An Unenchanted evening

The needs of our children don’t let up. They apply to us at all times. No matter where we are at emotionally, physically or whatever. So it was that I gathered up my energy and motivation and headed out the door even though I was tired and a bit

fragile as one of my girls needed a lift to her weekly small group she attends. It was an unexpected disruption to my inner plan for the evening and the rest of the day. Trigger point one had been breached — Change of routine in unexpected ways.

This was particularly pertinent, I had already dealt with a few of these little changes in the day and so was beginning to sense a level of anxiety rising within me. One of my other daughters is helping out a family around the block who is on holidays by collecting their post. She was in her pyjamas already, but figured she could just duck out of the car and grab the mail and jump back in the car.

Out the door and into the soaking wet rain, jump in the car. Of course I was just doing a quick ten minute little trip so didn’t worry about whether I had a jumper or even shoes, I threw on my rubber thongs (flip-flops for my American readers). Off we head two Autistics and an Allistic. The traffic was all over the place considering the night and seemed determined to raise my levels of anxiety to disastrous. Cars in front stopping suddenly with stop lights not working, the rain on the windscreen playing havoc with visual processing and causing all kinds of difficult reflections. A police car two cars in front dropping a sudden u-turn and needing to brake very suddenly to avoid an accident.

My anxiety levels were rising pretty quickly. I had other things I would rather have been doing, but, I was doing what I should

have been doing: what my kids needed me to do for them.

Another red light! Waiting. Off we go again. Up the hill. BANG! What the hell was that…

Flap flop. flap flop. Oh great. A blow out. No nice place to pull over, just a dirt edge, facing up hill, pouring with rain. Wearing jeans and a light shirt and thongs.

Stop take a deep breath. I really need to do this as I am feeling like I could easily just blow up right about now — Just like the tyre did.

I duck out into the rain and check the tyre. It couldn’t be much flatter. What to do?

Two daughters in the car needing to be somewhere else. One Dad in the car wanting to be somewhere else. Traffic blasting

past in the two busy lanes.

I have to deal with this, we ring the RACV (our local roadside assistance organisation), after some discussion and discovery that details need to be updated as they are attached to the other vehicle that is sitting happily in the garage at home. A 40–70 minute wait.

More frustration.

By this time I am on something of a knife’s edge. The 40–70 minutes became two hours. A tow truck turned up as the company deemed our position to be two hazardous for the roadside assistance person to assist. They made this call without actually telling me of course and suddenly everything had changed again.

I was really struggling to hold this all together. I was very angry that I was waiting and waiting, that there was minimal communication and left in a state of not knowing. These are things that I don’t cope with very well at all. I managed to hold it together reasonably well in the end and I am actually chalking it up to a successful avoidance of a meltdown. I am somewhat pleased with myself.

The success here was not planned and is somewhat surprising really. Situations like this have often been catalysts for me to crash into raging meltdowns where I become totally irrational and loud and end up in a curled up ball of quivering bawling human. So I am really happy to have managed this process as I did. Surprised but happy.

What was different here, I wonder, I can’t put my finger on it completely but I my line of thinking at this stage is that I had managed to have some tiny level of awareness that I was a bit triggered, that I was moving into a difficult state of circumstances. I believe that was the number one thing.

The number two thing, and perhaps the most important and pivotal was in making contact and connection with the people I know that could support and help me and were available. I was able to make contact with my wife at home so there was not that worry, I was then able to engage in some social media activity with some contacts and maintain connection throughout the process. I think this made a huge difference for me. I think this was in fact a huge thing in this situation. So much so I managed to kill the battery of my phone to completely flat. Thankfully I saw this coming and was able to make appropriate contact with home base to let them know the situation.

The take away from all this I guess is that it is possible to head it off. Yes we can, sometimes at least, head off that meltdown or shutdown before it actually happens. The key I think is twofold, well at least twofold anyway. Firstly, and this is pretty critical, know what triggers you, learn what are the situations, feelings, thoughts, words that are likely to contribute to heading down that pathway. Secondly and equally pivotal is knowing who you can call on that will listen as you ramble and not dismiss you, importantly have a few people or groups you can do this with, just in case you can’t contact the first you try.

It was not an evening of enchantment but it was an evening of triumph.

Out of loss grows hope…

Hope!

