generational neurodiversity

looking back at the life of my colourful, whimsical & daydreaming likely ADHD aunt

Hi, I’m Lauren from reasons to be weird. I write about the neurodivergent life / late-diagnosed autism + ADHD / parenting neurodivergent children / mushy stuff like love + grief / nature /community & life’s magical things. I love to tell stories about the past and thank the ancestors along the way. If you enjoy my stories, you can subscribe and leave a comment to say hello. Thanks for coming along, I hope you enjoy this read.

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As a child, I was very fond of an aunt who often visited from the other side of the country. She was glamorous and different from the adults I knew. She could have been described as an eccentric. She was kooky, witchy, and very Ab Fab. She was great friends with my mother, and I would listen to them laugh so much into the evenings, playing music and singing ABBA into the night. I would pretend to be asleep upstairs just to listen in on their scandalous conversations, which were not fit for a 9 year old.

My aunt would live a colourful life, and she would die by drinking herself to death by the time she was 40.

When she passed, people in our town would stop me in the street and say - ‘Wasn’t she so beautiful your aunt…’ - ‘I remember seeing her on stage ’ - ‘what a beauty she was’ - ‘she was just the loveliest soul you could ever meet’. And they were all correct.

She would command any room she walked into with her smile, her extra-large large pouffed, permed hair, and her very French eyeliner that flicked out at the sides. She was a former beauty queen and had traveled to countries I dreamed of visiting. Some days, when it was too rainy to go out to play, my grandmother would take out a big, old box filled with newspaper clippings of her daughter in her bikini and ball gown, posing on a big fancy stage. I think she was a runner-up in Miss Scotland or Miss Great Britain. She was a big deal in the 80s, and I think she had a famous boyfriend that everyone knew about. My grandmother, a working-class woman from poor beginnings, prided herself on birthing a beauty queen. It was a flex to have a daughter like her.

Pinterest, 1952 Life magazine

When she passed, it was hard for most to put the two concepts together -

Beautiful and an alcoholic. Lovely and destructive.

A bright light, shadowed by darkness.

Some people said she couldn’t take it after my mother died.

She loved her little sister more than anything. The weight of grief consumed her, and she replaced it with gin. Not just any gin, but the fancy gin. She was, after all, a fancy lady.

But her fancy days out with friends became less and less, and bottles of spirit would be consumed in secret. Friends and partners disappeared, and so did whatever interest she had in staying alive. She could no longer parent in her usual loving and tender way, could no longer work, and could no longer cook her famous meals we so wished for on her visit.

In the past, she would have us dine on the chicken liver parfait and an escargot entrée when my cousins and I stayed overnight in my grandmother’s home. In that little council estate apartment, we would be treated to the finer things in life.

She wanted us to expand our palettes and our minds. She laughed so hard when we tried the scallops and we made the face of never again - but thank you. We all loved her so much and wanted to please her.

Only recently did I remember how my family would call her ‘scatterbrain’. Or how they would say she is ‘so forgetful’ or say things such as ‘you know what she’s like’ when she didn’t show up to important events, or all cancel plans, or forget the important birthdays.

How I remember, she seemed to live on cloud, floating around in the air, as she breezed in and out of rooms in her large flowery skirts and long beads that made a jiggling noise as she moved. I remember how she daydreamed in the living room, smoking cigarettes and looking out the window.

She spoke of the romantic aspects of life whilst ignoring the realities around her. I was to go see the world, she told me, and enjoy all that life has to offer.

When I would stay at her home, her bathroom was covered in old, dusty makeup and shampoo bottles that hadn’t been replaced for years. Her fabulous clothing was piled high all over the house, as were magazines, recipe books, and colourful cushions, linens, and ornaments. Yet the room was always cleared with incense with a whiff of strong smelling garlic as she cooked what she had just learned from the food shows on TV.

‘She’s away with the fairies, your aunt,’ my grandmother would say.

Always thinking of something else, somewhere else. Always thinking of a time to do something else, yet never the thing she had to do right now.

She would have been blissfully unaware of ADHD or neurodiversity or knowing that her brain was its own unique flavour.

She would however, have been aware of anti-depressants, panic disorders, depression and all the manic women in history that the doctors told her who she was becoming.

The last time I saw her was in the hospital a few days before she left us. I waited for her in the café downstairs. She told me not to come upstairs - it was not very nice up there she told me. It kept her dignity intact to meet me for a machine coffee instead.

As the elevator doors opened, out she walked in a patterned polyester hospital gown draped over prominent bones. Her fading spirit still smiling that smile. She still had her makeup on - high blush on her cheekbones, dark eyeliner flicked like the old days. She would still be fabulous to the end.

Addiction is ruthless in its slow capture of the soul. It sucks out the spirit slowly and hungrily¹ until there is only a flicker of light left. Then it’s all gone.

It’s been nearly two decades since she left for somewhere brighter.

My aunt was a likely part of the generational neurodiversity puzzle that no one had words for then. My grandmother always said there was a family curse. That may be true, but maybe now we know more about our ancestral brains that find it too difficult to be in this world. And how for many generations that has been unsupported and unseen.

She was a kitchen witch, my aunt. A mother, a daughter, a friend and capturer of hearts of many. Another woman of a generation who failed to see women for who they are. A woman where life became all too much.

I often see her in my dreams.

In the dreamspace, there she is as her floaty, flamboyant self. With my mother dancing to the music, just as they used to do.

They say souls come to this earth to leave a mark on the world, to fulfil a duty and then they move on. Sometimes their time on the planet might be shortlived.

My aunt came here to open her heart to all, right until the end.

I hope we can open ours to more people like her.

x

1. I take hungrily from Gabor Maté - ‘In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts’ - a fascinating read on addiction