Blindness Doesn’t Bind Me

Posted on by Astrid

I am blind. This is, in a sense, an advantage. Not because it means I’m more capable in some way than sighted people. Of course, I could be more capable than some sighted people in some ways, but that’s not due to my blindness.

I say my blindness is an advantage in that it allows me an easy explanation for my challenges when I don’t want to elaborate. Other blind people – those in the “competent blind adult” community – may think I’m setting a bad example. Honestly though, I don’t care.

I know blindness shouldn’t bind me. It shouldn’t keep me from achieving my goals. But neither should autism. Or mild cerebral palsy. Or any of my other disabilities alone.

But I don’t want to have to pull my every disability apart to see how it does or does not – or should or should not – limit me. I am not blindness, autism, cerebral palsy or whatnot. And yes, I know I’m more dependent than other people with my diagnoses. But I am not my diagnoses. I am myself and I lead a meaningful life as much as I can. And that includes not letting other people define what that is.

Written for Three Things Challenge #MM75. I didn’t know how to fit in the word “abound” and actually had to look up its definition to be sure I would, if using it, use it correctly.

Spoon Theory

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone! I’m back after more than a week of not touching the blog. I feel horrible for having neglected something I really love over the past few years, ie. my blog. However, I just don’t seem to have the spoons for it.

Spoons? This week’s prompt for #SoCS is “spoonful”. I immediately thought of spoon theory.

Spoon theory is a way of describing life with a chronic illness or disability that limits someone’s energy levels when compared to non-disabled people’s energy levels. I haven’t delved deep into it, but the way I understand it, each person has a set number of “spoons” or spoonfuls of energy. However, for a disabled or chronically ill person, daily activities take up more spoons than they would for someone who is currently healthy and non-disabled.

I was thinking of this when, after a dispute with one of my staff over temp workers, I wanted a way to explain how hard it is for me to deal with a temp worker, especially when they haven’t been told what to do with/for me, because “she can explain everything really well”.

For example, let’s say we each have ten spoonfuls of energy a day. The actual number doesn’t matter, but the point is it’s the same for someone who isn’t disabled, like the staff, as it is for me. For a non-disabled staff, their first spoonful of energy of the day might go to showering. For me, it goes to processing the staff’s greeting in the morning and figuring out who is going to help me with my morning routine. Then, if it’s a temp worker, the next spoon goes to introducing myself and figuring out whether I “know” them already (as some of them claim I should “know” them when they’ve been my staff just once many months ago). Then, another spoon goes to thinking of whether it’s a day I’m supposed to take a shower (which I hate, so doing it everyday to skip this step isn’t really an option) or just do a quick wash. Showering costs me at least two additional spoons, often more. Then it’s not even half an hour into my morning routine and I’ve already spent half my spoons for the day. I accept this reality, but additional spoons go into explaining my routine to temp workers even though a lot of it is in my day schedule. When a temp worker (or even a regular staff who rarely works mornings) helps me with my morning routine, this usually means I’m overloaded by the time I’ve finished breakfast.

And just so you know, getting up on my own and doing my entire morning routine independently, would mean I’d spent all of my spoons by the time I had gotten dressed or even earlier. I tried this when at the intensive support home, where the reasoning was that if you can do something physically, it doesn’t matter how much energy it costs. I was then told I was being “negative” for going into bed right after my shower.

For your information, spoon shortage does not just result in physical exhaustion. For me, it often results in mental overload, which I may show as a meltdown. Then people reason that melting down costs energy too so why am I “choosing” to spend my spoons on that? The thing is, meltdowns aren’t a choice.

I honestly feel that staff in general, not just the staff who refuses to support me after said dispute, need to be more aware of spoon theory. Then they’d understand better why I can walk for 45 minutes but not do my personal care completely independently. Hint: walking is just one action for me (putting one foot in front of the other). Oh, that’s two because I have two feet. However, my point is that walking isn’t nearly as complex a task as personal care is.

That being said, I feel that spoon theory would not just help me, but the other clients too. There’s a client here who “takes advantage” of the others by not doing any chores, according to the same staff who tells me I can explain everything perfectly fine so the temp worker doesn’t need introducing. She’s all for fairness and equality and everyone being the same. Newsflash: we aren’t. And who knows how much energy goes into this client’s everyday activities?

