The Electricity of Every Living Thing: A Woman’s Walk in the Wild to Find Her Way Home

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All this wonderful diversity is invisible in the winter, but in a couple of months, it will begin again: buds, blossom, and then apples which will fall to reveal naked branches.” Poetic and intensely evocative. I read this as a metaphor that she feels elements of her personality retract into hibernation, but then unveil when safe. For me, her most important reflection wasn’t when sight-seeing tall forests and sparkling lakes, but when sliding through wind, rain and mud… In anticipation of her 38th birthday, Katherine May set out to walk the 630-mile South West Coast Path. She wanted time alone, in nature, to understand why she had stopped coping with everyday life; why motherhood had been so overwhelming and isolating; and why the world felt full of expectations she couldn’t meet. She was also reeling from a chance encounter with a voice on the radio that sparked her realisation that she might be autistic. Go to work: grinding guilt at my absence. Stay at home: grinding guilt at my own impatience. I may as well enjoy myself while I’m feeling guilty.” The Electricity of Every Living Thing: A Woman’s Walk in the Wild to Find Her Way Home by Katherine May

She often puts other people’s happiness first, describing herself as a ‘people pleaser’. But performing for so long has caused her to lose a sense of what her ‘true’ wants and desires are. And, when new stresses arise with the arrival of her son Bert, Katherine feels her coping strategies are stretched, and worsened by tongue-wagging mothers. She fears re-living isolation and rejection as she finds many new situations deeply challenging,Perfect for fans of The Salt Path and The Outrun, this book is a life-affirming exploration of wild landscapes, what it means to be different and, above all, how we can all learn to make peace within our own unquiet minds. It’s so liberating, actually. And the big liberation of it is not just that I don’t have to go to the damn party. It’s also that somebody who loves me can see me for what I am, for the first time, because I haven’t always been able to own up to that, without providing an explanation for it, you know? And now I have the explanation.

Fake it until you make it’ is a story known by many women with Asperger’s… even the ones who don’t realize they’re on the spectrum. Katherine May, trying to make sense of difficulties, finds herself relating to the diagnosis. But not to the stereotype of Asperger’s, Yeah, I love that. And that’s something I think about a lot and talk about is this idea that our, our neurodivergent kids really demand that we do the deep inner work, if we want to have meaningful relationships with them, support them show up for them in the way that they need. We can’t just kind of glide through and do all the usual things, we have to to really lean in and do that work. And I also agree that it can lead to such a more meaningful existence and connection with our kids. An immersive audio drama based on the original memoir The Electricity of Every Living Thing by Katherine May. This series compels you to walk with Katherine on her journey along the line of the South West Coast. In this adaptation, Katherine’s story is recreated as an immersive sensory journey detailing a different way of being in the world -and becomes a different way of experiencing an audio drama. Underneath that carefully learned set of gestures is raw, boiling chaos. I cling to the right to cover.”To say I recognize myself in Katherine May would be an exaggeration, but there were undeniably points in this book where I found myself saying "But wait, that's not weird. I do that." And I, too, have turned to walking to deal with things that seem impossible to deal with. So I was very ready to find out how walking worked for May, and how she coped, in the end, with her diagnosis and the new reality that created (and maybe if she got any brilliant insights or healing from the walking). Nearly 40 years of learning to cope, to mask her distress, to pass as normal, results only in despair over her inability to be completely like other people, and it is that sense that she is somehow failing as a person that drives May to start her rather ambitious walking project. What finally leads her to end the project (and take to walking in a much more reasonable way) is the realization that while she needs to walk, to go out alone into nature, she doesn't need to have a goal--not anymore, not once she understands her needs are real. Yeah, this concept of actively accepting sadness is something that really resonates. I know, with many of my listeners, can you talk a little bit more about that, you know, that idea of leaning into pain? Well, not to the sadness, but not fully giving into it in a way that could maybe be harmful? When she described hiding in a quiet corner of the cafe while her husband and son enjoy a busy, noisy science museum, I really wanted to reach out and tell her that's okay--heaven knows I did it often enough! Introversion, sensory sensitivies--those things are real, and what makes me sad is how little help we get in understanding them (I didn't recognize my own sensory sensitivies for what they are until my oldest child got an Asperger's diagnosis and I began to read about it).