Neurodiversity comprises you, me, every mind and every neurotype. Neurodivergency, aka ND, contains those like me, not in the neuro-majority such as autistic, dyslexic, dyspraxic and ADHD are some belonging to the ND family; yes, we are here experiencing and processing the world in myriad ways and emerging from our masks in little and big ways, at least for those that wear them. All are still striving for embedded bodymind equality; pushing for and embracing biodiversity is essential to making the world, in all honesty, a better place. This message is still needed even this year. Progress has been made, but there's more to achieve.
I don't know who needs to hear this, but we are more than our productivity, more than what we can give the Wizard of Oz for their golden coin machine. We don't need pity or congratulations for still breathing. Some welcome ingredients to foster joyful ways of being are acceptance, space, agency, autonomy, compassion, and the opposite of hierarchy; some of the things to enable a flourishing and expansion; into who we are and who we want to be on our terms; to shine like stars in the ways that matter to us most.
Where our minds go, our bodies follow, forever conjoined. Do not attempt to separate us; we are sewn together with strength and love. Pushing for everything we deserve and need under the sun benefits everyone.
By Natasha Trotman
Copyright © May 2022 Natasha Trotman
ND, You, Me: Hues (2) is featured in Azarra Amoy’s Kaleidoscopic Minds: Thinking Differently Commission, launched at the Great Exhibition Road Festival, on display until November as part of the Royal Borough of Kensington’s KCAW Art Trail. For more information please visit the link: (this link will open in a new window) https://www.discoversouthken.com/discover-more/kaleidoscopic-minds-thinking-differently/
This week I was asked to leave a public space (again). The reasons are normative in origin, not meeting the expectations of the dominant group's gaze. Encountering pressing questions that did not make logical sense (without the lens).
I did not feel I was out of place or that I wore an unusual expression on my face. A mainstream person belonging to a dominant group stood a mere two metres away, idling and staring at a
far-off place. However, when asked to move and leave a public space for transport and congregating, the invitation had only one (mythical) name pertaining to me; specific questions were raised, internally.
The security that had been called gestured to the CCTV; the crosshairs rested squarely only on me; I had been using my phone. I raised it clasped in hand, their expressions unchanged. When asked why they'd like me to leave, silence, 'space for evacuation', was mentioned; I looked around the huge terrain and looked back. Silence. It seems the profile I met was 'threat'; negotiation then took place at pace. Tiring. They left, and I stayed. Dropping from 5 spoons to minus 10; with tomorrow's spoons already spent.
When in a position of influence, disclosing a neurotype, bodymind, waxing eloquent; acknowledging privilege or the risk depending on the skin and body you're living within is worth considering. To blend, high-masking could be the difference between detainment, arrest and even death. When ableism, disablism, and racism are holding hands, interconnected embodied mythologies abound, names, authentic stories are lost to the stereotype(s), the individual's story crowded out.
Mythical Stories that way heavy on marginalised backs going back generations; belonging to no-one, yet so heavy and everyone carries them around: the security threat, the angry person, a thief all floating about, or dragging on the ground but still 'attached', schemas with no space for neurodivergence or adjustments to complex attitudinal barriers, a cause for pause when encountered in real life, on the ground.
When given platforms to beat the drum and write blogs, books, and deliver the workshops marking the ground think about crafting and defining spaces not just for where you are at, your 'patch'. When you discuss what shapes a mind, what makes a mind, unmasking and why, pause and appreciate the weight and ripple effect of such words, worlds and models leveraged, what underpins it; stepping fully into the responsibility of what you've advised, commissioned, co-signed, it's a challenge and risky at best for all, especially those that are multiply-marginalised. Don't shy away but recognise.
If you have not lived inside the skin of those who are pushed to the margins when you exclaim, 'this is the (my) way!', 'declare who you are', 'share your confidential medical information near and far!' , consider the impact of those words and the safety from which they are spoken (or not). Does a safe and supportive terrain exist to support multiply vulnerable groups and individual declarations? Such as reasonable (attitudinal) adjustments without hesitation, will you be an accomplice to push boundaries in this direction?