Okay, this post goes into the “Awareness” category because it’s not really a ramble. Well, it is, but it is also a post to raise awareness. I haven’t added the “#SoCS” ending to my post title because, well, not sure why but it didn’t feel appropriate. I hope that’s okay.

Abandonment Wounds: What Will Happen If I Can No Longer Mask?

Posted on by Astrid

I’ve been struggling with attachment issues a lot lately. Not related to a specific person this time. I mean, yes, like I said on Wednesday, four of my “favorites” among the staff are either on leave or will be leaving (be it temporarily or permanetly) soon. That’s not the problem, since I’ve learned the hard way to expand my list of “favorites” when necessary. It’s in my best interest too to avoid a situation like the one with my assigned staff in Raalte, who was leaving and left me with just two other trusted staff.

The issue I’ve been dealing with lately, is much more existential: the knowledge that, if I’m truly myself, I’m unacceptable. Not because I’m some kind of criminal. I’m not. Rather, I’m an outcast. And while I won’t be in the prison system for that, being shoved around care home after care home while not having family to advocate for me, will be equally horrid.

I have been struggling with memories of the circumstances surrounding that assigned staff leaving. A few months before she left, I sent her a rather dramatic E-mail about how no-one will be in my life forever. Well, my spouse says we’ll always be in each other’s life, but truthfully we can’t know that. Besides, when we lived together, there were just a little too many situations in which my spouse (understandably) was disappointed in me that are however things I couldn’t help. For clarity’s sake: I don’t blame my spouse, but maybe with my being multiply-disabled, I’m not suited for “traditional” long-term relationships. Ha, now I’m reminded that my spouse often reminds me that I said when we were choosing to be a couple, that I didn’t want a traditional relationship.

Of course, the reason I’m undesirable by society’s standards isn’t my fault. Like, I can’t help being disabled. But just because it isn’t something I choose, doesn’t make it any less real or hurtful. In fact, it hurts more because I can’t choose not to be me.

I mean, I’ve masked more or less successfully for many years. Mostly less successfully, but my parents prevented me from landing in the care system at a much earlier age than I did by claiming the police and other people who thought I was disturbed, were just stupid. They were masters at manipulating the system. I am not.

Back to my assigned staff in Raalte. She was the first to take my wish to leave seriously. I assume she genuinely felt that the intensive support home could better serve me than the care facility, but I also assume she had a team and a manager to deal with and it remains a fact that some of her coworkers couldn’t cope with my behavior. Which was, for the record, much less challenging than it is now.

It genuinely scares me to think of what will happen if (when?) I can no longer mask at all. There was this news feature sometime in 1997 or 1998 about a girl, aged about sixteen, who was too intelligent for intellectual disability services but who still couldn’t cope in adolescent mental health services and was, as a result, restrained long-term. After her family sought media attention, she was transferred to a treatment center for youth with mild intellectual disability and severe challenging behavior. I don’t know what became of her.

Last week, when I had several severe outbursts related to my most recent frustration, I begged my support coordinator to ask the behavior specialist to involve the Center for Consultation and Expertise (CCE) again. I really want to get the ball rolling on getting them involved before it’s too late and I’m being kicked out again, like the last time they were involved in 2018. In this sense, a consultation might help more this time, because at this point, as far as I know, staff aren’t yet so much at their wit’s end that they see the situation as unresolvable. But I’m scared of what will happen if they do get to this point, like apparently some staff in Raalte were.

Disability: Describing My Impairments #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I know for sure I did a post describing my limitations on my now defunct blog, but don’t think I ever did one on here. Besides, even if I did, I learn something new about myself, including my disabilities, all the time. For my letter D post in the #AtoZChallenge, I thought I’d describe my disabling conditions in lay terms. Oh wait, the lay terminology is going to be really tough.

First, I am blind. I have what is called light perception, which means that I am able to see whether it is dark or light around me, but not what direction the source of light is coming from (that ability would be called light projection). Functionally speaking, even though I can still tell day and night-time apart and this is what sets the totally blind apart from those with any vision in medical terminology here in the Netherlands, I consider myself totally blind.

