Unmasked - Episode 2

Jasper Peach 00:00

Hello, I'm Jasper Peach. Welcome to Unmasked. I'm standing on stolen land and if you're watching this in Australia, so are you. Recording's happening on Wurundjeri Country and much of the preparation took place on Djaara Country.

Jasper Peach 00:14

In every action, thought and intention, especially when it comes to storytelling, we must honour the rightful owners of where we find ourselves. With deepest respect to Elders past and present and to all First Nations people watching, this is Unmasked.

Jasper Peach 00:33

For the next half hour, this will be a neurodivergent extravaganza. Not in a ferris wheel or big budget kind of way, but I don't know, there's not really a lot of narrative or presence that's created and controlled by us.

Jasper Peach 00:47

Who is us? Who do I mean? Neurodivergent can mean your autistic have ADHD, OCD, PTSD, CPTSD. You may have bipolar or BPD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, sensory processing stuff, synesthesia, epilepsy, ticks.

Jasper Peach 01:06

There's a whole bunch of acronyms and names and whatnot. Some of them are called disorders. Others are referred to in all sorts of different ways depending on who is saying them and what those terms mean to that person.

Jasper Peach 01:20

It's not always relevant to know which ones in the list each person has. Our guests are invited to do what's comfortable. Feel free to share, no pressure to disclose. We check that out before we start and go from there.

Jasper Peach 01:36

It's one of the many ways consent, access needs and respect are crucial parts of neurodivergent culture. Come as you are. You don't have to sit still, be quiet, communicate in the way that works for you.

Jasper Peach 01:49

There's space here for all of it. There's no way that we could possibly represent every kind of neurodivergent person in six episodes but we're starting with this. This utopia bubble we're intentionally creating together.

Jasper Peach 02:06

It's 2024, attitudes are shifting, getting more nuanced and with more presence and visibility comes a slow but sure shift to better, more inclusive practices. Thanks for being here. This is Unmasked.

Jasper Peach 02:29

Being egocentric and relating most things to my own lived experience I really wanted to have an episode about parents. I'm a parent and it's only been through becoming a parent that I came to understand my brain and so much of my identity.

Jasper Peach 02:43

And I wanted to talk about all this with, I've got two guests today. The first one is Anna Spargo Ryan joining me through the magic of pixels in the sky. Hi Anna Spargo Ryan, how are you going? I'm just a bit.

Jasper Peach 02:57

I'm very well, how are you? I'm really excited because you are a community builder, a mentally ill human, a memoirist, a writer. You also have two adult children. And so you're the future that I hope to one day make it to.

Jasper Peach 03:12

Can you tell us first of all if that was an okay way to introduce you because I'm not someone who can really define others. There's anything else you'd like to add if any it was wrong. And then I'll ask you another question.

Anna Spargo-Ryan 03:27

No, that was perfect. It's so funny to hear other people intro you like, oh, is that what they take out of my life?

Jasper Peach 03:33

Yeah, that's the puzzle that I've put together and it's just it's in the filing cabinet so it must be true. Can you tell us about the ways your brain and identities intersect with parenting?

Anna Spargo-Ryan 03:47

So I, okay, so I'm a neurodivergent parent. I have ADHD. I also have complex mental illness. So I live with psychosis and also anxiety and depression. Although as I get older, the depression is much less than it used to be.

Anna Spargo-Ryan 04:04

So now I'm just like a ball of anxiety all of the time, but like a happy ball, you know? I have these, yeah, two adult children, 18 and 20. They're also both neurodivergent. So the little one has ADHD and the older one is autistic and has ADHD.

Anna Spargo-Ryan 04:21

And so my parenting is both informed by being neurodivergent and impacted by parenting neurodivergent. And I think the biggest takeaway for me has been understanding what they're going through is helpful, but it doesn't mean that I can fix every problem for them, I guess.

Anna Spargo-Ryan 04:47

And that has been my biggest parenting challenge. It's very frustrating to have absolute clarity on what they're going through and zero solutions and to actually not be able to fix a problem. Oh my God, yeah.

