Refocus: Carrie & David Grant On A Neurospicy Family Christmas

0:00Carrie Grant: Welcome to The Hidden 20%, our neurodiversity charity on a mission to rewrite the future for people who think differently. Together with you and an eclectic range of brilliant guests, we can break the cycle of silence by smashing outdated stereotypes, exposing the myths and sharing the most up-to-date truths about what it really means to be just different, not deficient. The best way you can help is really simple. Subscribe so you never miss an episode and if you can donate to our charity through the link below. Enough preamble. I'm Ben, your host. Let's get into today's episode.

0:47Carrie Grant: Carrie, we were we were sat here. This is like the first recording that we did.

0:54Ben Branson: I know, it was so exciting.

0:55Carrie Grant: It's now Christmas time, a year's gone by.

0:58Ben Branson: You've won awards in the meantime.

1:00Carrie Grant: We have won some awards in the meantime and you had just been diagnosed autistic. How has your year been, your first year being aware that you're autistic?

1:12Ben Branson: Do you know what? In one way, I feel the same as I did when I first got diagnosed and even before I got diagnosed. But I think the one thing that I would say I have noticed in myself is just I'm a lot more gracious towards myself because I'm really sociable and I love people. But I'm also aware that there comes a point where I need to turn the switch off. And I'm really aware of that now of how often I do have a big group gathering in my house. It's like a community center. But then when I'm done, I'm done. And rather than thinking, stay the extra half an hour till everyone's left, I don't need to do that.

1:55Ben Branson: I am actually going to just say goodbye and walk upstairs an hour before everyone's meant to leave. And they can carry on, but I need to remove myself at this point. And in the past, I would have thought of myself as being like, why are you so weak? Why can't you just keep going? What is your problem? And now I'm like, no, this is, I did great. I did four hours and knocked it out of the park socially. And now I do need to just be on my own. and that's okay.

2:20Carrie Grant: Yeah, and that's totally okay. And so David, how have you experienced Carrie in the last year?

2:25David Grant: I'd say if anything's changed in the last year, it's been that Carrie, rather than saying I'm this, I'm that, I'm the other, is able to say this is a characteristic of autism and that's fine. That's me. This is perfectly normal for me. Rather than trying desperately to find a reason for it and then fix it or not be it. Just be able to say, you know, this is where I'm at at the moment.

2:55Ben Branson: Legitimizes some of the things I feel.

2:58David Grant: It doesn't even, I think it's more than that. I think it explains a lot to you about you. And, you know, so nothing's really changed except, as Carrie said, I think that Carrie is probably less judgmental of herself.

3:14Carrie Grant: Do you think your relationship is better? because of it?

3:19Ben Branson: That's such a good question. Is our relationship better? I think that we're understanding one another through neurodivergence. Like a lens. It's a new lens. And so there are times when I find myself saying to David, I'm autistic and I'm quite annoyed and uppity. Whereas in the past, I probably would have just turned that in on myself. Whereas now he's more likely to get me saying, what are you expecting of me? I'm autistic. but equally I'm understanding David who has been on a year and a half waiting list for an ADHD assessment I realize how hard life can be for David actually so I think there's a learning about one another in a slightly different context in a way we are who we always were and yet in some

4:06David Grant: ways because we have an explanation for who we always were we're learning about each other and seeing that things that we may have thought were idiosyncrasies or quirks are just perfectly normal

4:17Carrie Grant: let's then talk about some organization and structure and traditions around christmas oh love christmas tell me about christmas in your household i don't even know where to begin

4:30Ben Branson: with christmas in our household i think what happened was when david and i got married 36 six years ago we started to invite people to our home who didn't have family to go to so we kind of made up a family and then we're like that's our family as well as our family family and that grew and grew and grew and alongside that David had also had another part of his West Indian upbringing where they had like a big West Indian day on Boxing Day so what happened was those two things joined together and now we have about over 20 on Christmas Day and we have 120 on Boxing Day.

5:12Carrie Grant: Yeah. I'm scared. Right. That's great.

5:18Ben Branson: But you know, given that we're both neurodivergent, I don't know what part of our brains loves it. Yeah, absolutely love it. So there must be, you know, every autistic person is different. I absolutely love having loads. I love the house filled with people and people enjoying themselves makes me feel great.

5:35Carrie Grant: When my wife and I moved house and we did a load of work to the house and our goal was Christmas, ready for Christmas because all the family are coming. My wife's brother lives in Australia. They were coming over. So there was this big deadline and I'm going to do the roast and I really want everyone there. I hadn't been diagnosed at this point, but I was really up for that. and I'm really antisocial actually and so I kind of love the idea of what you've just said but the reality terrifies me of that many people and that much organisation and that much sensory but you have 120 people over to the house

6:24David Grant: and a lot of them, what's great is people bring food, people go what can we bring so we cook a load of food

6:31Ben Branson: We cook loads. We're cooking for days before.

6:34David Grant: And then people bring. And then we've got members of the family who are DJs. We sit around the grand piano. We sing Christmas carols. We eat loads of food. We drink loads of drink. We have a party afterwards and we dance. We start about three in the afternoon. And by about midnight, everyone's gone home. It finishes early.

6:56Ben Branson: I need to go to bed. Half past ten, I go to bed. That's a late night for me. Yeah.

7:01Carrie Grant: That's a very late night.