A four letter word. But such a powerful one. True hope, is just that true hope.

Loss devastates us in many ways, yet it is not the end and the all of things. It can be of course but it certainly doesn’t have to be.

Today was for me a difficult day. I attended my dear grandmother’s funeral. I said goodbye to the most important person of my childhood. Yes you ready correctly, the most important person of my childhood. My Grandma was more important and influential than either of my parents. My Grandma was that safe person that every human needs.

You see, my immediate family life is a sordid tale. There are no need for details except that the result is that I now have zero connection with either my actual mother or father or either of my two sisters. It is a difficult and often painful reality.

A result of this sordid past is that I have always struggled with a positive self-worth and in particular an ability to have confidence that things I create, produce, write etc are of any worth.

Today on this day of loss, I was able to stand tall and allow hope to not just grow but to blossom. Over the past few months, I have seen the planting of hope, the cultivating and care of hope in me by some very wonderful friends. Today that care and cultivation was harvested. A blossoming hope sprung forth.

I stood today and read before an a full church building words I had written to eulogize my very special Grandma. I stood before this church with both my sisters and my father and my mother, who all refuse to speak to me, who all belittled me throughout my formative years, with them, sitting in the very front row.

I stood tall today and I read those words and celebrated the life of my Grandma. And those words were powerful words. They were words that brought forth joy, memory, and pathos in the heart and minds of those that heard them.

Hope blossomed in my heart today. As I stood and spoke those words. As I stood in the face of self-doubt and insecurity and I spoke those words. I stood in the face of

knowing there was a front row who were furious that I was there and believe wholeheartedly I had no right.

Hope blossomed forth from my heart today as numerous people thanked me for those words, and some, even quoted me back to me. Hope blossomed from my soul today in the midst of immense pain and loss.

I spent several hours today for the first time in many years in the same room as my immediate family and did not question my right to be there, did not question the validity of me being there. In the midst of loss today I stood tall and proud in honouring my special grandmother.

In the midst of pain, in the midst of grief and in the midst of loss, my words spoke for me, my writing did wonderful things.

In the midst of loss, hope springs forth, hope that I will not amount to nothing but will be someone wonderful and valuable.

Hope blossoms in the midst of pain and loss. It blossoms and repairs relationships fractured and halted for many years, through ignorance, assumption and fear. Hope blossomed forth today and seared my heart with goodness.

Hope just a small four letter word, yet, not so small after all.

That Parent!

We’ve all been in that situation when “that parent” made an appearance. It could be in the supermarket, walking in the street, at the shopping centre, the community centre or the soccer field. It could even be at the school yard. Whenever “that parent” makes an appearance many of us breathe a thankful sigh of relief that we are not “that

parent.”

That parent is the one is mostly silently, but sometimes not, judged as ineffective, unfit, or simply needing help. “That parent” is the one that needs to help in disciplining their kids, needs to work out how to control their kids, needs to let those kids know who is the boss.

Yes “That parent”, is quickly and harshly judged, wordlessly, without pause for thought without any sense of context, life circumstances or indeed what just might really be going on.

Try and put yourself in “that parent’s” shoes for a moment.

You dread it, but you know it has to be done. You suck it up and do it. You drive to the shops. You go in to the supermarket. You walk like you’re on knifes edge with your autistic child in tow. Up and down the aisles of the supermarket, hoping, praying, just wanting to get through this excursion to the supermarket without it happening.

You never know when or if it will happen, there are no real predictors. Sure you can identify stressors and triggers, but there are so many of those in the supermarket that

it just isn’t funny. You try to focus on the task of filling the list of items you have come for, and getting the hell out of the place.

It feels as though every eye of every other shopper is on you, as though they have all witnessed and judged you for it before. You have one eye on the list and shelves and the other well and truly fixed on your child. Looking for signs. It all seems so calm. That calmness is though, a falsehood, and you know it all too well.

Suddenly it’s happening. You are now in emergency mode, the problem of course is that you don’t feel free to work this through with your child in a way that is best, that you know is successful. You can’t because you feel the judgement, the expectations the shared understandings. The pressure of how one parents, how one responds to behaviour and how one deals with it in a public place.

The problem of course is those things mean absolutely nothing of consequence when dealing with an autistic child in the middle of a meltdown in a public place.

The judgement is largely silent but oh, so cutting.