Next, I (most likely) have mild cerebral palsy (CP). I say “most likely” because my parents didn’t tell me whether I had any diagnosable condition that would explain my mobility impairment and I stopped seeing a physiatrist (physical disability doctor) when I was around nine. In any case, I walk with a drop foot on my left side that gets worse when I get tired. Though I can, with difficulty, walk a distance of about 5km at a time when I’m very energized that day, I do fall more easily than non-disabled people. I didn’t realize this until, several years ago, I read on a CP-related blog about fall risk assessments containing a question about whether you’ve fallen for any reason in the past year. Well, the blogger said hardly a week goes by that they don’t fall. That isn’t exactly true for me, since I hold onto someone’s arm or hand when walking, but I do fall at least once a month.

CP (or whatever it is) also means my fine motor skills aren’t great. I used to get physical therapy for this. I did exercises like touching my thumbs to each of the other fingers. I can now do that easily with my right hand and with some difficulty with my left. I cannot use a knife and f ork to eat with and, even with my specially adapted spoon, often make a bit of a mess. I can type and do so with both hands, but I much prefer to use my right hand and, even though I was taught the ten-finger touch typing, I don’t do it fully correctly. As long as it works, though…

Since CP is caused by brain damage, in my case a brain bleed sustained shortly after birth, it can also come with other difficulties, such as processing issues and lower energy levels. This can also be part of autism, which I was diagnosed with at age 20, of course.

Autism, of course, has its core symptoms of differences in social communication and repetitive behaviors and interests. Because I can hold down a reasonably normal-sounding one-on-one conversation about myself, as clinical assessments often are, I am diagnosed as “mild” or level 1. I am not “mild” by any means, truthfully.

I am tired. I was writing an entire rant on why I am nnot “mildly” autistic, but I was using all kinds of technical terms and I promised you a lay explanation. I don’t think this post makes much sense, but oh well.

A Courageous Choice

Posted on by Astrid

I was a shy, withdrawn teen who was loyal to my parents even though they didn’t have my best interest in mind. I mean, if they’d had their way, I’d have gone to university and lived on my own straight out of high school in 2005, even though I could barely take care of myself. That had been their attitude towards raising “responsible” children ever since I was a little girl: if I couldn’t – or in their opinion was too strong-willed to – learn a skill as a child, I’d learn it as an adult by myself. Or not. In any case, there was no safety net.

Though I do indeed feel that children benefit from learning by doing themselves, this was not how it worked in my family. I don’t blame my parents for not having the patience to teach me self-care skills, given that I got frustrated very easily, but I do hold them responsible for not having accepted the help they could have gotten. Though it might not have led to me becoming as independent as they’d want me to be, my current situation is about as far from that goal as can be. Then again, my parents hold me responsible for that. And I, in a sense, do too.

I was reminded of this situation when I read a journaling prompt that asked me to reflect on a courageous choice I made as a teen that’s still helping me today. I immediately thought of the choice to go into blindness training rather than straight to university once I’d graduated high school. Though this decision itself did not by far lead to the self-awareness I needed to try to get into long-term care, it was my first step into the care system. And, of course, as my parents predicted, I never fully got out.

Back in June of 2005, when I accepted the blindness training center psychologist’s offer to put me on the waiting list for the basic training program, I still had my head deep in the sand about my lack of independence skills. The psychologist did not. He suggested I go to a training home after finishing the program. He probably knew that, like many young people blind from birth, and especially those from families like mine who value academics over life skills, I wouldn’t be ready to move into independent living after a four-month, basic program. I wasn’t. I never would be. Till this day, I’m not sure whether this is my blindness or my autism or my mild cerebral palsy or what. I believe strongly that, with multiple disabilities, the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Thankfully, the authorities approving my long-term care funding, eventually agreed.

Making Up My Mind: Why I Want to Live in an Institution

Posted on by Astrid

Last week, the behavior specialist for my care home came by for a visit to discuss my housing profile. This is the thing with my wants and needs with respect to a new prospective care home on it. I initially wasn’t too picky, saying for example that I would most like to live on institution grounds but if that isn’t possible, a quiet neighborhood home would do too. Then when I talked to my husband, he said that an integrated neighborhood doesn’t get much quieter than my current neighborhood in Raalte. He also told me I don’t need to make compromises about where I want to live as of yet, since I will be looking to stay in my prospective new home for the rest of my life.

