Friendship: What It Means to Be a Friend #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. For my letter F post in the #AtoZChallenge, I had a lot of choices and yet this actually overwhelmed me. I am once again doing a post on a topic I think I covered in 2019 too, ie. friendship. What does it mean to be a friend?

My spouse and I are best friends. Since we aren’t in a traditional relationship due to for example not living together, we need to find other ways to make our relationship work. However, we were friends before we were a couple.

As someone who didn’t have any friends beyond elementary school until I met my now spouse, I am not the best possible judge of what makes a friendship tick. I mean, I can look at what psychologists say about the development of friendships from early childhood into adulthood.

For instance, three-year-olds say someone is their friend because they play with them on the see-saw and “doesn’t want to be their friend anymore” as soon as the other child isn’t any longer interested in the same activity. I have this kind of relationship with some of my fellow residents.

As a child gets older, they develop more perspective about the fact that other children aren’t just momentary playmates, but their viewpoint is still very one-sided. For example, a six-year-old might consider someone their friend because they save them a seat at the bus or give them treats. They don’t yet fully comprehend mutual give-and-take though.

This follows at the next stage, which starts at around age six and continues throughout elementary school age. At this point, children are very fairness-conscious and usually have rigid rules for give-and-take.

At my very best, I am stuck at this stage. Usually though, I am at the second stage, hard as I find it to admit this. I, after all, usually only think of giving something in return for the things (material or immaterial) my spouse gives me when I’m in a very healthy place mentally.

At the next stage, which starts at around age eleven, children develop intimate friendships in which they mutually support each other. They help each other solve problems and confide feelings in each other that they don’t share with anyone else. Like I said, I never had friends beyond elementary school before meeting my spouse. Though I did and do confide in my spouse, I am pretty bad at offering my spouse any emotional support in return.

Finally, adolescents and adults have mature friendships in which they emphasize emotional closeness over anything else. They can accept, sometimes even appreciate their friends being significantly different from them. People at this stage emphasize trust, knowing their friendship will be long-lasting even through temporary separations and differences.

Creativity: How I Have Evolved As a Creative Over the Years #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. It’s late once again as I get to my letter C post. I don’t tend to think up my topics in advance. Same with this one. It actually popped up in my mind several minutes ago and here I am writing about my creative journey. Okay, I did my entire #AtoZChallenge of 2022 on creativity so am pretty sure I covered this topic already, but let’s do a repeat in that case.

I am not very imaginative. Like I said on Monday, I most likely have aphantasia. This combined with blindness and my other disabilities doesn’t make me all that great of an artist. And yet, I love to create!

In childhood, I’d often draw dresses and other fashion items, pretending I was a fashion designer. I lost the vision needed to draw around age 12 and, even though my drawing teacher found me paper that would create raised lines when drawing on it, I also hardly drew anything beyond stick figures in boxes from then on. Don’t ask me about their meaning – yes, I know they meant something, but for the life of me I can’t remember what.

I didn’t craft or create art again until my mid-twenties. Then I started card making. Over the next five years followed at least a dozen other crafts. And now, I’m stuck on polymer clay, although to be honest I don’t use the medium nearly as often as I used to.

Creativity can, of course, also involve the written word. I wrote stories from a young age on. I started out writing fiction and the occasional poem. Now, I almost exclusively write blog posts.

I must admit, as I think back on my creative journey, that my level of imaginativeness has probably declined over the years and I didn’t always experience aphantasia. Not that I ever had a rich inner world. Well, that is, I have and always had a strong inner monologue (or inner cacaphony, in fact) and could probably describe an inner world in words, but I couldn’t visually imagine it at all.

I think this lack of imaginativeness is the reason I write personal blog posts mostly and craft mostly realistic figures or things from tutorials. I mean, of course a unicorn isn’t real, but I almost literally copied my style of unicorns from a tutorial. Realizing this makes me feel really sad.

“St. Nick, I’m Stuck!”

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Sorry for not having touched the blog for nearly a week. I’ve been struggling once again. However, today I feel in an okay place mentally at least, so I thought I’d join in with John Holton’s Writer’s Workshop. One of the prompts is to share when you learned that Santa/the Easter bunny/the tooth fairy was your parents.

