Personal reflection on Queen's passing
Our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Co-ordinator Helen Ellis reflects on the past week’s events, the impact that the Queen’s death has had on her as an autistic person and shares some advice on coping
The past week has been an incredibly unsettling and upsetting one for a lot of people. I’ve tried multiple times to put into words exactly what I am feeling about the Queen’s passing and the change of monarch but each time I find myself getting even more confused about how I feel about it all!
I suppose at the heart of it is a real sense of seismic change which I am not used to. I have learnt how to cope with big changes at work, in society, in government and even globally but this one, it’s in a very different way because of how long Her Majesty was on the throne for.
My elderly grandparents were only 18 years old when King George VI died and the Queen became the country’s monarch. Only it wasn’t just our country she became monarch for, and we cannot in all the public mourning and celebration of her life forget the deeply impactful history of the British Empire and all the suffering that came from it.
Yet it feels like a completely different world to even think about, ‘the British Empire’ conjures images of Victorian England and even thinking about ascension/coronation years seems alien to me – there is precious little that 2022 has in common with 1952, although that’s not necessarily a bad thing, especially in terms of autism.
To think about the length of time the Queen was on the throne is mind-blowing really, and it’s something I have been ruminating on a lot the past week – how much has changed in those 70 years, in the UK and the whole world.
For individuals personally, it is been a lifetime of change - my grandparents have gone from fresh-faced teenagers newly in love, to octogenarians who are currently having their own discussions about end of life wishes and potential funeral plans. Because the Queen’s reign has been a lifetime of service, a lifetime that exceeded a great many other people’s lives, something that is powerfully at the front of my mind as we enter the 132nd week of a pandemic that has forever changed so many lives.
And in amongst all these swirling feelings and thoughts on life, death, the passing of time and global change is a strange grief for simpler times. A bittersweet longing for a time when Her Majesty seemed an eternal figure, when I did not know what loss or bereavement was, when life did not seem so goddamn hard.
Change of this scale fundamentally shakes us because it forces us to confront what change means to us, the deep fear of not knowing what will happen next, how other people are going to react to new things, the loss of predictability and comforting familiarity.
The Queen was a tangible link to our past, a direct connection to times we should never forget but a beacon of hope for a better future for many of us. I grew up admiring a woman who always seemed to be happy to be wherever she was - and as I got older and learnt about being an adult, being autistic and masking myself, my admiration for her grew even more, as did my love of the wonderful colour coordination of her outfits!
This week has been hard for many reasons but in writing this I have come to realise that my biggest fear right now is how quickly people seem to want everyone to adapt to the change and ‘get back to normal’. It is an uncomfortable feeling that unfortunately is not new to me as an autistic person, more times than I can count I have been belittled for not processing a change fast enough or for still struggling with something different days, weeks, months after everyone else has dealt with it’.
There will be many people who see no reason for anything to change right now and are angry about alterations to tv/sport/travel being forced on them. But there are equally a lot of people like me who are really struggling to compute exactly what all this means to us, to process the change on a national/societal level while also dealing with personal feelings and memories that such a high-profile death can bring up.
People need to be given the chance to express their feelings, the time to process their emotions, and the space to work out what it means to them.
I do not really have any advice to other autistic people at this point in addition to what we have put together, except the standard bit of advice I always offer – be kind to yourself, and be kind to others, no-one ever truly knows what someone else is going through at any point.
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