There’s a photograph of me as a child that I often find myself peering at. I don't know how old I was but I must have been about 8 or 9, sitting on a chair on my knees in a blue and white gingham dress with our back garden behind me.

I love this photograph as it shows a different me. I’m not looking at the photo in terms of how young I looked, but it was the look of innocence in my eyes. I trusted back then.

My 'Spiritual Beliefs'

I didn't understand exactly how my spiritual beliefs worked, but those beliefs must have played their part for years, because I always believed others had the best of intentions and never stopped to question their motives.

People's intent

As I began to grow up, I began to understand more and began to believe less about people's good intentions. It was clear and obvious I had physical, mental and emotional problems. My school reports were telling a story for sure.

I had a leg shortening on my left side and my left leg was smaller and thinner than my right and my left foot wasn’t a normal shape. I didn't know about my arm or what the diagnosis was, let alone have the right diagnosis.

Living with injustice

There was injustice, but my main concern was also being isolated, not knowing what was wrong and having to struggle in my own little world.

Something inspirational:

"If your actions create a legacy that inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, then, you are an excellent leader."

DOLLY PARTON

Chocolate Brownies

'Moist and absolutely loaded with chocolate. Recipe adapted from King Arthur Flour'

Ingredients:

2/3 cup cocoa powder

1  cup sugar substitute such as fruit sugar

Pinch of salt

1 cup plain flour

1 teaspoon instant coffee powder optional

1 cup chocolate chips milk chocolate, semisweet or bittersweet (your choice)

3 large eggs

1/2 cup sustainable source of vegetable oil

2 tablespoons water

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Method:

Preheat oven to 350°F

Line a 9x9 square pan with foil or parchment paper, leaving a couple inches of overhang on two sides (this will allow you to lift the whole tray of brownies out of the pan for easy removal)

Grease the foil/parchment

Combine cocoa powder, sugar, salt, flour, coffee powder, and chocolate chips in a large bowl

Whisk until combined

Add eggs, oil, water and vanilla and stir with a rubber spatula until combined (it will be fairly thick)

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top Bake for 25-35 minutes (start checking at 25 minutes)

The brownies are done when a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out without raw batter on it

Be careful not to over bake

Remove from the oven and place on a cooling rack

Ethical principles are a philosophical stance which directly or indirectly leads to a standard based around ethics.

Ethics means ‘moral principles that govern a person or group’s behaviour’.

The four principles of ethics are:

Integrity

To behave in accordance with ethical principles, act in honesty, fairness and in good faith.

Impartiality and independence

To remain impartial and to conduct oneself in the interests of others and to ensure that any personal views and convictions do not compromise ethical principles, or official duties.

Accountability

To take responsibility for one’s decisions, actions and their consequences.

Respect

To continue to respect the diversity, equality, dignity, worth and privacy of all people. We should at all times promote a high level of professionalism towards decisions and actions to make sure these are upheld, through mandates and objectives.

For those who are in a place of power and have responsibility, it is even more important they remain impartial. Others are relying on them to get that right, whether it’s in politics, in business or through an institution.

For society and the world to live in sync and in harmony with each other, it is important we all live by the same rules.

Source: https://www.who.int

I have always known I emotionally shut down, but perhaps withdrawal feels more accurate. I withdraw when my sensory input becomes too much, where there is too much negativity, too many decisions to deal with and too little time to process it all. I've been doing it since I was a child.

Withdrawing with Autism

Having autism means it’s almost compulsory to feel the withdrawal creep up. My mind switches, grows quieter, I hear nothing. I disconnect from conversation when it becomes too hard to focus, formulate or listen to responses.

I am physically there but I’m not consciously co-operating. As I quietly detach from everything going on around me, I am calm. My environment could be chaos and I would remain calm. As a child, shutting down was my coping mechanism.

Even now when I know what is happening, there is little I can do about it to control it, or stop it. The environment I grew up in made shutting down easy. Shutting down is triggered by autism. I hate the idea that I may struggle to take control... the answers usually lie in what happens before a withdrawal trigger.

