A month ago, I had surgery to remove my cataracts and replace the lenses in both my eyes. I now live in a small bubble of visual clarity — about a two-metre circumference — and my brain organisation needs a little more time to help my mind and eyes recalibrate their alliance (and reduce the blur).
At this stage, driving at night while it’s raining, feels like exposure therapy — where the eye sees one thing, and the brain sorts another — in a bid to avoid the impending trauma of an accident.
And while I am in awe of modern medicine, humbled at how fast I am already healing, and acutely aware of my privilege in even being able to have this operation, the term ‘brain organisation’ has resurfaced a few times and commanded my attention.
The first time I’d heard of it was when I interviewed Louise for a podcast episode titled 🎧 Understanding Neurodivergence, Trauma & Self-Regulation Through Different Decades
It’s a bit of a mouthful, isn’t it?
Louise was referring to her brother, who had navigated many challenging issues while growing up in a time where he had significant differences in how he viewed and interacted with the world around him.
It’s only in hindsight, she can see that he had autism, which she describes as a brain organisation that shows up in many different ways — each as individual as the person themselves.
I had the pleasure of sitting down with Louise, a woman whose journey truly embodies the intersection of lived experience and professional expertise. We spoke about her being adopted, losing loved ones, becoming a professional dancer, and even overcoming abuse.
She later became a devoted carer for her two neurodivergent children — well before the world at large had a reference, language or even an understanding of the sensitivities and needs of children with neurological differences.
What struck me most during our conversation is that Louise was ahead of her time.
She didn’t wait for society to catch up; she learned to understand her children’s needs long before ‘neurodivergent’ had even entered common parlance. She raised her children with a deep awareness of the nervous system, trauma, and how inherited wounds can manifest.
Louise’s story is one of resilience, love, and the power of empathy, and if there was a patron saint of self-regulation, she’d probably be one of them.
My life has always been a blend of optical illusions and organisational confusions — like seeing straight while thinking sideways. It might be another way to describe a personality that’s a little left of centre — perhaps even part of my charm, at least to those who know me well.
A friend with ADHD once told me he feels exactly the same — every single day. Author Sarah Wilson, who lives with anxiety and bipolar disorder, describes these conditions as a collection of “character traits rather than flaws” — an evolutionary quirk that means she doesn’t play it safe, or get held back by convention.
But when it comes to healing from pain, overcoming trauma, or learning to embrace your neurointricacies for a world that is mostly construed for the neurotypical, it can be a constant practice to rewire your reality to find your focus again, much like dispatches from a control room, where a brain is reorganising itself in real-time for adventures in perception and processing.
It’s a bit like pressing Ctrl+Alt+Perceive, because occasionally, rebooting your vision means rethinking everything, as sometimes the brain has its own filing system, and it too is as unique as the individual.
See you soon, (and I bet you’re even more glorious now that I can actually SEE you..)
P.S. Here’s the link to our podcast interview 🎧