For all intents and purposes it really does look like a naughty child having a “tantrum” over not getting what they want. The judgement largely says that you shouldn’t let the child get their way, you should not give in to the behaviour.

But it isn’t this, it isn’t this at all.

It’s a very difficult thing to describe, but imagine that your fight or flight response has kicked in at such a furious force you have absolutely no ability to control your responses.

But why is the obvious question. Imagine you are walking through a situation where your senses are assaulted to such a degree you can’t hear properly, can’t smell properly, can’t place yourself effectively in the world and may be experiencing vertigo for example.

There really are infinite triggers to kick a meltdown into gear. So it’s really hard to identify specific triggers for specific people, however sensory overload is a big one. It’s easy to think that too much is made of this sensory thing, but it really is debilitating. It is disabling to the person undergoing it. You can’t describe it effectively, you can’t paint a picture of it. You just can’t it need to be experienced or simulated to have any real concept of what it’s like. Here are five exmples you can watch.

So then let’s try to re-think the “that parent” thing. Because it’s all very well for societal expectations to be present, but all they do is actually stop, layer upon that parent stress and uncertainty. A feeling of whatever I do here is going to be judged and judged harshly. “that parent” knows whatever they do they are in for it. Whatever the choice they make they are done for in the eyes of some.

Next time you see “that parent” stop a while, pause, and think now what can I do right here and now, to show that parent I don’t judge them, what can I saw to put their world at ease and allow them to help their child through this situation with the least amount of pain and trauma.

I challenge you to give it a try.

So Dr What’s the treatment…

Imagine if…

Sitting on an uncomfortable plastic chair waiting for your turn to see the “specialist” who seems to hold so much of your future in their hands, you reflect and remember. Remember the blood tests, the interviews, the EEG, the ECG, the CT, and the MRI. So many tests, appointments, discussions.

Hours spent running scenarios, reading online opinions ranging for the way out conspiracy theories to somewhat credible to of course the more reputable and reasonable comment. So many hours spent wondering and worrying. Leading up like a juggernaut to the meeting about to take place on the other side of this waiting room.

Away from these plastic chairs that are so uncomfortable, in the plush and luxuriously appointed office. That office where credentials hang in ostentatious frames. The specialist sits behind an acre of impressive desk on plush leather executive chair.

The news, it’s time to hear the news. What will it be, which of the scenarios that have been racing through your head will it be that this impressive credentialed man will confirm is the issue with your child. Will it be cancer? Something else just as horrible? Some degenerative condition?

What will be the sentence, the cost, the prognosis. Where will it lead from here. What comes next. Will my precious child be ok. Is this a death sentence in waiting?

It’s a terrible time of waiting but at last you name is called and you shuffle in to sit before the great desk. This time the seating is far more amenable but no less intimidating. It feels like your very fate is in the hands of this professional who sits before you. It’s an incredibly scary and humbling moment.

You wait what seems an eternity.

The Dr, sits, almost staring, but with kind eyes. This doesn’t seem to put you at ease at all, it’s just something you happen to notice. You notice this as the silence extends in time. Almost as though on both sides of the desk a contest of who will be first to break the silence is in progress.

Finally, breaking the silence, the Dr thanks you for coming in, sympathises with the barrage of tests and assessments you have taken your child through. With understanding expresses how it can’t have been enjoyable or easy but that it has been necessary to come to a conclusion.

What is this conclusion is all you can think, it is everything not to blurt it out like a demand, a desperate plea. Quietly and kindly the Dr, explains that your child does not have a life threatening disease, does not have a degenerative condition that will slowly sap away at his life. There is no evidence of likely seizures or epilepsy.

The initial relief is palpable, you almost don’t hear the rest as your heart is filled with such relief and your brain is racing with joy and celebration. Your child is alright, is not dying. You catch the word spectrum. And suddenly your joyful heart dives once again towards despair.

You know that word, you’ve heard that word. It is used in conjunction with another word. Another horrible word, a word that is associated with epidemic, catastrophe and at times vaccine injury. That word is Autism. You quietly sob, as your momentary joy disintegrates into despair.

You manage between sobs to ask the Dr What is the treatment? What can be done? What can we do?