I’ll have to talk about St. Nicholas rather than any of the others here, because that’s what we celebrate most here in the Netherlands. St. Nicholas is like Santa, except he has helpers called Peters. They used to be black, but now they come in every color or with black streaks across their faces (from creeping through chimneys to deliver presents) because the concept of Black Peter is racist.

I was eight the last year when I still believed in St. Nick. This was 1994. As the legend goes, St. Nick and his Peters would ride over the rooftops on a white horse and maybe they’d descend through the chimney to deliver presents.

That year, on the evening of December 5, my parents, sister and I were having dinner when we heard noise coming from the roof. We didn’t have a chimney, but I was still too clueless to think about that. “St. Nick, help, I’m stuck!” We went looking for where the sound came from and saw that there were presents in the loft under the staircase.

Eight is a fairly old age to still believe in St. Nick. In fact, I’d been packaging St. Nicholas presents for my teachers for several years by then. By the year after this, when literally everyone my age had stopped believing, my father spoiled the beans for me: he came to me with a cassette tape, put it in the player and there it was: “St. Nick, help, I’m stuck!” It was his own voice, slightly distorted. By that time, I knew for sure that St. Nicholas was my parents.

The Wednesday Hodgepodge (February 14, 2024)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Happy Valentine’s Day! It’s Wednesday and I’m joining in with the Wednesday Hodgepodge. Here goes.

1. What does love mean to you?
To me, it means thinking that (and acting accordingly) someone is special to you. This special someone could be God, someone else, but it could be yourself too. I mean, I know that in many traditions, it is commonly believed that to love is to value someone higher than yourself, but I do think self-love is love too. In fact, I recently commented on someone else’s blog that, if everyone loves themselves, no-one will be unloved.

2. Is love blind?
I am blind, so my love certainly is. However, whether love in general is blind, I honestly wouldn’t know. I’m not even 100% sure what this expression is supposed to mean. Probably something along the lines of love preventing people from judging the person they love. Which would be weird, since justice is also characteristically thought of as blind. Oh well, maybe it means love prevents people from judging others based on appearance. In that case, as someone who has never been attracted to anyone for their appearance (in fact, I didn’t know my now spouse’s hair color until we’d been together for several months) but seems to be in the minority here, I cannot be trusted to give my representative opinion on this.

3. How do you remember Valentine’s Day as a kid? Do you have any special plans for the day this year?
I don’t remember it as a kid. In fact, I don’t think back in the mid-1990s, it was a thing for kids here in the Netherlands. In high school, I do remember kids handing out roses and can vaguely remember once having gotten one, probably as a prank.

My spouse and I aren’t celebrating this year. In fact, though we used to give each other small presents each Valentine’s Day, this year, since we both have a lot on our minds, we decided to take the pressure off by agreeing we’d give each other presents whenever we felt like it. I honestly feel that, in a committed relationship, love is an everyday thing. If you need Valentine’s Day to remind each other you still love one another, I doubt the relationship is going to last.

4. Are you a fan of the movie genre known as “rom-com”? What’s your favorite (or one of your favorites)?
I’m not a movie watcher, so no. In books, I do like them occasionally but I wouldn’t say I’m a fan.

5. What’s something you recently put your heart into?
Nothing. I’m struggling a bit, so I don’t feel inspired for any bigger (or even smaller) projects.

6. Insert your own random thought here.
I enjoyed a great Thai meal out with my mother-in-law yesterday evening. We went to Buddha Garden, the same restaurant in Apeldoorn I’d been to with my spouse and parents for my birthday. The food was just as delicious as it’d been the last time I went there.

The Downside of Praise

Posted on by Astrid

As a child, I was often praised excessively for my achievements. I remember one day, when I did calendar calculation at a family get-together, calculating what day of the week May 3, 1327 (for example), was, my mother exclaimed: “She’s sublime, she’s a genius!” For those who don’t know, many autistic or otherwise developmentally disabled people, including those with lower measured IQs, have this skill as what is stereotypically called a “splinter skill”. Now don’t get me started on the ableism of the term “splinter skill” when applied to people with lower measured IQs, but calendar calculation alone definitely doesn’t make someone, anyone, a genius.

