Perfectly Imperfect

31/12/2025

28/12/2025

Regulated enough to walk the dog!

28/12/2025

Regulated enough to do the things they avoid:

Some days, it’s the dog walk.

Not school.
Not therapy.
Not the big conversations.

Just… the dog walk.

I watch my teenager stand in the hallway, shoes nearby, lead on the hook and I can see it the moment his body says no. Not a defiant no. Not an “I don’t want to” no.

A can’t no.

He’s AuDHD, with a PDA profile, and he’s just finished primary school. That alone has taken everything out of him.

Primary school required constant effort, navigating noise, people, expectations, transitions, rules that weren’t always explained, and the invisible work of holding himself together all day. Now it’s the holidays, and on paper, that should mean rest.

But holidays aren’t always regulating.

Tonight it showed up as the dog walk.

Not earlier in the day.
Not when it was bright and busy.

At 8pm.

Instead of asking him to walk the dog, I invited him to join me.

No demand.
No expectation.
Just an open door.

And he said: “i would like to come with you mummy, i am enjoying our convesation”.

We walked for 45 minutes.

Not five minutes.
Not a quick loop followed by “can we go home?”

He didn’t ask to turn back once.

He stimmed the whole way.
Listened to his favourite music.
Info-dumped about the things he loves.
Talked freely.
Laughed.

We walked side by side in the quiet, enjoying each other’s company not performing, not bracing, not pushing through.

And I was reminded, again, of something I already know but need to keep seeing with my own eyes:

When his nervous system is regulated, especially when he’s not attending school his real self starts to show.

Not the masked version.
Not the defensive version.
Not the shut-down or reactive version.

Him.

Curious. Engaged. Expressive. Connected.

This is why I’m careful with encouragement right now, especially with high school on the horizon.

Because I’m holding two truths at once:
• I want him to access education and opportunity, in a form that he has requested
• I refuse to sacrifice his nervous system to get there.

For kids with an AuDHD profile and PDA, pressure even well-intentioned pressure, can register as threat. Demands don’t build capacity; safety does.

Tonight didn’t happen because I pushed him.

It happened because I respected his autonomy.
Because I waited for regulation.
Because I chose invitation over instruction.

And that walk told me far more about what he’s capable of than any timetable or attendance plan ever could.

High school will come.

But regulation comes first.

And my job isn’t to force him into the world before he’s ready: it’s to walk beside him, in the quiet, until his nervous system says yes.

20/12/2025

A Tiny Love Letter to the “Extra” Humans

This is for the people with:
• Big feelings
• Busy minds
• Too many tabs open
• And a nervous system that needs a little more care than the manual suggests

You’re not dramatic.
You’re deeply attuned.

You don’t need more discipline or thicker skin.
You need emotional support, safety, and people who don’t rush you through your processing.

Needing reassurance doesn’t make you weak.
Needing connection doesn’t make you needy.
Needing support doesn’t mean you’re failing.

It means you’re human and a particularly thoughtful one.

So here’s your reminder:
You’re not “too much”.
You’re just built for depth in a world obsessed with speed.

Stay soft.
Stay curious.
And keep a few emotional support tabs open: they’re doing important work!

20/12/2025

The most dangerous voice in any space isn’t the loud one: it’s the unaccountable one.

It’s someone in a position of power who does not live the experience, yet insists on defining it for everyone else.
Who pushes a singular narrative as fact.
Who refuses genuine dialogue.
Who turns off comments the moment engagement becomes inconvenient.

And when that still isn’t enough?
They block people the instant there’s disagreement not just on their own page, but anywhere.
Pre-emptive silencing and Narrative control.

Worse still, they justify the silencing using neurodiversity-affirming language.

“Low spoons.”
“Protecting my nervous system.”
“Boundaries.”
“Capacity.”
“Trauma-informed.”

Using disability and mental health language to avoid accountability is not neurodiversity-affirming.
It is co-opting care language to maintain power, and it’s going below the belt.

That isn’t boundary-setting.
That isn’t regulation.
That is authoritarian behaviour wearing the aesthetics of safety.

And this is where Dunning–Kruger syndrome enters the room.

Dunning–Kruger is what happens when low insight meets high confidence, when someone overestimates their competence and mistakes certainty for expertise.
They don’t engage because they can’t.
They don’t debate because debate would expose the gaps.
They silence because scrutiny threatens the illusion.
Their lack of insight is so deep.

So what does real accountability actually look like?

