You put my life into words

I opened my inbox this week to find an email from another parent.

She had just read my article in Special Needs Jungle and felt compelled to get in touch. She told me I had “hit the nail on the head” and that reading it had made her realise her family wasn’t alone.

And honestly, that meant more to me than being published.

This week, I had an article published on the Special Needs Jungle website. It’s one of the most read and respected publications in the SEND community, so I’m incredibly proud that they felt my story was worth sharing.

It’s not the first time I’ve been published. Last autumn I wrote for The Sunday Times about autistic masking in children, and I was proud of that too because I wanted to bring awareness of masking to a wider audience. But there was something different about this.

Special Needs Jungle is our community. It’s written by people who understand, read by people who understand, and shared by people who understand. There is something quite special about that.

What has touched me most though has been the response. The comments on social media. The messages. The emails from parents thanking me for naming what they’re living every day, for acknowledging what life can look like behind closed doors, and for being honest about it.

Because autistic masking doesn’t just affect the child who is doing it. There is a ripple effect that reaches the entire family, and I don’t think we talk about that enough.

In fact, I don’t think we talk enough about the mental health and wellbeing of parents and carers of neurodivergent children. Very often we’re carrying so much, and we’re doing it with very little understanding or support. We’re advocating, firefighting, researching, attending appointments, battling systems, managing anxiety, sleep deprivation and sensory overload, whilst trying to hold everything together for everyone else.

Many of us don’t talk about how hard it can be because we don’t want our children painted in a bad light. We love our children fiercely. We wouldn’t change them for the world. What we’d change is the judgement. The gaslighting. The lack of support. The environments that don’t feel safe for them. The constant feeling that we’re having to prove what we know to be true.

For years I heard variations of, “But they’re fine at school,” whilst living a very different reality at home. That’s why I wrote the article. Not because I think my experience is unique, but because I know how many families are living this reality in silence.

Sometimes there is enormous power in having somebody else put words around an experience you’ve struggled to explain.

If you’ve ever felt unseen, disbelieved, isolated or exhausted by all of this, please know you’re not alone. The emails sitting in my inbox this week are proof of that.

And if reading my article helps even one parent feel a little more seen, then every word was worth it.

Read my Special Needs Jungle article here – When “fine” at school isn’t fine at home: the hidden cost of autistic masking on families

Thank you for all the lovely comments, messages and support this week. It genuinely means more than I can say.