MY STORY

Aged 16, I was deeply depressed, experiencing situational mutism, bullying, and disassociating my way through school.

Following a breakdown in the art room, I asked the school counsellor how to "be myself?”.

And she showed me that who I was BEING, was in reaction to the school context, and that this version of me was not ALL of who I was.

This ignited a desire to experience what was beyond; and led me to becoming an artist, imagining possibilities for self expression within the hypothetical conjuring worlds of gallery spaces.

It wasn’t until my mid 20s that I met a group of autistic teenagers in one of my art workshops, that I saw myself in them and them in me: am I autistic too?

Cue personal and artistic research deep dives, tumblrs, papers, books and blogs… and a wholesale rearrangement of memories, relational boundaries, and my sense of self.

I was led by a conviction that there is more to “autism” than the pathological models and externally-defined social roles allow for, and gained funding for two year long residencies with top UK autism researchers, and neuroscientists working with embodiment (what is or isn’t ‘self’).

And in the decade that followed, I published a book, evolved from hiding myself, covertly incubating my potential internally, holding exhibitions of hypothetical hikikomori dreams, to finally coming to know how to be myself.

I now coach others into their own self clarity, self-acceptance, and self-directed lives.

I created a liberatory framework and set of bespoke coaching tools called 'The SOLA System';

and an alter-energy 'sola flare' to enact a siren call to what is possible when we reframe our differences from within: