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Lucy Baena

@lucybaenawrites

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Swimmer, Writer & Birthkeeper she/her
🏴‍☠️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇵🇸🇺🇦
Words on
🌊 Saltwater
🌱 Autistic burnout recovery
🧠 Disability
❤️ Birth & Mothering

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My substack page 'A Selkie's way to belong' is now live. My plan is to expand on what I share on instagram, to weave in all my seasonal watery wonderings that I’ve collated over the years and offer you autistic stories of life by the sea alongside weekly journaling and altar making prompts. I thought that as we are starting at the beginning I’d start by sharing the story of why I have called this space ‘A Selkie’s way to belong’ head over to have a read. Link in bio.
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Image id: beautiful artwork that hangs in my hallway by my dear friend and amazing artist @cassyoliphant check her out!

#autisticvoices #Autisticwomen #latediagnosedclub #seaswimmers #saltyseabirds #selkie by @lucybaenawrites

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2 years ago

EDIT: VIEWER: I MADE CAPTIONS WORK! 👍🏻An introductory first video 😅👍🏻 captions appeared beyond me. Next time 🩵 by @lucybaenawrites

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2 years ago

A bit exhausted by the world lately, especially the men, you know the ones... But then there's this. The wild wild sea and the wild things beside her. ✨🩵 by @lucybaenawrites

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5 days ago

Some more, possibly final reflections on driving. I was medically cleared to drive for the first time in my life almost three years ago. I never imagined I would be. It took me two years of lessons and practice to pass my test. I took my theory twice and the test four times. After I passed it felt like starting again, learning to be in a car by myself. I have now been driving for almost a year. It is the first totally new thing I have learnt since I understood that I am actually autistic.

The process has helped me make sense of my lifetime of educational challenges. Why I never quite got the grades I was predicted, why I crashed out of studying and jobs in a variety of colourful ways. How all those "failures" where actually undiagnosed, unsupported autistic burnouts. I needed more time. I can do anything, but I can't do everything. Especially not constantly. As well as learning when to drive I have also had to learn when not to. It has been very hard and involved many tears.

In the last couple of weeks only I have begun to feel that I can 'hop' in the car. I can 'nip' to the sea when the mood takes me, not when the buses are running. I can do mundane things like a spontaneous big shop and get the cheaper bulk bags without worrying if I can lug them on the bus. I can get my kids to the doctor and to that autumn farm trail. I can give friends lifts and leave when I want to, not when the bus comes. I can begin to imagine one day having my own van and heading off down the open road.

Do I like driving? No. But is it a life-changing privilege? yes!
I have never before been able to look at a clock and think "I've got 40minutes let's nip to the sea/shop/mates/appointment and back". I think it is one of the quietest achievements of my life. I am proud of how hard I have found it and how I have kept at it. Doing this later in life means that I will never take it forgranted.
Shared for those who have messaged me from similar places. If I can do it you can too!
Now to put the same commitment into building some muscles as sitting in a car does not a strong body make! by @lucybaenawrites

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6 days ago

When all feels most bleak and my heart shakes with fear of what might be, I collect pocketfulls of glimmers; sunrise glinting over the ocean, white water, glassy waves, conkers glowing on pavements, soft and warm in my palm, a feast of colour to delight my brain, my favourite waistcoat. Songs my Dad would play. Figs still rippening, making treats with honey from the hives nextdoor, living food from the hills I'm looking at, the last of our Colombian Cacao. Pocketfulls of joy. by @lucybaenawrites

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7 days ago

Finally autumn has arrived. Water crystal clear and warm. Grey above, green and brilliant blue below. Warmer in than out. As close to the divine as I can get. Swimming in the rain, seals diving, gulls calling, only a few souls left on the shore now. Candle light to welcome me home and the first after drop of the season. Magical, liminal spaces to help us through the days.

✨Songs from winter in another continent.✨ by @lucybaenawrites

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9 days ago

It's all alot right now isn't it? But the wheel is spinning and the light, oh the light is at it's most glorious. Autumn still feels far away, I am wearing sandals and linen, but yet the days draw in and I follow my feet to the best and oldest medicine I know.
Wild and free I determine to get in the water as much as I can and swim in the light of a newborn day.

A riot of colour, a momentary gift to humble us all and make us stop in awe. Dipping in glinting waves of brilliant green water slows my brain down for a while, reminding me of all the wonder that exists.

Suspended in those green depths I hang between this world and all that we do not know.

Getting out I tuck that feeling under my ribs, snap as many photos as I can to pour over later, when the day leaks out of my face and I cannot breathe for grief. Water still too warm for even the hint of an after drop, a memory I sink into my skin.

This morning I swam amongst this beauty, cormorants dived, seaweed swayed and far off in the distance, perhaps, somewhere, a great whale leapt. What a beautiful world it is. by @lucybaenawrites

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11 days ago

I have never advocated like this before.
Never felt so alone in it or had to become so robotic,
A journey that I know only other SEN parents who have prepared for tribunals can understand.

So angry and tired and worried.
I try to wash it off in the sea,
Notice the glimmers, the beauty of a snail trail in the dawn, a rainbow on the hill.

But the next moment it rolls back,
Meeting on meeting on meeting,
Letter on report on spreadsheet on list.
So out of control and frustrated,
So overwhelmed by the enormity of the task of educating a growing human being.

Dancing with the desire to give our children as many options as possible, to ensure they can access the mainstream whilst also wanting to get in a van and drive far away from the insanity that is the UK education system.

