There’s a lot of discussion around neurodiversity and unmasking, and I don’t feel I’m in a position of enough knowledge or understanding to be able to speak on this topic. Yet, at the same time I don’t think I’ll ever feel as if I have acquired enough knowledge to speak on anything… so I guess that’s my roundabout way of saying that what I share with my words, is simply my limited understanding of my own experience.
My experience is a lifetime’s worth of masking, and my understanding of it is still very patchy at best.
Yet here we are… with a neurological disorder that I feel is brutally tearing away my mask from my entire body that last week left me standing butt naked in the middle of an airport. Not pretty. Not comfortable, and not in the slightest bit safe… So this process of unmasking for me, of learning to live more in tune with my authentic experience of how I soak up, filter and understand the world, currently feels incredibly brutal.
Wolfie and me about 10 years ago - it’s fun what comes up when you type ‘mask’ into your google photos!
Reflecting on masking this morning, I realise that when we armour up and wear these ‘masks’, from such young ages, that they aren’t simply things that attach onto your face like a colourful garnish to be adorned on the surface of your skin. These masks feel more to me like scales… or even infact like trees planted on our skin’s surface, whose roots sink down and grow entwined through our conscious layers of safety, then deeper still, down towards our inner beings, and drink from the rivers of our soft, subconscious pathways.
So I guess I see my mask as more of a forest these days… that’s grown around my being, as a way to protect me from the immediate impact of the world that I interact with. It appears trees are not only great places to hide within, they offer great shade and make incredibly good sound buffers too. Now it appears that some of my trees have been destroyed… and this act of deforestation hurts. Literally. I wonder if the weight of them maybe grew too much (hello burnout / nervous breakdown), and mid-life hormonal changes appear to have wreaked havoc on their water supply. Whatever it was, the act of unmasking for me, is currently a very physical process… and not necessarily done within the comfort zone of my conscious choice.
Where it’s left me
This is something I’ve been pondering for over a year now. Wondering if it was a temporary glitch in my forest of perceived freedom… I questioned whether I could nip down to the garden centre of medical delights and grab myself a bargain on some old oak trees, maybe a bit of fast growing beech… that I could simply plug back into me and away we go. Unfortunately (I say this with a sprinkle of sarcasm and a touch of truth) for me it appears my forest doesn’t grow this way. It’s unique formation does not wish to be replicated so easily… although I will confess that some hormones in the form of a progesterone coil and some oestrogen cream I slather on my skin each night does seem to help the trees that are left feel a little bit safer for now.
So I sit again with this idea of unmasking, and what it means… and wonder if I maybe could learn to manage this forest of mine a little better. I won’t lie, and say that I think I need to rid myself of my trees… and learn to live truly authentically (I confess, I can’t even feel what that means) and exposed. In all honesty I think the world in which we live in is genuinely far too fast, loud and frightening for any of that. But I do think I maybe over-planted (ha, just a tiny bit!)… I do think I like to hide away from sensation and feeling as a way to try to stay safe… and I do think that in doing so I’ve left myself vulnerable to forest fires and have overburdened my safety ecosystem.
And as I write these words, and sit with the idea of a forest mask, I have to admit I quite like it… not the ‘masking’ aspect necessarily, but I do think that we all have parts of ourselves that we either have to, or wish to, keep hidden. I hate the fact that so many of us had to grow these forests out of fear. That’s the part that physically pains me… and as I sit with this image, I wonder if the trees that grow out of fear maybe aren’t native to our soil, and are more like the fast growing economic forests that we planted in Scotland in the 60s. Those forests that feel ‘dead’ inside when you walk them…
I’ve meandered off my forest path… I feel it… so I will bring it back to unmasking now, and leave you with this idea of growing trees, and planting shrubs, that feel native to you, and your own unique soil. Of pruning and planting in a way that supports and encourages growth for safety, but also for feeling… I don’t think we need to necessarily live bare earthed and butts out, but I do think we, I, can maybe find a way to continue to cut back some of these forests of mine, to encourage more of my wildflowers to grow, worms to wriggle, and tiny birds to sing…
I’d truly love to know if the idea of growing trees of safety makes sense to you… or how else you might ‘see’ or ‘feel’ your mask? I think I’m going to spend some more time with this idea, as it’s just grown with me this morning and so I’m looking forward to seeing what other thoughts / reflections might sprout here…
Well my relationship with trees is very literal and has brought up a lot of issues with safety. And it's interesting how reading this I can feel my nervous system darting all over the place. I realise I can't yet put trees---> safety in the same place but my relationship with trees is now almost inter connect with my growth. It's a dismantling of the old bark to uncover the heart underneath. Something. I'm not sure any of this makes sense. I'm still processsing!!
Or is it a bit like a physical mask? …used to defend our true self, protect our identity, but the choice of mask…needs consideration and appreciation. Love that pic of you and your daughter….did she paint that mask?