(or, how I got to be me)
This is the story of my biological parents and my genetic inheritance. First, though, some background on “the forgotten” – those who were thrown into orphanages and detention centres and… forgotten – including my biological parents.
In June 1999, the report of the Commission of Inquiry into Abuse of Children in Queensland Institutions was tabled in the Queensland Parliament.
It covered the period from 1911 to 1999, examining records from more than 150 orphanages and detention centres, and evidence given by more than 300 people. The Commission of Inquiry found significant evidence of abuse and neglect of children in the past. (https://fordefoundation.org.au/resources/the-forde-inquiry/)
What was not investigated, because it was not in the terms of reference of the Forde Inquiry, was the forgotten who were put into psychiatric wards because of their behaviour.
Imagine this. In 1971, in a psychiatric hospital in southern Queensland, two patients in their 20s met, fell in love, pledged themselves to each other, and conceived a child. Once her pregnancy was discovered by hospital staff, he was transferred to another facility, the Challinor Centre, in south-east Queensland, while she remained in the same psychiatric hospital, Bailey Henderson, alone, having had her love ripped away from her. Her pregnancy developed, and on 5 April, 1972, she gave birth to baby girl.
Within two weeks, that infant had been removed from her mother, transferred to
the Warialda home in Brisbane, and prepared for fostering and adoption. Her mother remained at the hospital, now having had two loves ripped away from her.
Two lovers, forcibly separated, and an infant in an unknown location, being given to someone else.
All hope was lost.
That is the story of my biological parents, and me. It continues.
In 2003, I searched for, and found, both my biological mother and father.
In 2004, my biological mother and father saw each other for the first time in 33 years.
In 2005, they married.
In 2024, the lovers are separated once more, with him in a secure nursing home with dementia of the Alzheimers type, and her, with emotional and physical frailty, in a different nursing home.
Underlying this, like a discordant threnody, lies the falsehoods that saw the mother and father
institutionalised while very young.
She went in before the age of 10, with borderline schizophrenia.
He went in at 11, with schizophrenia and borderline mental retardation. They both got out of the system, and to this day, are not on medication for schizophrenia, indicating they never had the condition in the first place.
In the mid-20th century, especially during the 1940s and 1950s, there was a significant lack of understanding and knowledge about autism. Many children who today would be recognized as autistic were often misdiagnosed or misunderstood. Terms like “borderline mental retardation” and “childhood schizophrenia” were commonly used to describe behaviors and conditions that we now recognize as part of the autism spectrum.
So it’s entirely possible that both of my biological parents are neurodivergent, with either ADHD, autism, or both. My biological father was surrendered as a ward of the state by his parents, and what is described of his behaviour matches a PDA response. My biological mother was a quiet, reserved child, often “away with the fairies”, detested by her adopted mother, and was committed to the psychiatric hospital by her adoptive parents. That sounds an awful lot like the inattentive ADHD type.
In the “pick up sticks” process of meiosis, when DNA from both parents is jumbled and shuffled to create the zygote that then becomes an embryo, which then becomes a foetus, and then becomes a baby, it was almost a dead certainty that their child, me, would be neurodivergent; autistic, in fact.
Experts posit that autism is a combination of genetic and environmental factors. Environmental factors would include whatever drugs she was taking in that hospital, both before and after they knew she was pregnant. There wouldn’t have been a folate supplement, or any of the things that are recommended for intending and expectant mothers today.
Research into and knowledge about autism has come a long way since then, but mostly relevant only for five year old white boys. The gaps in knowledge about autism and girls, autism and ethnicity, and autism and aging are still wide, and the DSM-5-TR diagnosis criteria are still looking at the male presentation of autism.
All we can do is keep speaking up, advocating, participating in research and making the most of every single day. Autism is more than Autism Awareness Day, Week or Month. Autism is for life.
The Auld Skald's Fudgel 