Every year I write a review, and have done for much of the time I have been in Private Practice. It began as an extension of a journaling, taking stock and looking back over a year at things which had made me smile, think, feel proud, and positive. This does not of course mean the negative is erased, but rather like a gratitude journal it is a choice about where to put my focus and attention.

This idea of where one’s atttention goes, what is allowed to take up space, and the time to breath has been much in my mind this year. One thing I consciously decided, partly inspired by Dr Devon Price’s book Unmasking Autism was to not hide my joys, which meant embracing all of who I am. Whilst I am very happy to no longer to a rare autisitic therapist in a sea of neurotypicality I think I had still to take the final step of saying this is who I am, in all its glory. Self acceptance is always a process, a series of steps which lead us deeper into self knowlege and self love.

This Spring I was able to express this in two very different but equally wonderful ways. Helping to program, and run the online side of the Pink Therapy Annual Conference, on the intersections of neurodivesity and queerness felt like a real moment of saying, for so many of us, this is who we are. No longer having to hide or sublimate one aspect of identity for another. I also had the privilege of being able to celebrate twenty five years of Pink Therapy, and my pride in being a clinical associate of the largest queer therapy organisation in the UK only grows as anti LGBTQ hate grows. Every attack on the community, particularly the trans part of it, makes me more convinced that those of us with privileges of race, percieved gender conformity, age, among others, have to stand tall when we are able. We are the elders who must say; “You shall not pass” to the orcs and balrongs driven by hate and bigotry.

To then follow this with presenting a paper on grief in Lord of the Rings, at an international Tolkien conference is something the child me, who first entered Middle Earth with a battered copy of the Hobbit, would have not dared dream possible.

The longer I have the honour of working with people as they explore the most important questions we can ask of ourselves the more I come to believe our work is not to change people but to walk with them as they become who they were meant to be. Without trauma, without prejudice, without abuse, without the storms which can wreck, and the winds which can destroy, each of us carries this knowledge, even if we sometimes only have a dim and unconscious realisation of it. This can mean there is a need a to grieve, we cannot let go of who we might have been if the tears and anger are unfelt. However we cannot become who we are, our best selves, if we focus on changing that which is an unalterable part of us. Conversion therapy comes in many forms, but at hear it is always about change who you are to make yourself more acceptable to those who will not make space for you in the world.

There have been bike rides, and two book chapters, coming out in 2025 of which I am very proud, travel to new places and rediscovering of old ones, training and connection. Most of all though there has been joy, and space to say yes to all that I am and all that life brings.

I am aware this is a very different review to previous years, but how to summarise, this was a year of insight, of fear, and of unexpected joys, because I made space for those things to blossom and grow? As I look to 2025, I feel I have space to be, to breathe, to find joy, and to sit alongside others as they do the same, and as a legacy of a year I can think of nothing more important than that