look them up. The problem is my vision is so rubbish I cannot always see the markings. I still enjoy watching them and listening to their songs.
This week I have had a lot of visits from Pixie. I feel her fur against my feet or legs like I used to always feel when she sat on or next to me. I know she is all around us, I still check for her when I get off of the couch because she would always lay on the floor next to where I sat on the sofa. Then while I was thinking about her I opened this email. Check number 9 –
The energy between the male dogs has changed completely, it is really interesting.
This week I am including a song by Lucy Spraggan that I heard on Spotify. I cannot find a video other than an audio only version so I am including this cute live performance some random person posted. I love the lilting of her voice and the lyrics. I feel ya Lucy! Lucy was on X-Factor in the UK a million years ago but I have only just discovered her and I am now a big fan!
That is it for me, I need to get ready. Today I am doing a house energy clearing for a friend.
I hope you all have a lovely weekend. Tomorrow I will be resting up, I thought I had drumming but I found out I do not. The schedule has changed and I still have the old schedule as well as the new schedule in my calendar so my diary is a bit of a mess! I am glad I have a day of recovery though, I like at least one day to lie in bed late and do nothing except potter about all day, my body needs that.
I wish you well until next time, Kisses from the Kitten xoxoxoxxo
Kitten in the City 
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