My struggles with change

Although it’s not easy for me to anticipate or deal with change, I am getting better at reading the signs. Change itself is difficult because there are so many elements that I have to deal with before I can handle anything new. I try to embrace the unfamiliar, it's fair to say the unfamiliar catches me out.

Environmental Sensory Overload

It's easy for environmental sensory overload to blow up into something bigger and those cause me to shut down. It is inevitable, but I must learn to compartmentalise my anxieties so that I can manage those.

Something inspirational:

“Change the changeable, accept the unchangeable, and remove yourself from the unacceptable.”

DENIS WAITLEY

I wanted to go into this in more detail. Climate Change is continually being talked about and is the biggest problem facing Governments around the world today that they must tackle. It is also the biggest threat to mankind and mustn't be taken lightly.

The world is warming caused by a build-up of carbon dioxide and other greenhouses in the atmosphere. The gases trap heat by forming a blanket around the Earth – like the glass of a greenhouse and as they build up, the planet’s temperature rises.

Greenhouse gases build up in the atmosphere mainly due to the burning of fossil fuels; coal, oil and gas and by cutting down forests. Greenhouse-gas levels have rocketed in the last 100 years.

The following are stark facts about climate change:

"Humans are warming the planet. It is now accepted that human activity has and continues to warm the earth and humans have been the dominant cause of global warming since industrialisation.

The pre-industrial concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 280 parts per million (ppm). As of April 2018, the concentration is 407 ppm. The amount of carbon dioxide is higher than at any time in the last 800,000 years.

The United States is the second largest contributor to CO2 in our atmosphere, although it is home to just 4.4 percent of the world’s population.

In 1910 Glacier National Park was home to more an estimated 150 glaciers. As of June 2017, that number is 26 and shrinking. This national park is expected to eventually lose all its glaciers.

Rain Forest Destruction

Rain forest destruction contributes to climate change, as trees store carbon dioxide as they grow and clearing and burning forests releases large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The world’s coral reefs are in the midst of a global mass die off. In the last 30 years, the world has lost half of its coral reefs.

Global Warming

Global warming is leading to more extreme weather. Warming has already increased the occurrence of some types of extreme weather events and further temperature increases will see the frequency of heavy rainfall events and very hot days increase, with the severity increasing in proportion to warming. There will be more droughts and floods.

Sea Levels are Rising

Sea levels are rising - they will continue to do so over coming decades and centuries as sea water expands as it gets warmer, as well as additions from glacier melt water and losses from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.

Addressing Carbon Pollution

Addressing carbon pollution brings significant additional benefits, such as reduced health impacts from air pollution, healthier lower meat diets, increased biodiversity from afforestation, and less water scarcity;

Business as usual will lead to 4 degrees of warming and extremely severe impacts - 4 degrees of warming would lead to very large releases of methane from melting permafrost, triggering still greater levels of warming, and the near-complete loss of the Greenland ice sheet.

Food Production

Food production will be harmed. Climate change is expected to reduce crop productivity by as much as 2 per cent per decade. The risks to food production are not spread evenly, with tropical countries at greatest risk.

Severe threats to wildlife - 20-30 per cent of the plant and animal species assessed are at increasing risk of extinction as global mean temperatures exceed a warming of 2-3 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

The poorest in the world will suffer the most - people who are socially, economically, culturally, politically, institutionally or otherwise marginalised are often highly vulnerable to climate change. Africa is particularly vulnerable, even with high levels of adaptation. It will eventually affect the rich also."

Conclusion

The facts on climate change make for morbid reading. Its facts won't change, we need to change our attitude to climate change.

Whilst we cannot reverse the damage already done through climate change, we can limit further damage. Again, Sir David Attenborough, a Broadcaster and Natural Historian, has been talking about climate change and its effects for over 20 years now, and still nothing is being done by Governments to address the issue.

We are already feeling the effects of climate change. Individually, there are things we can do to help combat climate change and need to. It's vital. Governments need to lead by example and work together to help but the brakes on climate change before it’s too late for us and our planet. We're killing our planet.

Sources: Greenpeace.org  NASA Earth Observatory  NASA Global Climate Change  National Geographic

Given the degree of hurt and unnecessary suffering, I have the same old thoughts whirring in my head, but it's not surprising, given my experiences. It's hard to let go of those thoughts.

