What I’m Sitting With is my short Monday live, somewhere between twenty-five and forty minutes, where I talk through what has been happening here, point you towards a writer who has been on my mind, and open up an idea before I have it resolved.
If you missed this one, here is what we sat with together.💛
I came on unscripted this morning, as I always do, and I let the live follow the thinking that had been moving through my week. You heard it before I had tidied it up, which is how it actually happens anyway.
It wandered from money to work to parenting, and it carried in two writers who have been on my mind lately, along with a question I am still working out, which is how any of us begins again after the mould we were poured into stops fitting. I did not arrive at tidy answers this morning, and I was not trying to.
Here is what came up.
Whose suffering counts
After last week’s live on economic conditions and the nervous system, I opened a chat thread. People shared where they are with money, with work, with the weight of all of it.
What struck me was how easy it is for us to apologise for our own pain before we describe it. “At least I am married.” “At least we are not living in our car.”
I do it too.
On paper my family is privileged. We have a home, healthcare, an education behind me. We are also living week to week. My husband’s business has had to make seventy percent of its workforce redundant, turnover is down fifty percent on last year, and some nights I feel we are one bad month away from losing everything. Both of those things are true at the same time.
The danger sits in the shame. When we decide our struggle is less worthy than someone else’s, we stop speaking, and we travel the whole road alone. Last year someone in my circle lost a brother-in-law in his most private despair. On paper he was an extremely privileged man. The shame of suffering while appearing to have everything is its own quiet emergency, and I have been close enough to that feeling to take it seriously.
So the thread is open to everyone, and it is especially important for those who feel they have no right to be there. I have included the link to the thread at the bottom of this post.
No amount of mental health struggle is less deserving than another.
Voices is led by capacity, not by the calendar
There was no Voices From Inside the Arc interview this week.
Several people who had offered to contribute told me they are struggling right now, in their mental or physical health, and have stepped back for the moment. That is completely okay. This space is not driven by schedules. It is driven by capacity, mine and yours.
If you have wanted to take part but feared you might not be reliable, please do not let that stop you. If you message me two days before publication to say you cannot do it after all, I will pull the piece. You matter more than a deadline.
The next contributor, when she is ready, is Bridget from Neurodivergent Nurse. Her story comes in two parts, and it sits at the heart of this work, the move from earning acceptance through performance to living from capacity. As a nurse she gives so much of herself by profession, and I think we have a great deal to learn from her journey. The first part is planned for Thursday 11 June and the second for 18 June, both dependent on her capacity on the day.
The mask we wear to fit a world built for someone else
This week I also spoke with Sapna from BrainGrease Lab, a fellow lawyer who writes on ADHD at and is still practicing. I wanted to understand how she manages her capacity inside a profession that rewards conformity.
We recognised the same pattern in each other. The law rewards political instinct over competence. It runs on unsaids and hidden agendas. You are hired to do one job and quietly expected to protect the status quo instead. To survive that, you mask at a very high level, and the masking drains your nervous system until there is very little left.
I described the cycle so many of us know.
A new role feels exciting. People are kind. You think this might be the one where you finally fit. Then a couple of years in, your system is under strain, every day feels as though it should be Friday, and you start to be called difficult. You resign, you take a break, you begin again somewhere new, and over time your CV comes to look like someone who cannot hold down a job. The interview questions grow more pointed. Underneath all of it is a mismatch between your nervous system and the environment, not a defect in you.
Had I been diagnosed while I was still a lawyer, I think I would have tried to push through, because I had no idea who I was apart from being a lawyer. My identity had merged with my profession. That happens to a great many of us. We become the mask in order to survive.
It is never too late to reinvent
Here is the turn I keep coming back to. So many of us are deeply skilled. That is the very reason we lasted in those environments as long as we did. Those same skills can be turned toward something of our own. It does not have to relate to neurodivergence at all. It can grow from your experience, your zone of genius, the years of work behind you.
I could not see my own for a long time, because I was too close to it. That is why I worked with a coach, Jen Benford, who was on the live today.
I want to be clear that this is not a sales pitch. I am simply telling you what was true for me. Without that work I would not be speaking to you now, and my Substack would not have just passed a thousand subscribers, in seven months, still unpaid. So much becomes possible when someone helps you see what you cannot see in yourself.
It is not too late at forty, or fifty, or sixty. I would go further than that.
Our world is starved for our wisdom. Young people are facing a future where a steady job no longer promises certainty. My seventeen-year-old stepson does not know what to study, because he looks ahead and wonders what will still be there. If we can show that there is a life beyond the mould, we become an example for them.
Not everyone has to leave, either. If the gap between who you are and what your environment demands is small, staying can absolutely work with the right strategies. Sapna has practical tools for exactly this, how to prepare for meetings, how not to zone out, how to manage ADHD at work and in life. I would also point you to Off-Script at Work by Sven Brodmerkel (PhD), which is about decoding the hidden language of the workplace.
To the parent who thinks she is failing
The last thing I sat with was parenting.
I post about navigating life with my daughter, who was diagnosed at four with level two ASD and also lives with a slow processing disorder, dyscalculia and a language delay. Every time I do, generous comments arrive telling me what a wonderful mother I am. I want to be honest with you. I am not extraordinary. I am just like you. I simply have my children at a different stage of my life.
I had my daughter at forty-three and my son at forty-seven. I waited that long because, in my thirties, I did not have the capacity to love a child the way a child needs to be loved. I think often of mothers in autistic burnout right now, with young children, who have not had the things I have had. I have a diagnosis. I have had access to mental health care. When I could not cope, I was able to check into a private unit for nearly a month. When I came home still not coping, we engaged a nanny who did, for three years, everything I could not.
So if you are reading this and thinking you are failing, please hear me.
You are doing the best you can with where you are right now. What matters most is not getting it right. It is repair.
When you mess up, and you will, you come back when you have the capacity and you name it. In my own home, what my children seem to need most is to know they are loved and to feel seen, and that is something I can offer even on the days I get the rest of it wrong.
Bring me your questions
I would like to end each of these lives with your questions. You can ask me about my writing, the Overcapacity, Collapse and Rebuild Arc, masking, burnout, rebuilding, or the things I rarely say out loud.
No question is too small, and you do not need to have read everything here to ask one. If you have been reading in silence, this is a way in that asks nothing of you in the moment.
Drop your question in the comments any time before the next live, and you never have to appear or say a word to take part.
With love,
Marie-Christine
P.S. This space remains free. If this work helps you, there are a few ways to support it.
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Thank you for being here. 💛
Thank you Jen Benford, Margaret Williams, MS, ACC, Jason Ives, Sapna from BrainGrease Lab, and many others for tuning into my live video! I apologise if I haven’t mentioned your name.
I hope to see you in my next live video in the app.