The reason I initially compromised about living on institution grounds, is that my current care agency has only one such institution and that one at least wasn’t admitting new clients back in 2019. I’m not sure about right now or whether not admitting new clients means they aren’t keeping a wait list either. However, I was wary of contacting other agencies due to the bureaucracies involved. Then my husband said though that this shouldn’t be something for me to worry about.

Eventually, after talking about it with my assigned home staff, my husband and my mother-in-law, I decided to make up my mind about my wishes for the housing profile. I said I’d really like to be looking at institutions.

This does mean I had to drop my objection against contacting external agencies. I offered two agencies we could contact other than my current one. One has an institution in Apeldoorn, the city I grew up in, and another in a small town elsewhere in Gelderland, about a 45-minute drive from Lobith, where my husband lives. For reference: Raalte is about a 75-minute drive from Lobith and I did agree with my husband that I won’t be looking at care homes that are farther away. The other agency has an institution near Apeldoorn and one near Nijmegen. I’m not sure the one near Nijmegen was acceptable distance-wise to my husband, but the one near Apeldoorn certainly was.

Both agencies are unlikely to refuse to consider me based on my IQ alone, even though both primarily serve people with intellectual disability. The reason I think so is that both also serve other populations and I have some experience with both agencies.

I do feel all kinds of feelings about the fact that I’ve made up my mind. For one thing, I do feel some form of shame about wishing to live on institution grounds. Back in 2006 and 2007, I wrote agitated articles about the fact that deinstitutionalization was said not to be working by some non-disabled advocates for the disabled, claiming it was poor care, not community living, that was at fault. I meant, for example, the fact that people in the community need more support to go outside if, for example, they aren’t safe in traffic, than they would need in institutions. Then, if that support isn’t provided, it’s no wonder they’d rather go back to living in the woods.

Now one of the reasons I want to go into an institution is the fact that I don’t feel safe leaving my home and the only way of preventing me from leaving it anyway is locking me up. Now tell me again you want the least restrictive environment.

Another feeling has to do with the institution in Apeldoorn specifically. My family home was quite close by that institution. So close in fact that I remember one day when I was eighteen, having an encounter with the police and being asked whether I’d run away from there. I know my parents would feel intense shame if I moved there. Then again, they probably feel intense shame at the fact that I live with people with intellectual disabilities already. Besides, who cares what my parents think?

I do have a few things I need to consider when looking at external agencies. For example, my current agency provides free, pretty much unrestricted WiFi in all rooms of all its homes and it’s available to clients if they wish to use it, which I do. I am not sure the other agencies do, but I will inquire about this when the need arises.

Early Experiences With Medical and Dental Care

Posted on by Astrid

Today’s topic for Throwback Thursday is doctors’ or dental visits. I have many early memories of medical care, probably because I, being multiply-disabled, often had to visit the doctor. Until I was about nine, that is, when my parents, my sister and I moved across the country and my parents stopped taking me to doctors altogether except when I had everyday ailments.

An interesting question Lauren asks in her original post, is whether your parents were scared of doctors or dentists. Well, truthfully, yes, mine are. My mother had her own fair share of traumatic experiences involving doctors, among which a situation that would’ve been considered medical malpractice had it been in the U.S. surrounding my premature birth. My father, I don’t know. He probably feels he’s smarter than most doctors and hence considers spending time with them a waste of his own time.

All that being said, up till the age of about nine, I was taken for medical care when I needed it. I don’t think I was really taken for health checks except those part of preemie follow-up. I don’t remember most of these visits, except the ones to the eye doctor. My eye doctor was always, and I mean literally always running at least two hours behind schedule. Waiting in the waiting room for her was the worst. Well, no, the second worst: the absolute worst was waiting for her to come back after she’d put dilation drops into my eyes.

I don’t think I was very afraid of needles as a child. In fact, when I needed to be put under general anesthesia for my various surgeries, as soon as my parents allowed me to make the decision myself between the anesthetic mask and the injection, I always chose the injection. I remember being horribly afraid that I would get the mask when I had to have cataract surgery in 2013, even though I’m not even sure they do this on adults.

One thing I did always remember was that the hospital staff would stick me in my toes rather than my fingers for finger pricks, because the nerves in my fingers should not be damaged because of the fact that I read Braille. I had to have a finger prick last year and told the medical assistant that she was supposed to stick the needle in my toe. She explained that she couldn’t, so I reluctantly agreed to have her stick the needle into the side of a finger I hardly use for reading.