And just so you know, it’s incredibly counterproductive to praise a person for who they are rather than what they do. It is usually better to praise someone for their achievements by naming those achievements as well done rather than praising the person themself. Moreover, any excessive praise, even if you say “you did an awesome job calendar calculating”, can be taken the wrong way.

Besides, many people feel they are praised for something that doesn’t reflect their personal values. For example, when I am praised for completing a personal care task, all I see is pressure to be able to do it independently the next time too. When, however, I am praised for creating something nice out of polymer clay, for my writing or the like, I feel like I’m valued for my contribution to the world.

There is, or so I’ve read, some school of thought that says any praise, whether person-centered or accomplishment-based, should be avoided by parents or carers. This doesn’t mean parents or carers should completely ignore their child’s achievements. Rather, simply pointing them out and engaging with the child about their achievements, will, according to these people, help the child develop a healthy sense of self. Honestly, I am inclined to agree with this.

The Wednesday HodgePodge (October 4, 2023)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. It’s been a few weeks since I participated, so I’m joining in with the Wednesday HodgePodge once again. Here goes.

1. What’s something that scares you?
Too many things to mention, although I’m not one to have many classic phobias. My main one is toxiphobia, a fear of poisons.

2. Do you care where the food you eat comes from? To what degree?
Not really, honestly. Not that I get a say in where my care home food comes from in terms of the supermarket they order from – it’s some type of countrywide supplier specifically for care agencies. However, it’s not like I’d care much even if I did have a say. I do care about having a say in the specific foods I get to eat, which thankfully I have. When it comes to organic or not and the country my food originally comes from, I honestly am too lazy and stingy to care even when I go to the brick-and-mortar supermarket in the next town.

3. What’s something you wish you’d spent more time doing when you were younger?
Be creative. I did love writing as a child and spent a good amount of time on that, but I definitely wish I’d spent more time on other creative outlets.

4. Let’s play autumn this or that….pumpkin spice or apple cider? Corn maze or haunted house? Horror film or Hallmark movie? Blanket or sweatshirt? Watch football or watch the World Series? Foliage-red, yellow or orange?
Pumpkin spice for sure. Corn maze, though I don’t care for it either (but I hate haunted houses). Neither on the movies, but a Hallmark one if I have to choose, since the reason I hate haunted houses is because I startle extremely easily and also I don’t want nightmares. Is the blanket supposed to go onto me in the same way as a sweatshirt? Then I’ll choose a sweatshirt because it’s easier to keep in place while I type. Neither on the sports thing. That is, I’ve never heard of the World Series but assume it’s sports-related too and I never watch sports. All three colors are beautiful.

5. This time last year where were you and what were you doing?
Such an intriguing question especially today. October 4, 2022 was my last full day in the care facility in Raalte. Most of my furniture was being moved to the intensive support home (my now old care home) that day, as Raalte’s transportation person was off on Wednesdays (something thankfully my staff did realize beforehand, unlike with the recent move). Can you imagine I lived in three different care homes over the past year?

6. Insert your own random thought here.
October 4, 2023. I’ve been living in my current care home for just over two weeks and am beginning to consciously or unconsciously erase my connection to the intensive support home. Honestly, I feel awful when a temp worker tells me he knows me from there. That being said, it’s not just because it could hardly get worse than there, that my current home feels like a better fit.

Memories of My Paternal Grandfather

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today is National Grandparents’ Day in the United States. I heard of this a few days ago when looking for inspiration for my blog, but didn’t feel like writing about the topic at the time. Now, the subject returns in Marsha’s 10 on the 10th post. This is a meme in which Marsha asks ten questions related to a particular topic of the month. Rather than answer all ten, I’m going with one of them, which is to share a favorite memory involving your grandparent(s).

I have shared about my paternal grandmother a lot of times already. She was certainly my favorite grandparent. Today though, I’m going to share about my paternal grandfather.