Anna Spargo-Ryan 04:59

Yeah, that's kind of my parenting in a nutshell, I think.

Jasper Peach 05:03

If you think back and also to the now as well, what impact did becoming a parent have on your brain?

Anna Spargo-Ryan 05:14

I was young when I became a parent so my first child was born when I just turned 20 and then my second one when I was 22 and I didn't know my husband very well. We sort of met and had a baby and then got married and had another baby and then went, who are you?

Anna Spargo-Ryan 05:32

I found it very disorienting to become a parent which added to the disorientation that I already felt because of my mental illnesses and I felt a strong desire to be the best parent that I could be for them and in the context of what you're asking I did think that I would suddenly be able to overcome my mental illnesses and to be able to do whatever they needed just you know if they're in trouble I'll be able to drop everything and go and it was just assumed that I would be especially as a mother that I would be able to just be there that it would be more important than any of the mental illness feelings that I have that I could it would overcome my anxiety because it was so important and it just doesn't and that has been devastating at times and that took quite a few years for me to learn A to learn that was true and then B to learn that it was okay in the context of the other things that I can do for my children and also that as an anxious person sometimes I actually am the right person to help in that situation in a different way you know like I'm always catastrophizing and so when something really bad does happen sometimes I'm in the best place to organize that horrible situation to go all right you know what I just always assume that something horrible is happening and now that something horrible is happening I know exactly what we need to do so when my younger child yeah when my younger child broke their leg and they called me and they were like oh I've fallen over ice skating I think I've broken my leg my dad had to go and pick them up because I couldn't but once they were at the hospital I was able to do all of the things that I can do as a parent that other people in my life are not as good at that I was like okay well I'm going to figure this out I'm going to talk to people I'm going to understand what needs to happen I'm going to talk to the surgeon I'm going to book this in I'm going to sleep on a chair I'm going to you know all the other things that I could do and so a lot of my experience of being a parent has been understanding my limitations but then also celebrating the unique positives that I can contribute as a parent

Jasper Peach 07:54

and there are so many. Like I remember talking about my physical disabilities with Mrs. Peach when we were planning to have children and really going deep on what it would mean for those people as they were born and grew up with us but we forgot to consider the mental health elements.

Jasper Peach 08:13

Like physically my whole coping strategy for chronic pain was rest. That was gone. How do your children relate to to you as as a parent with mental illness and neurodivergence in terms of expectations that I don't know like the broader world has these expectations that are garbage.

Jasper Peach 08:37

You know your strengths. What about your relationship with your children around those expectations?

Anna Spargo-Ryan 08:45

So, I think my relationship with my children really started with my relationship with my mum, who is the loveliest woman but extremely anxious, very, they're like so tightly wound. and when I was small she couldn't articulate the feelings that she was having those anxious feelings and so from my perspective it just always looked like something horrible was happening and so one of the critical things that I've always done with my children from when they were born basically was to try to talk to them like adults about what is happening like it's important that you understand this about me partly so that you know what's going on and partly so that our relationship with each other can be as healthy and productive as possible and so now that my children are the age that they are they have a complete understanding of what it's like to be in my brain which as it turns out is helpful because my little one in particular is a really anxious kid now they feel like they can come and talk to me about it because we speak the same language and I haven't made it scary and I haven't made it you know taboo it's not a secret it's something that is a reality of what it's like in our lives and that that gives them a free communication to talk about it and it has also created some incredible advocacy in them and their experience in the world has I think been changed by the fact that they learned that you could advocate and that you could be empowered really early in their life because you know at one level you have to and I think I showed them that it you know you can take the power back and that was the thing I wanted to do most as a parent like you're going to come up probably against some hard stuff so all of those things are stuff that we did right from the start

Jasper Peach 10:34

Oh my gosh. There's such power in radical visibility and turning toward what's real. Nothing's assumed anymore. Yeah.