As for dental care, I think I did have proper dental check-ups when I was young. I didn’t have problems with my teeth until I was about eleven and fell and a bit of one of my front teeth broke off. That was the first time I started worrying about my teeth. I did need braces, which was quite an ordeal as the orthodontist never explained properly what I could and couldn’t eat, so there were always parts of my braces getting loose.

I am not very scared of doctors. Dentists though, well, it’s complicated. I am scared of dentists, but also scared of losing my teeth. This has led to some rather odd situations in which I sought out dental care that I might not have needed and didn’t seek out dental care that I did need. Thankfully, now that I live in long-term care, I do get regular dental check-ups and the staff and dentist do try their best to make me feel as comfortable as possible.

A Sunday With the Theme of Self-Esteem

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all. The past 24 hours have truly been a mixed bag of emotions. I started obsessing over wanting to start another new craft. Yes, another! Somehow, I decided on macrame and got all obsessed about learning its techniques before even having any cords. Then I decided to ask in a Facebook group whether you need to be coordinated in both hands in order to be able to do macrame. The first commenter basically said not only that, but you also most likely won’t be able to feel your way around the knots.

This was late last night, past midnight actually. I went to bed feeling awful about myself. After all, the reason I wanted a new craft is not that there’s nothing more to learn about polymer clay, but that I’m somehow convinced that I’ve reached my full potential.

By morning, I found that other people had been more encouraging of me trying macrame or even card making. You know, remember I’d said I tried that back in 2013? These people said so what if my work doesn’t look good, if I enjoyed the craft. That’s not entirely my kind of attitude, since I do want to be able to share what I make here or on my personal Facebook page at least without feeling like I have to be ashamed of myself.

I have been trying to work on some polymer clay projects in progress again later today by sanding some beads and charms. It felt kind of okay. I also watched some more YouTube videos on polymer clay, but they made me feel like I’ll be taking forever to understand the concepts. Then again, this is even more the case if I start another craft entirely. Guess I’ll just stick with polymer clay and try to be more patient with myself.

As a side note, one person did say that, if I can tie my shoelaces, I can do macrame. That kind of discouraged me at first, since I can’t tie my shoes. Make that couldn’t. At least, after three tries, I was successful at tying my shoelaces while my shoes were in front of me on the table. Then I tried several more times, more or less successfully. I don’t think I want to really be able to tie my own shoes, but it was an interesting boost to my self-confidence.

This Is “Profound Autism”?: Reframing the Discussion Around Complex Care Needs

Posted on by Astrid

A few days ago, there was a discussion on the Autism Science Foundation’s Facebook page in which parents of autistic adults with complex care needs were describing their children with the hasthag #ThisIsProfoundAutism. I asked to reframe the discussion to include people with multiple disabilities including autism in general, because it is rarely (but not never!) autism, no matter how severe, alone that causes a person to be completely dependent on caretakers. I then explained that due to the combination of my disabilities, I need 24-hour care, including one-on-one for most of the day.

Not surprisingly, I was quickly met with the question whether I was saying I needed 24-hour help with basic tasks such as eating, bathing, dressing myself, etc. Well, the Autism Science Foundation page is a public Facebook page and I didn’t want the people on my friends list (including immediate family) who don’t know this, to judge me for it, but the short answer is yes. While I, like presumably most “profoundly autistic” people who don’t have physical disabilities, am physically capable of eating and dressing myself for the most part with some difficulty, my executive dysfunction means I still need help with them. As for bathing, well, I basically need someone to wash me, because, while I can physically hold a washcloth in my hand, I don’t have the organizational skills to actually work out the ritual without a ton of supervision and even then it’d lead to a lot of meltdowns.

I did, incidentally, point out that I recognize intellectual disability as a valid additional disability that needs to be taken into account when I asked to reframe the discussion. After all, that’s most likely what’s causing these autistic adults to be unable to understand instruction and to be completely dependent. For me, it’s a combination of executive dysfunction, which is a direct autism symptom, blindness, mild cerebral palsy, and other things.