My anger and irritations

I cannot believe the ignorance, my difficulties, my irritations, my anger we're ignored, growing up. I can’t believe that through the anger, I was still that pleasing child.

I continued to believe others had my back and didn’t stop to question my life. Them not wanting to know about my disability or for me to know, would always cause a ripple effect. I didn’t understand.

Continuing to believe

The hardest part was that whilst I continued to struggle with issues around the neurological difficulties I didn't know I had, I continued to believe. The frustrations around my physical difficulties although difficult, seemed to pale into insignificance over my mental difficulties.

How difficulties play out

To this day, I still have difficulties getting my head around how things played out. Then there are days when I can look at what I have achieved since my diagnosis ten years ago, and know that without these experiences, I wouldn't have achieved my accomplishments, and then I go back to that place again and fail to reconcile.

The trauma looks and smells familiar, but I still need to find a place for it. I still find myself asking the question, how do you really get over these experiences?

It is 56 years into a disability I didn’t know I had, and there are new things that I am needing to come to terms with. Even though I didn't know anything about an affected left arm until I got my cerebral palsy diagnosis, my left arm did seem weaker.

Although I always found it easier to open things with my left hand, than I did with my right, I now have difficulty using both. Where my right side would compensate for the left, there is now progression on both.

When my Consultant told me about cerebral palsy at the age of 46, he explained that as I age, my brain cells can too, and as a result, I may physically struggle more. It makes sense.

It is already happening, as I find it difficult to pick things up with my left hand. Trying to open things with my stronger hand, such as bottles, deodorant with twist lids and opening certain car door handles is difficult. When it comes to car doors, I sometimes have to use both hands.

If I pick supplements up with my left hand, I fail to grasp them and they inevitably end up on the floor. I still need to continue with supplements because they help with my general wellness and digestion. Certain foods continue to make me ill and taking supplements help.

I hate having had to bring the whole disability thing into focus on my own. It has still left me asking the question why others would choose to ignore a disability in this way. Not wanting to know isn't a good enough answer.

Something inspirational:

“Some beautiful paths can't be discovered without getting lost.”

EROL OZAN

We must all have a social responsibility. It is something we need to take control of and be responsible for.

Social responsibility is an ethical framework around an organisation or individual that has an obligation to act for the benefit of society as a whole. It is a duty we should be working towards, so that we balance and maintain the economy and the ecosystems.

Ethics and Social Responsibility

Social responsibility is built on a system of ethics where decisions and actions must be continually ethically validated. Where a decision or action causes harm to society or our environment then it is considered socially irresponsible.

We all have a responsibility

All individuals have a responsibility to act in a manner that is beneficial to society, each other and not solely to themselves.

Moral values that are inherent in us, will be inherent in society and it is those morals that can create a distinction between right and wrong. Where social fairness is believed by most of us to be right, more frequently than not, this fairness isn't applied.

Moral Values in our daily decisions

Moral values should be incorporated into our daily decisions and actions, particularly actions that go on to affect other people and the environment. Ethics and social responsibility must also apply in institutions and businesses, as well as through interactions with other individuals.

Overlooked ethical implications

The ethical implications of a decision or action in the political arena have most recently been overlooked for personal gain, and also where companies attempt to cheat environmental regulations.

I would have to question whether ignorance is bliss. I guess the answer is whether not knowing about something is something you can live with. I couldn't live with it.

My Diary was born and is the reason I know about my disability now, but in terms of ignorance is bliss, it didn't work for me, because not knowing about my disability and its many symptoms, meant I was angry instead.

On one side I was being protected, because I would have ended up in a special needs school, I would have had to wear calipers to help me walk, but on the flip side, not knowing meant I was continually being exposed to problems.

Ignorance isn’t bliss. For me, living in ignorance left me with anger issues. I was always being labelled and that label stuck, with everyone ignoring the fact that my anger had anything to do with my disability. That irked me out totally.

Being angry made things worse for me, because it was easy for others to make me the scapegoat, and that's literally how my life played out.

Receive regular updates

Enter your details below to be the first to receive updates on new articles on my blog.