7:03David Grant: But it's a really interesting, it's become a tradition so much so that we're seeing a very gradual handover to the next gen. It's been happening at our house for 20 plus years. Before that, it was at my aunt and uncle's house. It started in the late 50s. It started with a group of five guys whose wives and children were back in Jamaica. They'd come over, sort of part of the Windrush generation, at the invitation of the government to help rebuild. And it got to Christmas and they were like, really lovely. So they got together on Boxing Day. And then every Boxing Day it just built and built and built and built from five people to 120 plus.

7:42David Grant: But the point is that Carrie and I, we have it at our house and we take it on and we embrace it. And then when it's over, it's just like we have pyjama. We shut the doors.

7:52Ben Branson: Do not knock on my door. On the 27th.

7:54David Grant: Forget that.

7:55Ben Branson: Forget it. Okay.

7:56David Grant: But we have another Christmas tradition on the 27th, which is it's just the family and anything that's left over. Carrie is the greatest pie maker, one of the best pastry chefs I know. She is brilliant.

8:13Ben Branson: I love making moments that will be remembered. I feel like memory is so important when, you know, eventually we'll pass. And what will our children hold? What will they be left holding? and they will have so many memories from Christmas Eve. We go out into the little shed. We go into the little shed and we do the Christmas story. That's the beginning of Christmas. It's like no presents.

8:36David Grant: Wrapped up and shivering with candlelight. It's not about presents.

8:39Ben Branson: It's not about all the partying that's going to happen in a couple of days. It's just about what is Christmas really about? So they understand that. They tell the story. It's all candlelit. It's like really lovely. Just the family. The next day's presents and close family and then the craziness of Boxing Day and then Pi Day and all of those are I'm really hoping memories that our children will carry with them for their lives and continue and maybe continue maybe they won't but that they will know this is how I grew up I grew up with my parents engaged gathering I don't know I think sometimes whatever you had in your childhood you either want to copy it or you want to go the opposite opposite direction and for me my mum didn't like having people at our house because the house was always so tidy and we're a little bit more raggedy around the corners and I really love that it's so

9:32Carrie Grant: it's about people and not stuff you know I am often in my household called militant that is the phrase that is used because i i like a plan yeah i like repetition i like routine i like to get on with things you know of like let's get it done let's come on let's speed this up yeah and i like taking action so it's like come on are we gonna do this or not or what is the plan yeah So, yeah, I can be accused of being a bit militant at times, but then I deliberately at times don't make a plan. I don't take, I don't lean in and impose my absolute need to have a plan on the rest of the family.

10:25Ben Branson: I'm very similar to you. I like a plan. I like it all to be worked out. one of the things that crisis in my family has birthed in me just because it's been so difficult is to enter into that liminal space to enter into a space that isn't dualistic and black and white to enter a space that is unknown to enter a space that is so uncomfortable that you have to learn comfort in discomfort that you have to learn contradictions sit alongside each other since entering that space and it was crisis that pulled me into it i love sitting in this space when i first was pushed into it into this space that didn't feel safe or secure it's so disordered i hated it and my big thing is how do i get out of this now i'm not saying how do i get out of it i'm saying i'm setting up home here yeah this actually is the place where i need to learn how to live and since I've lent into that life just feels so much more exciting it's much more in the present it's much more in process it's much more anything could happen and that's okay yeah and then becomes a security in knowing that is that anything could happen I don't know how I managed

11:42Carrie Grant: to find that one in my head but my brain has worked that one out I feel incredible safety and and reassurance that I now know who I am. So I now know how my brain works. Yes. And therefore I can start to understand why I react to certain situations or why I think the way I think. So that kind of feel, I feel like I've sort of taken a mask off but got a bit of armour on. Yes. To kind of go, I feel better equipped to deal with life. Yeah. I feel a bit more grounded. That's like, that's amazing. It's enlightening, isn't it?

12:18Ben Branson: It's enlightenment. It is.

12:19Carrie Grant: That's why hearing that you're on a waiting list and have been for over 18 months and we know it can be up to 10 years for ADHD assessments in parts of the country, it's just like, it's not okay. No, it's really not okay. Because it's not about a label. And okay, the aftercare is dreadful and there isn't that post support. But my God, just can we give people the keys? Yes. They can go and find the door. They've had to adapt. They've had to change. they've had to figure stuff out yes they're not they're used to that yes of the hidden 20 percent

12:53David Grant: if i had a new year's resolution it would be that more and more of the hidden 20 percent would grow comfortable with celebrating who they are rather than feeling a pressure to conform to the world around them to actually to to express the world within them rather than trying to fit in the world

13:14Carrie Grant: around them i mean this guy get him on the radio he's so good he's so good and what do you both hope happens or changes in the world of neurodivergence and society oh such a good

13:33David Grant: question i hope that in the world of neurodivergence it becomes much less about people thinking they're in the center and neurodivergent people are on the margins but realizing actually neurodivergent people are in the center of their own world and there is more than one world there's more than one perspective there's more than one viewpoint there's more than one outlook and there's more than one definition of success and i really hope that neurodivergent people feel more and more as though they have the agency to redefine what they are and who they are and what success within the context of their own lives looks like to them, that it doesn't have to look like anyone else.

14:33Carrie Grant: that's it for today's episode of the hidden 20 % but just before you go a favor the hidden 20 % is a charity and we do this to bring you the truth the latest research and the real stories that matter so if this episode spoke to you then please hit subscribe and if you can donate via the link below. Finally a big shout out to you all for listening and our brilliant team who make this all happen. Phoebe, Charlie, Kristen, James, John and the guys at TYX Studios we'll see you next time.