Blog by RUTH BARTLETT
For as long as I remember I have been overcome by the urge to "reset". As a child this presented as excitement over a new exercise book. Maybe this time I could write neatly. As a teen, the urge manifested itself as a longing to move overseas, to be somewhere(one) different....
Several years ago I trained to be a volunteer tour guide at Lincoln Castle. One of the most popular attractions was the Victorian-era prison. It was designed as part the the 'separate system', a form of prison management in which prisoners were kept isolated from fellow inmates in an effort to ...
Why France?
hen I was about 13 I borrowed a book of short stories from the library in my local town of Horsforth, Leeds. One of the stories was about a young woman who decided to move to Francophone Canada on a whim. She didn’t speak a word of French but she moved there and got a jo...
Comment je suis devenue francophile
En 1994, à 16 ans ma francophilie naissante m’a poussée vers une année scolaire en Auvergne. Dans ma famille d’accueil, j’ai baigné dans la culture et la langue françaises tandis qu’au lycée j’ai découvert une passion pour l’histoire.
En 1997, j’ai entamé des ...
Before my ADHD diagnosis I was caught in a cycle of inspiration, implementation, failure and giving up. I banged my head against the “should” wall sporadically, forgetting how much it hurt the first time, telling myself that I could find a way through if I just tried harder. More post-it notes...
I’ve been thinking about how my experience of foreignness relates to my neurodivergence. ADHD brains thrive on dopamine and I spent nine years in Paris, the dopamine capital of France. The Metro map was like a colourful board game to explore, offering new rewards whenever I threw the dice. Anonymity...
As a child I loved to go to my friend Jennifer’s house for dinner. One of the reasons was the family’s meal schedule with specific meals on specific days. Every Tuesday was sausage and beans, Wednesday was fishfingers and chips and so on. This blew my mind and made me question the spontaneous eating...
I'm sick of repeating myself when communicating with service-providers so I've created my personal Accessible Information Assessment Scheme. Barclays scored an F.
I believe that the benefit of considering atypical brains in communications and processes far outweighs the investment. ADHD brains deserv...
2008 was a big year for adults with ADHD. For the first time health authorities in England recognised adult ADHD and guidelines were published by NICE. Whilst medication was recommended as a first line treatment, even back then the experts understood that it wasn’t enough.
They say that neurodivergent people wear a mask. I would call it armour and mine was made from my fierce independence. In May 2021 I received my ADHD diagnosis and slowly began to lose my armour. I began to accept that I had challenges that other people didn't have and that I needed some suppor...
Before I set off for France at the age of 16, volunteers from the organisation that had arranged the experience used the term "learning through crisis" to help us to put culture shock in perspective. Never has that phrase been more relevant to me than in trying to access support fol...
Some time ago I submitted an FOI request to the Department for Work and Pensions. I had noticed that ADHD does not feature in the Condition Insight Report, the primary reference document used by PIP Assessors. I was worried that, against the backdrop of sensationalist media headlines about ADH...
Keeping accessories that can easily get lost on a keyring is a godsend for anyone who tends to lost track of their stuff. My keyring obsession began with carabiners. I got sick of losing hair bobbles while camping, so I started to keep them on a carabiner, and have been using them ever since. Y...
Customer Service Departments, Utility Companies, Internet Service providers, Financial Institutions, Government Agencies
Neurodivergent Customers and users
One French word encapsulates how I experience the world: décalage.
Depending on context it can mean gap, shift, difference, lag or discrepancy but can also be used to describe that feeling of being out of sync.
I’m constantly en décalage, much to the amusement of others...
It's come to my attention that certain public bodies are in need of a refresher on the Equality Act.
I believe that the benefit of considering atypical brains in communications and processes far outweighs the investment. ADHD brains deserve more than home-made workarounds. Let’s work on t...
I haven’t written here in ages because I’ve been working. And before that I was hyperfocussing on (in no particular order) keyrings, colour-coding, magazine-holders, Google Sheets, Alexa routines, Zapier automation, travel bags, transparent boxes, transparent bags, photo storage solutions, blackboar...
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