The Dr, stops, for a moment, looks intently, then suddenly roars with laughter. Stops, apologises for his abrupt and out of character behaviour, this seemingly utterly not appropriate laughter. And explains…

You may have heard this is a terrible thing? You may have heard this is an epidemic, and you are destined for a ruined family, that there is a rising tide of terror with this Autism thing. You will have heard through national charities that there is a fight, a battle, a war against this Autism thing. You may have even heard of so-called cures. Let me be clear please, and this is very, very important. Are you listening carefully.

You stop, quiet your mind and focus and nod slowly.

Kindly they say, there is no treatment for Autism.

A pause, which you fill with more catastrophising, but quickly the Dr goes on.

No there is no treatment for Autism, because no treatment is needed. There is nothing wrong with your child, they are not sick, disordered or diseased. They don’t need some treatment to cure them, they are not sick.

Now your head stops spinning as you mind, your hopes, your dreams grasp onto that tendril of news. Not sick. But hang on isn’t this an epidemic a terrible thing…

Knowing what you must be thinking the Dr goes on to explain that Autism is not as it has so often been portrayed a demon of destruction, but simply what is known as a neurological divergence, yes, something different has occurred in the development of your child’s neurology, but it’s not something wrong. It’s different, not less, different not broken, different not inferior. It’s not a disorder or a disease, he says, it is a different way of being.

With head spinning you leave that office, armed with information to make contact with support groups run by autistic people, advocacy groups to assist with accessing services to support and accommodate your child and assist you to ensure they can and will become all they set out to be.

You now understand your child is different, not less. Not broken. This autism thing, you don’t have to fight it, you don’t have to battle it, you don’t have to cure it or treat it. You now understand you need to accommodate it, to listen to it, to accept it. But that no you do not need to be a warrior against it. In this moment of realisation you become aware that in fact you have just become your child’s greatest, most important and most influential ally.

Use that power, use it to bring about acceptance, accommodation and inclusion for them.

Use that power, use it to make it known that your autistic child is Never Less Than Everything.

Wouldn’t that be something…

Tongue in cheek: Autism Parenting Olympics

The very sad thing is that the tongue in cheek parent is not completely fictional. I have come across many in autism support groups and the like. It is a very sad state of affairs that so often it seems to be far more about the mom and their suffering than on the support and the best outcomes for the actual autistic child involved.
I could easily reel off a bunch of things that are struggles in some respects, that would “qualify” me but how does that assist my kids. How does it bring them acceptance, inclusion and the possibility of the best possibly outcomes?

Human Rights are for… ah, humans.

One does not need to read too widely in any variety of media sources to find an appeal to human rights. It could be rights for children, refugees, women, LGBTIQ, or any minority or majority group at all.

There are bills of rights, rights are enshrined in things like the United Nations Human Rights Declarations, The Bill of Rights. So many sources of such declarations. There really is. But what does it actually mean? What do we mean and who do we mean?

We call them human rights, surely we mean them to apply to humans? All humans? Surely! Seriously!

But do we mean it? This is the question.

As readers know I am an autistic man. A proud autistic man in fact. I wear that I am autistic loud and proud. I have a question here though. Do these human rights actually apply to me?

I would like to believe they do. I really would, but I am having trouble. You might wonder why. Why would I have trouble with this, human rights are enshrined in law, they are, as I said enshrined in the United Nations Charter. In so many ways we must applaud that this is the case.

The big question here then is how do we classify human. What do we really mean when we say that. I mean do we really mean all homo-sapiens. Do we mean those with disabilities? Do we really mean those with conditions such as Downs Syndrome or severe intellectual disabilities. Do we really mean this?

I am wondering at the veracity of our belief in this. Circumstances continue to arise that make me question the belief of this from the legal and governmental structures to the parents of those with disabilities.

I can’t help but wonder. I can’t help but be concerned.

Currently in the USA there is at least one autistic adult woman, essentially held hostage by the state, her communication device taken from her and her access to her family withheld.

What of her human rights?

All over the world children are being fed quack treatments to “cure” them of autism. Chlorine Dioxide — Better known as bleach, is fed to them orally and by enema. GCMaf is injected into them — an unregulated unsafe and untested blood product. And this is too happening to Adult children too.

What of their human rights?

Do we really believe in universal human rights?

Really?

I do! And I am well sick of seeing and hearing about how those rights are stripped away or ignored for autistic adults and children.

Enough is enough. Surely.