Anna Spargo-Ryan 10:47

That's pointless to pretend, you know, what's the point in pretending not to be anxious? This has happened to me at work as well, you know, like why would I pretend not to be anxious when something is definitely going to happen where I have to go, actually I can't do that and then I have to explain why and then I, and then I apologize and then I feel like a burden.

Anna Spargo-Ryan 11:07

There's, yeah, it's been very empowering to have like a little support network around me as well at home, which sounds like a very unhealthy parent -child relationship. But, but it's, yeah, it's very open and caring and loving and supportive and true and all of those.

Anna Spargo-Ryan 11:22

good things.

Jasper Peach 11:24

I just love you with like aggressive ferociousness. Anna, can you share some of your written work with us?

Anna Spargo-Ryan 11:33

Oh, well, so this book is a memoir. I've written two novels as well that are both adjacently about parenting and the struggles of it and mental illness. This one is a memoir. So just a tiny little bit.

Anna Spargo-Ryan 11:45

So this chapter is called difficulties relating to the sense of self. People sometimes ask, what's wrong with you? It seems appalling that someone would ask this question right to your face. But the thing about having an illness or disorder or disability is that other people believe it entitles them to your body slash brain.

Anna Spargo-Ryan 12:03

They're allowed to ask whatever offensive and terrible questions they want to, on account of you having the nerve to take up space in their abled and neurotypical existence. The only reasons you're here is to be inspirational or to be, to listen to them tell you that their auntie had something like that once and she put essential oils on her toast and was cured.

Anna Spargo-Ryan 12:22

So they ask, what's wrong with you? And I say, could you be more specific? They gestured to empty space, ceilings, other people, what's wrong with you? What they mean is, which movie character are you like?

Anna Spargo-Ryan 12:34

Are you the Here's Johnny guy? Or are you Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? Do you have multiple personalities? Have you ever tried to drill your brain? A voice is talking to you right now.

Anna Spargo-Ryan 12:45

Have you ever been put in restraints? Are you gonna try to kill yourself while I'm standing here with you in the body shop? What do you have? But seriously, what's wrong with you? And that has been my experience of living with mental illness.

Anna Spargo-Ryan 13:00

So that's pretty much what my life and the book are all about.

Jasper Peach 13:05

Amazing. Thank you, Anna Spargo Ryan for a juicy chat. Thank you. All right, Flis Marlowe. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Oh, it's cool. So you and I met through doing rainbow family stuff. And you are, as we say in the community, a gay for pay.

Jasper Peach 13:24

Gay for not much pay. Not much. It's never enough pay. And that means you have employment related to your sexuality. Can you tell us a bit about your job? And then we'll talk about you as a parent after that.

Jasper Peach 13:37

Yes.

Flis Marlowe 13:38

Sure, so I'm very fortunate to be employed as the Rainbow Families Manager at Switchboard Victoria and that's a position I took up in April when we created the position and prior to that we'd had all of these little working groups and committees and community groups, the first being the Fertility Access Rights Lobby in around 2000 with the fabulous Ruth McNair and so I was on that little group and we haven't really had employed people ever before.

Flis Marlowe 14:11

I had a little grant at some time but then the marriage, I suppose I said I got in the way of that and that was a bit tricky. In the way of the college of staff didn't you? Yes, so this last year in April I was able to start at Switchboard full time which has really been great.

Flis Marlowe 14:25

It's enabled me to do two crucial things which is particularly in a post -COVID environment, kind of work on that community connection of all the different queer, trans, non -binary, gender diverse, sole parents, separated parents that are all just out there not connected and I think after you've had your kids and maybe gone to a few play groups and you enter the whole school thing it is very quick to just lose those contacts that you had and then also do some service capacity building because there's just still services out there.

Flis Marlowe 15:01

My kids are 18, nearly 18 and nearly 15 and when we were doing parenting stuff and trying to get parent 18, 20 years ago the language was really poor, the understanding was really poor, we were a surprise, they called us same -sex parents which just makes me blah.

Flis Marlowe 15:19

So we still have services from anything early childhood to the dentist who are still not sure how to talk about a family so that's a big part of my work too is a community practice and checking with people who are out there.