To just stop and be and witness the pure wonder that is our child and not fill in another form, make another table or speak to another SENCO ever again.

I have written 50 turgid pages on this. Fifty.
Not to mention the daily burecracy, emails and lisason with over 10 schools.
All trying, but all, it seems to me, fighting loosing battles.

This is not how education should be.
This is not how we raise up the future
This is not how you inspire wonder, encourage learning, build community.
It is unfair and unjust
And a simmering rage reminds me; if it is this hard for me, how must it be for those more marginalised...
But we'll keep going.
Because all children deserve an education.
✨
Shared with the biggest solidarity for everyone in it right now. I see you fighting for your babes. I'm right there with you.❤️ by @lucybaenawrites

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17 days ago

It is always the liminal spaces that call to me. The spaces between what we know and what, might, be out there. Equinox is one such threshold, when the Other is that much closer. When light and dark hang in balance. I honour it quietly, gathering things from those spaces;
Hawthorn berries, blood red from the top of the Downs, strung on red strings of 13 around our doors, the rest offered back to the water. Crab shell and lobster tails cast along the shore with bright pink Irish moss, ripped up as the autumn swells consider what to do now.
I swim out in the September sun, notice May bloom and worry about the confused plants. Float in this moment. Enjoy the blue speckled beauty of the cast off lobster tail, rejoice in it's presence and the glowing red of berries meeting at the intersection of land and sea, light and dark. Rolling in awe, sinking into wonder. by @lucybaenawrites

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21 days ago

It's been a whole month since I sat on the shore.
I see the sea from my bedroom yet, somehow haven't managed to get there. End of summer holidays, back to school, relentless health challenges, family and tribunal2 prep seasoned with a sprinkling of existential climate dread, amidst a background of rising facism seems to have absolutely taken me out. Fury and exhaustion have collided and left me landlocked. Unable to hold clear thoughts or finish sentences.
But today, somehow, I found a way to make the 10minute journey which for a while felt so far, so selfish, so unachievable. And it was good.

To sit with a friend for an hour on the pebbles, that roll and slip and roar in the waves that are as familiar to us as our own palms. To return to the salt wind that has listened to our woes for the past seven years. Where we have weathered all of life's storms together. To watch the tide ebb, to consider, in detail if it is safe to get in, if we want to, if we can, if we should. To see that it is low and still so warm from the summer heat.
Waves big enough they need to be dived through till a mighty undercurrent snatched at my legs and it became a fight to stay upright and forced a decision to not go out of my depth and perhaps even return to the shore.

A reminder of the power of the water to bring me back into the moment, away from the swirling overwhelm of all there is to do and all the human struggles to be had.

To simply exist under the vast sky amongst the endless blue is such a very wonderful thing. by @lucybaenawrites

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a month ago

I want to write something soft and lyrical that soothes my head and comforts my heart but I am 6 weeks into the summer holidays and I cannot hold a full thought.

I have had my children with me 24/7 for 6 weeks. We have had no clubs, no family support, no work even to shift my brain into a different gear.

My days have burst with activity planning, meal making, budget keeping, cleaning, washing, providing. Being the endless snack maker, peace keeper, body-double-regulator.

I do not know a single other family who has done schools holidays like this. Everyone at least works. Most have grandparents involved in some way.
It hasn't felt like a choice and has been the fastest summer of motherhood so far.

In many ways I have loved it, loved existing in our bubble, away from noise, free from all systems and prying eyes. Free to find our own rhythm and divest from known paths, to make our lives accessible only to us without need of explaination. Free to celebrate the glorious wonders my children are.

But also, especially this year, as the eldest becomes a tween it has felt not-quite-real, as if we are in some twilight universe on the edge of the known earth. Life here is not sustainable locked into a holding pattern made of cakes and chalk, ice sculpture and bedsheets. I know I cannot hold my babes here indefinitely we must venture back out.

Other parents I meet tell me of their joy that school is starting soon, their delight sickens me.
My stomach twists too, but not with relief. I cannot keep going like this, I need to have a moment to use my brain for more than picnics and yet I do not want to send my kids to school. To where they must fit in to a system that does not care about them, to where I face the long march to another tribunal and the banality of the year 6 curriculum. Sadness sits heavily on my chest that our society is failing our amazing younglings so very badly. I comfort myself with a messy reel of summer glimmers and relish the last of the slow mornings. by @lucybaenawrites

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2 months ago

One of the many privileges I grew up with was that I travelled abroad alot. With my family at first and then later on my own, not just Europe, but long-haul around the world trips.

When I became a mother life shifted, we didn't have the resources, physically, practically or emotionally to travel. I didn't leave the UK for the best part of seven years. Now slowly the world is opening up to us again and we are able to dream into trips once more.

Now that I understand the challenges more clearly; we know that journeys and airports create not just seizures but meltdowns, we can prepare better and overall, despite the tears and the stress, the ques, delays, overwhelm, sickness and the eleventy billion requests to; "know the Actual (!) plan"...

The bliss of being out in the wide world, listening to other languages, following our feet away from towns and down sleepy lanes we have never seen with place names we cannot say, is a glimmer that fills me up and is worth every challenge.

The world is still so very wonderous. There are so many ways to live and places to see. A reminder that we will find our way even if sometimes the systems around us make it seem impossible, travel has a way of reminding you, it isn't. by @lucybaenawrites

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2 months ago