It’s time to put a stop to this.

Autistics across the world are campaigning against these horrid treatments. Petitions call for the release of adult autistics held under duress.

The authorities seem to be deaf.

Yes they are aware of the treatments. Yes they are lobbied and yes they have been provided with accurate and creditable information.

Yet websites abound that sell these vile products.

Yet parents face no restriction. These products are not made illegal. And perhaps more worrying that the use of these products on humans is not legislated to make it a crime to administer it.

Human rights are for ah, um, yes, HUMANS.

Last time I looked I qualified as a human. Last time I checked non verbal autistics passed as humans. Last I checked intellectual capacity was not something that reduced my humanity.

When Cecil the Lion was slaughtered the internet and the media was rightly outraged. But where I ask, where, is the outrage of the human rights of disabled people, being trampled.

Yes I call for Human Rights for all. Specifically I call for Human Rights for Autistics, because you know what we are humans too.

Human rights are for… wait for it… HUMANS!!

On Not letting it all hang out

Life. It’s certainly never fails to throw us curve balls, or bouncers, or sometimes even mulligrubbers. I guess I’ve mixed up my ball sports there but never the less. the point is that life often doesn’t go to plan.

Life is A Beautiful Ride

I’m a proud autistic man, and have only had the privilege of being able to out and own that for a relatively short period of time. I spent a lot of my life pretending to be normal. Pretending I was just like everybody else, even though I knew deep down I wasn’t. I am neurologically different, but I digress.

I never expected life to throw me the curve ball of an immediate family that refuses to speak to me.

I never expected to have the bouncer of losing contact with much of my family at the request of my immediate family.

I never expected the mulligrubber balls I have had with the death of my beloved Grandma this week.

I didn’t expect to be making a second drive from Melbourne to Sydney and back in a week.

I didn’t expect to be grieving my beloved Grandmother.

I most certainly did not expect to be in a situation of attending her funeral and being in the same room as my immediate family for the first time of significance in close to twenty years.

I’ve written in the past about the emotional dissonance that I as an autistic man experience. I’ve spoken about the utterly potent experience of empathy and emotion I feel and experience, even though I may not express this always in the most preferable ways. Yes I have indeed, been known to inappropriately let it all hang out, to have what is commonly known as a meltdown or a shutdown.

I am a strong advocate for Autistics being autistic, living as autistic, living true to that reality, not pretending, as they say, to be normal.

But…

There are times, I believe, that, it is appropriate, if we can, to make the effort to pass. To make every effort to select the correct rules, to select the best social strategies and responses that will be seen as acceptable. Yes there are times to do this. And I am pretty sure that the coming situation of my Grandma’s funeral might just qualify as one of them.

So….

I will do my very best, not to let it all hang out. To not respond to the bait that will likely be presented. To disengage from situations and interactions that start to move towards social and emotional difficulties. When placed in the situation of being in the same place at the same time as my parents and sisters I will attempt, try, and do my very very best to not let me emotional responses get the better of me, to not go into meltdown or shutdown situation but to pass as neurotypical. Or at least to pass enough to there not be a scene. To not be a ruinous interaction of other people’s grief and remembrance.

This will be difficult, but for my part, I will not be the catalyst for other people’s experiences being made less than they should or could be as they remember the wonderful woman my Grandmother was and the celebration of the wonderful life she lived.

But…

The thing that I, and of course, many other autistics know, is that whilst at times we can pull this off, there is a hidden cost. To the uneducated or unknowing by standing neurotypical, this is not seen and not known. They probably in fact wonder why we can’t do this all the time.

The cost in fact is expensive. It is exacted from our very bodies.

After an event of passing or faking it. I will be utterly exhausted. Prone to emotional shortness and susceptible to meltdown for some days afterwards. I will be prone to depression and anxiety impacts far more so than normal. Yes the cost is an expensive one and it makes its presence felt and ensures it makes its withdrawal from our account.

And so…

I am a proud autistic man and I now live a life of pretending no more, but, for some special people, in some special situations I will make an exception. I hope and pray it will not cost too much and I will pull it off. My Grandmother deserves it.

Yes, indeed I have been thrown some unexpected balls in life, and not a few in the last few weeks.

This is one of those times when it is positively one of those times when it is patently not time to let it all hang out.

