OMG it’s September.

Finished reading this almost cover to cover - Dr Louise Newson’s book called The Definitive Guide to the Perimenopause and Menopause.

If you or someone who know might be impacted by perimenopause or menopause - in the future or now - read this! Or a book like it.

Perimenopause and menopause is so much more than hot flushes and brain fog. It can disrupt many bodily systems causing both physical and mental health problems and it often isn’t intuitive to consider whether hormones might be involved in those.

This book is relatively inclusive of trans and nonbinary folx, also mentions the common experiences of people with ADHD, early menopause (for various reasons), post natal depression, and many relevant health conditions from PMDD to POI.

Don’t wait until you’re a “certain age”, read up about it all now because the impacts can begin sooner than you might realise.

To fellow autistics: I saw a survey of autistic people a while ago that showed most people really benefit from know about perimenopause and menopause in advance. On the flip side of this, many people end up discovering they are neurodivergent because perimenopause broke their ability to mask and cope. This book (and others like it) can forearm you with enough knowledge to ask a GP for help and early.

For anyone with a pre-existing chronic illness that has an inflammatory component to it like I have, note that perimenopause can mess things up with that too!

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#ADHD #ActuallyAutistic #pwME #MEcfs #perimenopause #menopause

I would really like to post somewhere about my data science course, on topics such as machine learning, Python coding etc, but I know the majority of my followers here would not be interested in that.

Still pondering creating a hashtag that followers can filter out, versus using a separate account.

If any of you here have had experience splitting your interests across fedi accounts - I’d love to hear how it went for you.

I’m most worried about starting from scratch and I hate filtering myself since it feels like forced autistic masking, but I DO want to connect with more coding folk. Hmmm.

What a fantastic book!

Just finished reading this brand new book (released July 31st) and wanted to recommend it here.

Neurodivergent, by Nature. Written by Joe Harkness.

It is all about neurodivergent people and the benefits of nature for many ND people: both adults and children.

Through many, many interviews with people across the UK it covers career paths into nature-based work like conservation, personal connections, work place adjustments, education including forest schools and also broader EDI topics like ethnic diversity (a huge problem in the ecological / environmental sector in the UK), socio-economic backgrounds and other disabilities and prejudices (e.g. based on age). It is a book about all neurotypes, but specifically mentions neurodivergent types of: autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia.

Joe is neurodivergent (ADHD) and his background is working in special needs schools in the UK and he is also a keen bird watcher who wrote about how beneficial this hobby has been on his mental health (depression) in his last book, Bird Therapy. As he writes, he shares how his ADHD shaped his journey writing the book and the finished book.

Contributors are from: Defra, Natural England, Environmental Agency, RSPB, National Trust, Wildlife Trusts, Woodland Trust, small conservation organisations, academics / lecturers, freelance ecological consultants, CIEEM, forest schools, and more.

Has a nice, diverse range of voices. I particularly love how Joe mentions people’s different communication preferences when he interviewed them and the adjustments he and others made for each other. 💚

(If you are a member of CIEEM you can get 20% off now until October.)

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