History is irrelevant without context.

My children are fed up with one of my favourite historiographical quotes, so apologies if you've heard this one before....

"A fact is like a sack. it won't stand up until you put something inside it." Pirandello.

Perspective is so fundamental to history, I would go even further.
Facts are irrelevant without context.

Today the Bristol Black Lives Matter protest saw a minority tear down the statue of Edward Colston, (a racist and a murderer by today's standards) and drag it to the river.

But Colston was a Bristol-born English merchant, philanthropist, slave trader, and Member of Parliament. He supported and endowed schools, almshouses, hospitals and churches in Bristol, London and elsewhere. His name is commemorated in several Bristol landmarks, streets, three schools and the Colston bun.

He was also a slave trader who made his fortune from the trade of human beings as commodities, and on reaching St Peter at the pearly gates, I've no doubt his deeds would have been considered carefully. In context.

Autism - a perspective

Someone on Twitter asked for a perspective on bringing up a child with autism. This was my reply:-

"Nothing is set in stone, which is probably just as well much of the time. It's like riding a rollercoaster. With fireworks. In the dark. But the fireworks are amazing and the troughs are never permanent :) xx" 

If someone had told me 14 years ago, when things were at their most bleak, that the journey I was on would change me forever in an amazing, profound and utterly fundamental way;

that it would take me places I never knew existed, never wanted to visit, but absolutely needed to go...

that I would still be fighting, living and breathing the battle begun so many years ago;

that I could never be more proud, despairing, distressed, elated and all-consumed over another's path, fiercely determined and completely terrified for their future,

then I would have been less afraid.

And most important of all that I would find a kindred spirit on this journey, that I would see myself looking back in the mirror and complete a lifetime's journey towards self recognition.

That would have been some perspective. I'm glad I have it now.

Autism is an alternative operating system. A different way forwards - not a dead end. The possibilities are endless.