Real accountability means:
• Staying in the room when your position is challenged
• Allowing disagreement without punishment or erasure
• Naming the limits of your perspective, especially without lived experience
• Correcting yourself publicly when you get it wrong
• Not hiding behind “low spoons,” “boundaries,” or curated silence to avoid critique
• Letting your ideas stand or fall on merit not positional power

Accountability is not control.
It’s exposure.

It’s allowing your narrative to be examined rather than protected.

If your ideas can’t survive respectful disagreement, they aren’t robust.
If your narrative requires silence to function, it isn’t truth.
And if you weaponise neurodiversity language to erase dissent, you are not being affirming: you are being unethical.

People with lived experience don’t fear accountability.
They expect it.
Because real leadership doesn’t need silence.
And real neurodiversity-affirming practice never uses the block button as a shield.

We all make mistakes, most of us have amazing reflection skills, it’s only the small minority who do not.

20/12/2025

The NSW government has launched the 1 mitzvah for Bondi. Please share if you want!

https://www.nsw.gov.au/community-services/one-mitzvah-for-bondi?fbclid=IwRlRTSAOzNghleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEe9cPkEkG3U1OCrtIj_23CxIKTAm2z6aPBP_SUlgGX2JutPRVY94JHzGReYcM_aem_Y2nbt0o3JRnwxR5sk_i0kw

We are calling on people of all faiths and all communities across NSW, to come together in the wake of the terrorist attack at Bondi on Sunday, 14 December 2025, and help unite our state.

19/12/2025

The last day of school doesn’t always look like excited assemblies, signatures on shirts, and big goodbyes.

Today looked like this.

A quiet room.
Plastic chairs.
A nervous system holding on by a thread.
And my beautiful boy needing me not nearby, not “on standby”, but right there with him.

Today was heavy with change.
Endings. Transitions. The finality of “lasts”.
And for an anxious, neurodivergent nervous system, that’s not exciting, it’s overwhelming.

There were yearbooks to sign.
Jerseys passed around.
Messages written.
Assemblies.
Farewells.

Moments that are meant to feel joyful but instead stirred panic, urgency, and the desperate need to escape and go home.

So I stayed.

I stayed beside him while messages were written, one at a time.
I stayed while jerseys were signed, when the room felt too loud and too much.
I stayed through assembly, through goodbyes, through the ache of endings his body didn’t yet know how to hold.

I stayed when it would have been easier to rush, to distract, to say “just get through it.”
I stayed because support isn’t about pushing kids through distress, it’s about walking with them inside it.

His need to leave wasn’t defiance.
It wasn’t avoidance.
It was communication.

This is what regulation looks like in real life.
Not strategies on paper.
Not expectations imposed from the outside.

But presence.
Containment.
Safety.

We don’t teach children how to cope with change by forcing independence before their nervous systems are ready.
We teach them by co-regulating, by staying close, by showing them that endings don’t mean abandonment.

One day, he’ll walk into endings with confidence.
Not because he was pushed.
But because he was supported again and again, until his body learned it was safe.

Today, I stayed.
And that mattered more than any farewell ever could.

Jess xx

17/12/2025

17/12/2025

When Advocacy Becomes Hypocrisy: Antisemitism in Neurodivergent Spaces

There is something profoundly uncomfortable and deeply revealing happening in parts of the neurodivergent community right now.

The same voices who demand loudly and rightly that autistic people be listened to over neurotypical interpretations have, without irony, turned around and mansplained to Jewish people how they should grieve, respond, and feel after an antisemitic massacre on Australian soil.

Let’s call this what it is.

Hypocrisy.

Neurodivergent advocacy is built on a core principle:Those with lived experience are the experts in their own oppression.

We push back hard when neurotypical professionals speak over autistic people.
We reject being told we’re “too emotional,” “misinterpreting,” or “overreacting.”
We demand our pain, context, and history be centred.

So please explain this contradiction:

Why is it unacceptable for neurotypical people to define autism but suddenly acceptable for non-Jewish people to define antisemitism? Why are autistic voices “critical and central,”
but Jewish voices are dismissed, corrected, reframed, or outright ignored?

After the antisemitic massacre at Bondi, Jewish people didn’t need:

• Behavioural commentary
• Political reframing
• “Contextual explanations”
• Or psychology pages turning mass murder into a teachable moment of “how to support children in a mass shooting”

They needed safety, solidarity, and silence from those who were not impacted.

Instead, many Jewish people were met with:
• Conditional empathy
• Whataboutism
• Minimisation

All while being told by people who claim to oppose oppression how they should respond.