Speaking about non-norms from inside a normative box, a dominant frame, yes, with its pros and cons, it's scratches, struggles and knocks but still all within the box…… what does this mean for my 90% multiply-marginalised family? A Family speaking, signing, mark-making, and eye-pointing, ever mindful of the (normative/dominant) 'grand design', the non-consensual DNR's and battles to get it off the f**king file(s) and charts, does that resonate so far?
Own privilege if it's within your orbit and you can touch it, experience it. Whatever shape it comes in, name it while your naming minds and making declarations cushioned by the dominant landscape, structures, bodyminds.
I ask, please, attempt not to other those already othered existing in the folds within folds, minorities within minorities; when you beat that drum, not everyone who hears the call can rise for myriad reasons, know this, I invite you to deeply consider, explore why.
Yes, discuss the norm's pros and cons, also acknowledge the norm gilded box keeping selected bodies and minds voices amplified, safe, or safer and what that means. Multiply marginalised bodyminds are still searching for a 'safe space' nomadic in the endeavour, striving forwards. Nonetheless pressing on seeking tangible and living places devoid of pathologised labels.
Acknowledge the interconnectedness, the challenges but also the safety, the ridges and folds a dominant group provides and displays. Many like me who are multiply marginalised, despite the challenges, feel pride in who we are and express it in intricate and nuanced ways, within the folds, often beyond the (dominant) gaze.
#BlackAutisticLivesMatter #BlackDisabledLivesMatter today and everyday
By Natasha Trotman
Copyright © 2022 Natasha Trotman
Dark brown hand shown holding a sphere reflecting the cityscape's backdrop, buildings, trees, and the sky upside down. Text in the lower right reads image Natasha Trotman. Copyright 2020 Natasha Trotman.
Skywards (Poem)
Over the years, I've experienced hurdles and reinforced walls faced only by those who are multiply marginalised; this can take most of my spoons, if not all shifting a stride to a shuffle or crawl, and with zero spoons, no movement at all.
Those facing hurdles made of known and unknown materials and things never encountered before, blocking every turn, door. Take a breath, rest; if you need more time, take it, permit self-compassion; respite, or whatever is to your satisfaction. Upward progress needs blue skies and tangible equalities for all.
But I, being poor, have only my dreams, just enough to take flight, leaving doors and such behind, constrained to the construct no more. Do not lose heart; we will make it to the horizon, and beyond it, our dreams are but the start.
By Natasha Trotman
Copyright © 2021 Natasha Trotman
Covid-19 Poetic Response: Hope Love Faith. An Original work by Natasha Trotman. Copyright Natasha Trotman
Black Lives Matter Response (BLM): Intersectional solidarity with BLM
Water and Air.
Water holds memory, consciousness. A single tear contains more than fatty oils, different proteins, electrolytes and saltiness, it holds energy. The tear is a portal.
A liquid threshold, allowing passage, access, to our cosmology, centuries before and after this, where language of thought is known and based on hertz, lightening bolts and a 2-2 beat.
The catalyst. A constellation of ancestors, Moki-Jumbi, more than melanin, where mouth words fall away and language is pure frequency, permeating our very being(s).
A salty fluid time bender, journeyer, creating gateways where it lands, the sweat on our brows and our backs, now glistening doorways to ascension.
Intergalactic DNA, two linked strands, winding around, then expand; a constellation. Acknowledging the ingredients; expansive, uncoupled from language and modern-day constraints, a tapestry of worlds and ways of being, reconnecting with our bodies. Frequency in the darkness. Space to become. Singing songs of songs.
Caretakers of the ‘verse striding, inter-dimensional safeguarding, releasing, phasing in and out, embodied hertz, shifting realities, colliding. Embracing bittersweet memories, goodbye ceremonies. Stubbornly ascending.
Salty transitions and revisiting sites for healing. Toil, libations created on brows, backs, cheekbones, a baby’s fontanelle, a collective pouring out. A salty spell imagined, whispered, said out loud, an invocation of hope and liberation. None of us are free until all of us are free.
By Natasha Trotman
Copyright © 2023 Natasha Trotman
Water and Air. Poem