This is life… It’s for the living

Sadness, grief, loss… Life.

It’s palpable, it’s strong, it’s thick, it creates an atmosphere that can almost be reached up and touched, almost cut with a kitchen knife.

A 20 Something year old Grandma

A grandma lost. 95 years and I am sure she would not want me to be sitting here in grief and loss. She has always been the absolute example of life for the living. Taking what is given and using it to the best of her ability, to live well, to give to others, to serve the greater good.

This is life.. It’s for the living. She may never have used those words but that’s the message of her life. It’s how she lived. Taking what she had, using only the necessary and using what was left to the betterment of others.

I am proud to have called her Grandma. To have known her as my most favourite person in the world. To have relied on her as an unchanging unconditionally loving and always accepting wonderful grandma I could trust and rely on.

My most early memories of my Grandma are of her showing generosity, love and care for all who came into contact. At that time in her life she was a ministers wife, in a working class inner suburb of Sydney Australia.

Alcoholics would come to the door and she would make them food to care for them. The big house they lived in always had other people in them whom she had taken in to care for. There was a big larger than life Aboriginal man, a boisterous fellow who was taken in and treated as family.

In the course of her life my Grandmother was a Sunday school teacher, a missionary, a mother to many in boys homes, a ministers wife, a volunteer for many years for various organisations. But mostly she was a mother to her six children, many grand children and great grandchildren.

In the midst of my pain I do well to remember that my Grandma, the amazing lady she was in life and will continue to be in so many hearts very much lived life. Very much she embraced the circle of life, embraced life for living and passed that to all she encountered.

So yes. I will exist for a few days, perhaps a few weeks in the midst of pain, grief, loss and an emotional rollercoaster ride. But I will hang on to the fact, grasp it for all I am worth that this is indeed life and it is indeed for the living.

I am reminded of Elton John’s Circle of Life.

And a line from a film, Shawshank Redemption I think. You can get busy dyeing or get busy living.

My Grandma would insist that I get busy living. That I grasp life, hold it and live it for all it could be. To pass on life to all I encounter. That this is life, it is for living and not for wasting.

Live it, don’t waste it with bitterness, anger and unforgiveness. No, live it with grace, passion and care.

This is Life, and it is for the living.

Vale Beryl McLaughlin, 95 years young.

Plumbing the depths of soul

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the myth of lack of empathy in autistic people is just that a myth. It’s a horrible, unhelpful and hurtful myth. It denies and takes away

the from autistic people the accepted emotional responses of grief, loss, sadness, and others. It inhibits that acceptance of autistic people plumbing the depths of the their own soul, to be permitted to feel deeply the emotions that are a real and very present part of their daily experience.

Right now I am myself experiencing this so deeply it is indeed an experience of finding just how deep the waters of my soul descend.

I will always be the first to say that my expression of emotions is a an area of difficulty, however, as I have also said before the ability to feel them is not, and in many cases is far more intone with the feeling than it is for many neurotypcial people.

I watched in horror yesterday evening as I saw my uncles sit with my grandma as she breathed her last and passed on her mortal coil and beyond the mortal life we all live.

It was heartrending, heartbreaking, heart tearing. The emotions and feelings writhe within me, they writhe with a depth of feeling I can only begin to fathom towards the extended family who are far off and unable to be with her. The depth of feeling is indescribable. for me.

I can hear the neurotypicals putting words of expression around the feelings and the processes. I can’t do that in the same way. I can’t even nuance out the differences between them.

I am plumbing the depths of my soul looking to express, looking to feel to the depth I am supposed to. It is an incredibly painful experience. There are not words I can access that begin to provide a picture of the level of emotion churning within me.

I am sure there is sadness, grief and loss mixed in there but I am also sure that there

are many others too. This is an incredibly difficult time. It is exhausting and difficult. The pain levels are exhausting, the emotional dissonance even more so.

Where does this road lead. it doesn’t bring back my glorious Grandmother. Is it worth walking this road, will I be a better person for this. I don’t know. I know that it hurts like hell. I know that I wish I was able to make the pain go, make the world stop, to cut out this pain from my heart.

Yes it is a myth, we autistics don’t lack empathy, or any feelings for that matter. We feel just as deeply, perhaps at times more deeply, than others. We don’t always express it well but boy we sure as hell feel it. Deeply, purely and abundant