My paternal grandparents divorced in 1973, years before I was born. They didn’t have much contact since, as all of their children were adults by that time. In fact, I can’t remember a birthday or holiday when they visited my family on the same day.

My paternal grandfather was a radio technician during his working life. He knew a lot about all sorts of science and tech things. Indeed, my parents tell me I acquired my first spoken word from him. As the story goes, my father and grandfather were discussing aviation and, at one point, either of them mentioned the word “aircraft industry”. I, then ten-months-old (seven months corrected for prematurity), parroted: “Aircraft industry.” This, my parents see as a sign of my being a genius. Most of my psychologists in my adult life have seen it as one of the early signs of autism.

My paternal grandfather was probably on the spectrum himself too (as is my father, though he doesn’t care about diagnoses). We had these traditions built into his visits with us. One of them was him always giving my sister and me ƒ5 each. At one point, when my father had probably decided we were too old for this, our grandfather put the coins in a very hard to open money-box with transparant sides, so that we could see our money but not reach it. I am pretty sure I had a tantrum over it.

My grandpa had a small motorized boat. Well, large enough to sleep in. My sister once went on a week-long sleepover on the boat with him. Mid-way through it, my parents and I visited them and we sailed IJsselmeer a bit. I was both scared and excited, as we could leave the boat when it was anchored and have a swim around.

I went to grammar school, the type of high-level high school I attended, in 1999. My grandfather had attended grammar school back in the 1930s, so he gave me some kind of a button with “grammar school 1” written on it.

By that time, age 75, my grandfather started thinking he was suffering from dementia. My father brushed it off, saying he probably thinks he has dementia when he doesn’t remember the most difficult of the Latin words he learned in grammar school. As it turned out, my grandpa was right after all, as he was diagnosed with pretty advanced dementia in late 2001, age 77. At this point, he needed to be placed in a nursing home. He died not even eighteen months later. Now that I know more about dementia, I know that the stage of not recognizing people and having no short-term memory whatsoever, is by far not the first stage of dementia. I realize now too that my paternal grandmother probably suffered from mid-stage dementia too, but died of another cause before entering the phase at which point my grandfather was diagnosed. It is truly tragic that my grandfather wasn’t taken seriously.

Creating Glimmers

Posted on by Astrid

Today’s prompt for Friday Writings is “Glimmers”. A glimmer is the exact opposite of a trigger, something that brings you a sense of safety or joy.

Let me say that I often struggle with the fear of experiencing positive emotions, so even glimmers could be triggers in a way. I have yet to figure out why this is and what to do about it.

That is, one thing I do about it is to create positive experiences for my inner child parts that aren’t connected to the past. An example of this would be reading stories about unicorns. I don’t think my mother ever read me stories about unicorns as a young child, so unicorns bring out the playful inner child in me without the memories of my childhood attached. I can probably safely say that unicorns are a glimmer for me.

Another glimmer are my stuffed animals, but I honestly think the same applies that is the reason I love unicorns: they can’t be connected to my childhood. I currently have five stuffed animals on my bed, but the oldest one I’ve had for about four years.

I wonder why this is, honestly, given that my childhood, though not stellar, wasn’t horrifying either. Ah, who cares as long as I have my unicorn stories, unicorn polymer clay cutters, stuffed anymals, including several unicorns, etc.? Let me just live love laugh in unicorn land. If only it were this easy…

The Wednesday HodgePodge (June 28, 2023)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I haven’t touched the blog in a few days once again. It’s for partly different reasons than last week this time though. The different reasons include the hustle and bustle of my birthday. It’s over though so today I’m back joining the Wednesday HodgePodge. Here goes.

1. What’s one thing you’re excited about in the coming month?
The last bit of my birthday celebrations when my mother-in-law visits me next week. We couldn’t visit my in-laws on Sunday. That is, technically we could, but since my mother-in-law was on call for the animal rescue service she volunteers for, it would have been quite boring for me.