I also do recognize that the need for support with severe challenging behavior is not the same as the need for help with basic personal care. One does not exclude or necessarily include the other and one is not more valid than the other. I, for one, am somewhat more independent in terms of eating, dressing and bathing than my severely intellectually disabled fellow clients. I am a lot more dependent where it comes to the effects of my challenging behavior.

I also do not mean to say that autism on its own cannot possibly cause a person to need a lot of care. It can. I am reminded of a girl I read about on Dutch social media many years ago, who indeed had hardly any functional communication skills but did have an IQ above 85. She, unlike me, didn’t have any additional disabilities. She was completely left behind in the care system: she was too severely disabled for traditional child and adolescent mental health services, but her IQ was too high for intellectual disability services. Really, I should not have called for reframing the discussion to include those with multiple disabilities, but those with complex care needs in general.

That being said, I strongly disagree with those people who say that just because I can write, means I should have ignored the conversation, since it clearly wasn’t meant for me. The fact that I can write, does not make me not dependent on care providers and does not mean policy or lack thereof won’t affect me. I am autistic and that, along with my blindness and other disabilities, causes me to need the extensive care I get now.

Life Skills I Struggle With As a Multiply-Disabled Person

Posted on by Astrid

Earlier today, Ann Hickman wrote an interesting list of ten life skills she is teaching her autistic teenager. As a teen, I missed out on most of these lessons she mentioned, leading to a big gap in my skills as well as my awareness of them.

Of course, lack of education isn’t the only reason autistics and otherwise disabled people may struggle with life skills. I struggle with many of them due to lack of energy, executive functioning issues and other things.

Today, I am sharing life skills I struggle with and why.

1. Personal hygiene. I remember vividly my sister gave me a deodorant for my fourteenth birthday as a hint. I didn’t get it. I wasn’t taught about hygiene much beyond childhood, but even if I were, I didn’t grasp the concept.

Similarly, because we had a bath at my parents’ house, I didn’t learn to properly shower. I didn’t know until a few years back that you’re supposed to use body wash when showering each time.

Other personal care tasks, I simply cannot do due to my physical limitations. I cannot clip my nails, for instance. I know some other blind people (presumably without physical disabilities) can, but other blind people I know go to the pedicurist for this.

2. Meal preparation. While in the training home, I tried for weeks to learn to put peanut butter or jelly on my bread without success. My mother can’t do it blindfolded either. My father can, but he assembles all his supplies around him in a very structured manner.

To be honest, I never had to prepare my breakfast or lunch before going into the training home, as we didn’t eat breakfast at my parents’ home and my lunch was always packaged by my mother (or I’d eat a sausage roll at the cafeteria).

There are probably ways I could prepare my own meals if I really need to. I mean, when living on my own, I just ate plain bread without toppings. However, I prefer my staff prepare it for me.

3. Cleaning. This is a difficult task for most blind people, but it can be done. I can dust my desk and table with minimal help if I’m reminded to do so. However, I can’t vacuum or mop the floors. I learned both, but with each house having a different way it’s set up, it’s very hard to find my way around it with a mop or vacuum cleaner.

What I struggle with most with respect to cleaning, is remembering how often each task needs to be done and actually organizing them. For example, in the training home, I’d clean the top of the doors each week despite no-one ever touching them. On the other hand, I’d procrastinate about changing my bed sheets, sometimes leaving them on for months.

4. Getting around. Ann mentions navigation for a reason: regardless of high-tech solutions to help people navigate, they still need to learn to use maps or to use public transportation. For me as a blind person, mobility was always more important, as it additionally involved safe white cane travel. I never mastered this, even with seven years of mobility training in special education and many more lessons once out of special ed. I only recently learned that more blind, neurodivergent people struggle with white cane usage.

Currently, I can for the most part move around inside the care home by myself, but I cannot at all get around outside without a sighted guide. My parents used to blame this on lack of motivation. While I am pretty sure this, as well as anxiety, does play a part, it is also about other things. Besides, lack of motivation is not the same as laziness. In my case, it feels as though the activity of independent travel overloads me cognitively to the point where I feel incapacitated.

I am assuming Ann’s son is “just” autistic, whereas I am multiply-disabled: autistic, blind and mildly physically impaired. However, with this article, I want to make it clear that there are many reasons a disabled teen or young adult might struggle with life skills and, for this reason, many different approaches to supporting them.

Keep Calm and Carry On Linking Sunday
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