That isn’t support.
That is control.

You don’t get to boycott Israeli-owned platforms, post selectively about Palestine, refuse to acknowledge Jewish grief and then suddenly wrap yourself in the language of “trauma-informed care” when Jewish people are murdered.

When you decide which forms of harm are worth acknowledging and which aren’t, you are participating in the very systems of exclusion you claim to oppose!

Antisemitism doesn’t always look like slurs or violence.

Sometimes it looks like:
• Denying Jewish people their own narrative
• Correcting them when they name harm
• Expecting them to justify their grief
• Or telling them they’re “making it political” by existing in pain

If you believe lived experience matters it must apply universally. Otherwise, what you’re practising isn’t advocacy. It’s hierarchical empathy.

The neurodivergent community cannot claim moral authority while replicating the same silencing, gaslighting, and power dynamics we say have harmed us.

We either believe:
• Marginalised voices matter always,
or
• We believe they matter only when convenient.

Listen. And act.
Or stop pretending you stand for justice.

16/12/2025

I need to call this out. I won’t be naming and shaming.

After the antisemitic massacre at Bondi Beach, Australian psychologists flooded their practice pages with posts about being trauma-informed, about holding space, about supporting affected communities.

And that should matter.
But professional accountability requires context and context exposes hypocrisy.

Because many of these same psychologists have spent the past 2 years making very public choices:
• Refusing to use platforms like Wix because it is Israeli-owned
• Publicly endorsing Israeli boycotts that cost them nothing
• Posting exclusively in support of Palestine while remaining silent on Israeli civilians, Israeli trauma, and Jewish fear
• Treating Israeli identity as ethically disposable while continuing to benefit from countless other systems with complex global harm histories

Those choices were not neutral.
They were ideological.
And they sent a clear message about whose lives were worthy of acknowledgement and whose were not.

So when Jewish people are murdered on Australian soil, and those same practitioners suddenly position themselves as safe, trauma-informed supports for Jewish clients, it demands scrutiny.

Trauma-informed practice does not mean ignoring Jewish trauma until blood is spilled.
It does not mean erasing Israelis for months and then speaking over Jewish communities during crisis.
And it certainly does not mean selectively recognising harm only when silence becomes professionally embarrassing.

You cannot publicly disengage from Jews and Israelis when they are alive, complex, and inconvenient and then claim authority on Jewish trauma once they are dead or grieving.

That is not care.
That is not safety.
That is performative ethics.

Psychologists understand power. We understand harm. We understand the impact of exclusion, silence, and othering. Which makes this behaviour especially egregious. Because therapeutic language is being used to legitimise selective empathy and sanitise antisemitism under the guise of values.

Posting “how to support Jewish communities” after Bondi does not undo a year of silence, erasure, and selective morality.

Trauma-informed practice is not a graphic, a caption, or a moment of reputational repair.
It is a consistent recognition of humanity before violence forces your hand.

And if your values only show up when tragedy makes them unavoidable, then what you’re offering isn’t support.

It’s optics.

16/12/2025

In the midst of heavy moments, what has stood out most to me recently isn’t the noise: it’s the support.

The messages.
The check-ins.
The quiet “I’m here” texts.
The people who didn’t need an explanation, didn’t need context, and didn’t need anything in return.

And it’s reminded me of something I don’t take lightly: the privilege of being held by others and the equal privilege of being trusted to hold people in return.

In the work we do, relationships are everything. Real ones. Built over time. Built on trust, honesty, and showing up even when it’s uncomfortable or inconvenient. The kind of working relationships where people don’t just collaborate with you they stand with you, forever.

That is not accidental.
That is earned.
And it is deeply humbling.

There is a privilege in being allowed into people’s lives at moments of vulnerability, grief, fear, and growth. In being trusted with their stories. Their nervous systems. Their children. Their relationships. Their advocacy battles. Their hope.

And there is a responsibility that comes with that privilege.

Strong, supportive working relationships don’t just make the work easier, they make it safer. They remind us that none of us are meant to do this alone. That collective care isn’t a buzzword, it’s a practice. And that mutual respect creates a foundation where people can breathe, ask for help, and keep going.

So today, I’m naming my gratitude. For the support I’ve received. For the people who show up consistently. And for the reminder that the strength of our work is not in individual expertise, but in the relationships that hold it all together.

That kind of connection?
That’s something worth protecting.

Thankyou from the bottom of my heart.

- Jess xx