2. What was your life like when you were ten years old?
It was a very difficult year. I turned ten on June 27, 1996. The day before my tenth birthday, I had my first out of what turned out to be only four sessions with a play therapist/educational psychologist. Given what I remember of those sessions, I wonder whether the therapist saw signs of autism back then. Either way, I’m pretty sure my parents decided after those four sessions that it was useless to continue. Fast forward to the end of my year of being ten, June of 1997, I had a psychological evaluation supervised by the same ed psych. This, and the recommendations that came out of it, led to my parents finally falling out with the school. Oh, how I wish I hadn’t been loyal to my parents back then…

3. What’s something from your childhood you still enjoy today?
Being creative, although not in the same ways. That is, I did love playing with play-doh (which one might say is somewhat related to polymer clay, even though real polymer clay artists will punch me in the stomach for saying it) as a young child. I loved drawing more though, something I obviously am no longer capable of. One thing I want to say though is that, even though I’m now totally blind, I still appreciate colors.

4. What state (that you haven’t been to) do you most want to visit? Tell us why.
I haven’t been to any U.S. states and honestly have no interest in visiting them anymore either. As for a country I’d like to visit that I haven’t been to: Sweden.

5. Do you like to drive? Tell us how you learned to drive.
Uhm, N/A. I don’t drive, as I’m blind. That being said, I doubt I could’ve learned had I not been blind, because my processing is about as screwed as can be.

6. Insert your own random thought here.
Today, I created a polymer clay flower pendant in just half an hour. I loved the entire process and it turned out quite good. In fact, the only thing I dislike about it is the fact that the eyepin’s direction is off.

I really need to be showing more of my creations on here, I think, as social media hardly work for me. I mean, I do try to use Instagram, although I wish it were more of a microblogging service with the pictures being optional. Then again, that’s what Twitter is supposed to be, but then again I despise Elon Musk. Oh well, the perfect social media platform doesn’t exist.

The Wednesday HodgePodge (March 22, 2023)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m joining in with the Wednesday HodgePodge once again. Here goes.

1. Did you celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in some way? If so tell us how. Are you a fan of corned beef? Cabbage? The color green?
No, I didn’t celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. I am not a big fan of cabbage or corned beef, but it’s not like I hate them either. I do love the color green.

2. March 22nd is National Goof Off Day…will you celebrate? Your favorite way to goof off? Last time you had a whole day to spend “goofing off”?
I don’t work and can officially choose my own activities within my day schedule, although a lot of staff will suggest them for me. In this sense, I can “goof off” as much as I like, although it doesn’t often feel like it. My favorite ways to “goof off” would be reading, watching YouTube videos and chilling out with an essential oil diffuser on. By the way, crafting is also a favorite way to spend my time, but since I need support with that, I often don’t feel as playful about it as the expression “goofing off” reminds me of.

3. Something on your to-do list that has been there more than a month? Will this be the month you finally cross it off?
I don’t have a to-do list, honestly.

4. In your opinion, what emotion is the most beneficial? Which one is the least useful?
The most beneficial emotion, to me, is joy. Okay, yes, I copied that from Joyce but I completely agree. I had it as my word of the year last year. The least useful emotion, to me, is bitterness.

5. What was your favorite thing to do as a kid? Elaborate.
Many different things. I enjoyed playing with PlayMobil® until I was at least thirteen. I also loved sitting on the swings in my garden. However, I was also quite nerdy, enjoying geography and drawing maps by hand (obviously not detailed at all due to my severe visual impairment and my poor spatial awareness). My favorite map to draw was that of Italy.

6. Insert your own random thought here.
Just a thought: for those of you who don’t need care, can you imagine what it’d feel like if, each day, five or so different support people, often random strangers, showed up in your home claiming to want to do an activity with you? How about if they felt entitled to ask you personal questions to “get to know you” without disclosing much about themselves (after all, they’re “professionals”). What if, after six months, you’d seen literally over a hundred of them, if not several hundreds? How would it make you feel? I just asked a staff, who is a temp worker here but has supported me about ten times now so I’m supposed to “know” him, this question, after I got very irritated with another temp worker (who’s supported me about five times). The more familiar temp worker seriously replied that he wouldn’t mind who got into his home as long as they’d do the activity with him. I guess this means needing care is too far out of his realm of experience to understand the question.