The affect of distance
“You must be the only person who says their holiday was fine”. This was the response my manager gave me after our brief interaction about my two week trip to Australia. Besides the fact that the flying time there as well as the resulting jet lag is the equivalent of a five day festivals worth of stress on the body which leaves you dazed and confused upon arrival. There is also the fact that for most people a family holiday is not the easiest of holidays. I won’t claim that mine are the worst there ever was but as I’v grown older and wiser, I have come to see the imperfections of my family. This is mostly due to the fact that we live on opposite sides of the world and that distance has allowed me the space to see them as an almost separate unit from me. Sad I know but this doesn’t mean I don’t love them any less but it does allow me to critically look at them and maybe try provide different perspectives on the world.
I am a millennial who works as a support worker for an autism charity so much like a lot of people from my generation and the newer ones I am more aware and understanding of mental health issues. My family who are from the “get on with it” and “that’s just what they did” generations are only now discovering that actually mental health is something to take into account. This was not something they needed to think about when we all lived on the same continent. I mentioned that I had flown to Australia from the UK but my mother flew from Cambodia where she now lives and teaches English. This separation has caused a lot of stress for her which has in turn worsened her mental health. This is understandable and something I have struggled with but since I left home at a younger age, I was more able to adapt to the massive changes of moving to a new country. I went through my struggles but after a decade of being a directionless deadbeat I somehow woke up and did a 180. When faced with the existential crises of being semi alone all the way on the far side of the planet from my family, I realised I needed to focus on my mental and physical health. I have no idea how I managed it but I did. On the flip side of the coin when my mother moved first to Vietnam to teach English I don’t think she was ready for the culture shock. I spent some time there with her and it was difficult. She just didn’t take to the culture. I think this is often the case for many South Africans but that is a different topic all together. After some difficult times she moved to Cambodia which is better for her but not great. The damage was done.
Ever since then my holidays with her or with the family have had a low lying hum of tension for me. Sometimes there would be full blown meltdowns by my mother as she dealt with stressful situations and family issues from way back in the day. I could never figure out the reasoning behind my mothers behaviour. Her mental health would fluctuate between fine and really bad. This was not the woman I had grown up with. She raised me as a single parent so I knew things were difficult for her but she always seemed like a strong person who knew what she needed to do. This new person was clearly struggling and unsure of her place in the world. Something had changed in her since the move to Asia that had forever broken the solid ground that she had always found herself on. I think she had an idea of what travel would be like but the realities of moving to a new continent were more than she could handle. I however, can travel and find my feet wherever I end up because the idea of the open road is something that I desire whereas my mother requires stability and routine.
Stability, routine and predictability are the requirements for a lot of the people I support. My work with people with autism is what got me thinking that maybe my mother is neurodivergent. So this most recent family holiday on the Sunshine Coast of Australia was my chance to actually observe my mothers behaviours. I would try to approach this with the same mindset as I do at my work while also trying to remain as unbiased as possible. It was tough as I often thought that I was looking for signs that would confirm my hypothesis. This holiday had less activities planned as my Aunt and Uncle still had to work but we did end up doing some activities that took advantage of the beautiful nature of Queensland. Something my mother really misses as she lives in Phnom Penh and always talks about wanting to see more trees. We went to the Everglades that were conveniently only about an hour away from where my Aunt lives. A fun fact is that there are only two everglades in the world with the other being in Florida. This was one occasion for me to observe my mother because as a support worker I often have to consider how environment affects the supported person. Again this is a vague concept but the longer you work in the industry the more you start looking out for triggers that may cause discomfort. In this case my mother mentioned that she hoped there wouldn’t be a lot of people on the tour we were taking. This triggered a memory from a tour the family took in Thailand on our previous holiday. We were going to en elephant sanctuary that my mother was very keen to see and the day before she said the same thing to me. I have worked with a few people who can’t handle large crowds or in an extreme case even two people in the same space. Often times busy environments can overwhelm people and the recovery time needed is a lot more than we imagine. Something my cousin spoke to me about one day in the car when we were coming back from a hill walk. While this may not be a definite sign, when added to other signs and placed in context with other behaviours I started to think I was on the right track.
As the holiday went on I felt more and more confident that I was on to something and would need to figure out a way to break this news to my mother. I was running out of time and needed to find a time that wasn’t going to be too overwhelming for her. A tough task considering that she was not having the best time and her departure date was fast approaching which was causing more anxiety. At this point I had found a book for her to read as well as a podcast that was recommended by a friend who is a AuDHD coach. The day before she left I sat down with her and calmly told her what I thought and that with my limited and very much not professional experience thought she should start looking into neurodiversity to see if anything resonated with her. I was careful not to push too hard but she seemed to take it well. I can only hope that this opens up doors for her to better understand herself and in doing so be kinder to herself. As far as holidays go this one wasn’t bad, it was fine which in the context of previous family holidays is better than I expected.