Jasper Peach 15:33

And why, like it just, I get really cranky pants because they haven't updated the paperwork on their computer to reflect that we exist. We haven't just jumped out from behind a tree and go, hey, it's so bananas to me.

Jasper Peach 15:53

And I kind of ties in with what you were saying, Anna, that it's interesting because we're writers as well, like that words can be so impotent or the words that are prescribed like fatigue, that doesn't come close to describing what that actually means and what the experience is.

Jasper Peach 16:12

Oh man, okay, so thank you for your work. And now tell us about your life as a parent.

Flis Marlowe 16:20

Well Sarah and I met in 2000. We both share an ex -girlfriend so we're just trying to be really yeah traditional and we very quickly decided that we wanted to have kids. I am the eldest of five and so I was like well I want five kids I used to want eight but that's okay can we talk down to five and Sarah's the eldest of two and was like oh that seems like a lot I'm not so keen on that maybe we could just have two.

Flis Marlowe 16:51

Luckily after three years of IVF Sarah had the chance to put back two embryos which you can't really do anymore. We had two left we were trying to get pregnant in an IVF system where the only way that we could access it was Sarah was a single person and had to have a medical infertility which she did it was in the days when you went yes I've got a fibroid.

Flis Marlowe 17:15

I got really excited so she had PCOS and we could put two embryos back so we got a bonus baby so we had twins which was really amazing and then I also I had a fibroid very excited. Love that for you.

Flis Marlowe 17:30

I know thank you. I had surgery to remove that then had a minor panic in my gynecologist clinic where I went oh my god you've removed it am I now no longer medically infertile he was like no no it's okay honestly he was like shit and so like three days later started the started IVF and we have a lovely donor Cam who again both of us knew separately in the 90s me because of student politics and Sarah because he lived with an ex -girlfriend and we have the Cam in our life who is just delightful and gorgeous and he is the donor both the kids and if he wasn't our donor he'd probably be a priest to be honest a gay priest and yeah so he's there there's the Cam and he's lovely and we see him very often which mean the kids have three sets of grandparents and yeah you know relatives and nieces and nephews and all that kind of thing so that's our family things you don't ask your donor are probably do you think perhaps you have ADHD didn't think to ask that probably should have thought about it because there was a lot of things that were very similar and yeah also didn't ask about orthodontic care which also would have been really good

Jasper Peach 18:48

Yeah, on Mrs. Peach's side, there's gonna be a lot of braces in our family and we chose our donor because he's very similar to me in terms of personality, we didn't know they want that man. Now we do!

Flis Marlowe 19:03

Totally, totally. Yes, like tracks like. Yeah. Yeah. So we live in the suburbs. We have my beautiful twins who are 17 ones doing year 12, one is not because of mental illness and a whole lot of range of other things to do with their gender and body have not been in formal education since year seven for COVID.

Flis Marlowe 19:25

And they just attended their first TAFE class yesterday. So I'm so excited for them. I loved TAFE. I loved TAFE. It really worked with my brain. Yeah, exactly. It's so good. Yeah. And then we have 15 year old who is autistic, which is part of my kind of coming out autistic story.

Flis Marlowe 19:45

Yes. Amazing. And we just live in the suburb with our dog, our cat, two rats and a snake.

Jasper Peach 19:51

So, you are like so many, this is the story of so many families, I know, so if you're watching this and going, wow, that's so interesting, just hang out with some queer people, because this is what happens, it's just very beautiful and expensive and gorgeous.

Jasper Peach 20:07

It's so expensive, yeah. So lovely. Could you share a little something with us? I think you brought an image. Yeah. Yeah.

Flis Marlowe 20:21

It's not a gay -for -pay image because it's just about you, it's just about me. A lot of those gay -for -pay images are things like media stories and other things from the advocacy and activism my family and others have done over the last 15 years to change the laws in Victoria un -nationally, so I didn't bring those in because they're in a box in the shed.

Flis Marlowe 20:43

They did bring in a little photo of me and Ceri, I don't know who I need to show that to so you can see that that was our wedding, our actual wedding like the real, like the legal wedding thing that we decided to do last year and one of the reasons we decided to do that last year was because one of my kids who is really mentally unwell and is ADHD and gender dysphoria and body dysphoria and trans, their girlfriend was coming from New Zealand and we knew that Kelly would leave the house to come with their beautiful girlfriend so we waited till the ticket had been bought and then we planned it at the registry office then so that Kelly would come, they don't really leave the house for a range of reasons.

Flis Marlowe 21:30

It was really lovely that Ella was able to be there with them and they were able to come to the registry office with my sister, with Cam and another friend of ours, it was just like I said you could be wives if you wanted to, it was such a funny thing to say, it's 23 years with three kids and a lot of pets, the kids are so involved in the marriage equality campaign themselves, stopping the plebiscite, going to Canberra, telling their story, speaking at rallies as quite little kids, they really were like we did all this work, like what's going to happen, why aren't you getting married, I want some cake.

Flis Marlowe 22:14

Fair, fair, it was fair, so that was my little story, it's not so much gay for pay but it's the outcome of being gay for pay over a long period of time.

Jasper Peach 22:22

And do you feel different now that you're legally married in any way? No. No? No. You've got a piece of paper in the following capital somewhere.

Flis Marlowe 22:35

the admin task to be honest at this point in time. But it's really great, I love that.

Jasper Peach 22:42

Would you like to tell us about what your stems are? Do you have stems?

Anna Spargo-Ryan 22:50

mine are all things that are trying to distract me from the feeling that I'm having which obviously is what kind of what a stim is but they're specifically like turning up the air conditioning in the car I have a lot because I'm nervous about going places because I'm agoraphobic things in the car turning up or down the volume on the stereo turning up or down the air conditioning putting our sunglasses on or taking our sunglasses off anything that changes the current situation that's that's how I cope with whatever feeling I'm having drinking cold water or stopping drinking but it's anything that adjusts

Jasper Peach 23:25

What about you, please? Do you have any... What's your stem? What's your stem deal?

Flis Marlowe 23:29

So I think having control is a stim, which feels like a weird one, but it's like I will be in charge of this event or, you know, and now that I know where that comes from, I can be a little less in control about that kind of stuff.

Flis Marlowe 23:45

But my main ones that I noticed are all the things that I do physically, like even now I'm clicking my toes in my shoes. I've got the dance in toes. Yeah, I do that all the time. I've allowed myself to shake more, because I sort of like need to shake.

Flis Marlowe 24:01

And that's really allowed me to go, oh, stims, this is good. I get it now. Yeah. Why I like to watch the same thing on telly or... Yep. Yeah.

Jasper Peach 24:11

Yeah, you comfort shows. Comfort shows. I'm two months in. Like I only twigged two months ago. So every day I'm like, oh, oh. And I'm listening to Devon Prices. Oh, yes, that's good. And I have to stop so often because I'm whacked in the face with understanding and why I found everything so impossible, but managed to do it anyway at a deep cost.

Jasper Peach 24:42

Yes. Yeah, and just how much grief there is associated with that. But also looking at the way like your kids are now and your kids are now Anna, it's so beautiful. And I, because they can do it, I can do it.

Jasper Peach 24:58

Yeah. Yeah.

Flis Marlowe 25:00

But we've only all just been diagnosed in the last four years with one non -diagnosed but utterly, completely in utterly ADHD.

Jasper Peach 25:09

We're in the clumps. Yeah. Yeah. If you are not and all of your people are, I've got some news for you. So it's nearly time to wrap up. I'd love it if each of you could give me a little contribution to the neurodivergent utopia bucket.

Jasper Peach 25:30

And Anna, I'll write yours on your behalf. Okay. Would you like to tell us about yours, please?

Flis Marlowe 25:37

Well, I've worked for years in training to improve LGBTIQ plus inclusiveness in education and just in everyday kind of service delivery and so everything I write is like a bit like what should be on a continuous improvement plan for a service or a school.

Flis Marlowe 25:57

I wrote down that there should be a strength based support for everyone when they need it, not a deficit idea. Drop my next one. You can have another one. Yeah, I did put another one and this is really important because I have worked as a student well -being coordinator for a long time on and off in schools and I do this for my own kids.

Flis Marlowe 26:21

Advocacy, that every school is a neurodivergent inclusive space.

Jasper Peach 26:29

yeah really important as well yeah my kids school is so full of neurodivergent children and that it's such a safe place for every child because of that um Anna what would you like to put in the bucket?

Anna Spargo-Ryan 26:46

Mine is very similar to that, which is that all school and work should be outcomes based and not be

Jasper Peach 26:57

All school and work should be.

Anna Spargo-Ryan 27:00

out from space. So no one looks at how you're doing something. No one assesses or has an opinion on the way that you do things. They just go, did you do it? Yes or no? And you go, yes, here it is. And they don't ask how it got there.

Anna Spargo-Ryan 27:17

And they don't tell you that you did it the wrong way. And if you didn't do it, they also don't have anything on that. You're just assessed on being able, like everybody is just able to do the things to the best of their ability in the way that works for them.

Jasper Peach 27:33

I think you should just jump into the buffet. That's a very long piece of paper. Yeah, you can jump in and then you can be like the leader of the neurodivergent utopia. I don't know how you feel about that pressure.

Anna Spargo-Ryan 27:46

President? Yeah. Yeah, you can be the L -President. No, excuse me. The data clipboard. Oh, I'm sorry.

Jasper Peach 27:51

It's so hot for a clipboard also because then I'm not all good.

Flis Marlowe 27:55

I'm a lenient. Yeah.

Jasper Peach 27:57

Yeah.

Anna Spargo-Ryan 27:57

Yeah, yeah. The clipboard, I think, I like that too. Very important to have something to hold on to because I don't know what to do as lots of neurodivergent people don't know what to do with my hands.

Anna Spargo-Ryan 28:06

Like, what are these? Where do they go?

Jasper Peach 28:12

So I'm not allowed to take this tub of stuff home, so I'm hoping that both of you could finish some of my craft projects. This is some granny squares, so I learned to make granny squares at the CWA in Castle Main, and then I made enough starts of granny squares for a king -sized bedspread.

Jasper Peach 28:33

It's the only thing I've ever made, I've got bored, but I can't throw it away, so you can have some of those. I love it. And next time I'm down your way, you're going to have this punch needle kit koala, because you get to, like, and then you can either keep that or give that to my youngest who is one of your deepest admirers, so yeah, I'll drop that off.

Jasper Peach 29:00

We can do it together. We can go the path. They would love that. They would absolutely love that. Thanks for unmasking and being so attractive as a starting point, but also just showing us who you are, because who you are is wonderful, and I don't know how to end these things ever.

Jasper Peach 29:19

It's hard to know. For me, the transition from one thing to another, so I'm just going to look at my phone, because that's how you start your phone. Yeah, that's right. I'll save it for you.

Anna Spargo-Ryan 29:26

Jeff, well, I love you.

Jasper Peach 29:28

I love you too. I love you. Yeah, it's really, it's really cool to, to hang out in the tally and I'll see you in an hour or sooner. We'll have some like sweet, gushy, squishy things, maybe some.

Anna Spargo-Ryan 29:39

Mrs Peaches face

Jasper Peach 29:42

Yeah, we'll just have a nibble on Mrs. Peaches, but like there's nothing, it'll grow back. Thank you, Fliss, and...

Flis Marlowe 29:48

did have a chance to chat. Yeah, so nice.

Jasper Peach 29:51

and you can, you're probably just on the way home to think of seven other things you need to fix and we'll have a...

Flis Marlowe 29:58

We've got a meeting on Monday night, so I think it'll be on the agenda. Okay, cool. Yeah, great. Well, I guess I'll see you then.

Jasper Peach 30:03

Thank you. Bye.