First, Add No Shame

You’ve Always Been This Way is a column written by Taylor Harris, a late-diagnosed neurodivergent woman and 1980s preschool dropout, who identifies every moment from her past that filled her with shame, and mutters, “Yep, that tracks. I see it all now.”

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This morning, on a walk around my neighborhood with two poorly-behaved poodle mixes, I stopped once again for the baby pine cone. This one already dropped and disentangled, waiting at the border of a small garden.

I remembered then: Writing can be small and wrapped, layered and touching, tight and nearly eternal in depth. Hold it between two fingers, hide it within a cove of denim beside your house key. No one carries loose change anymore. By chance or memory, retrieve it before laundry day, and roll it in your palms or set it on your desk, let it stand alone as living amidst a sea of Paper Mate markers and fineliner pens. See it as you write or grade papers, as you read comments from one guy who shapeshifts from workshop to workshop, changes his name and interests, but his ways are the same. You know the one.

But what can he possibly say about the pine cone?

“Haven’t we seen this before?”

“So what?”

“Pretty language, but what’s at stake?”

Kindly tell the gentleman from Dartmouth or the Carolinas, or wherever they make men with loud thoughts, he’s missing the point. And what’s at stake is always life, or beauty, you’re not sure yet.

I had a plan, you know, for this column. A funny-ish opening, a long and rambling middle, a punchy end, to make you remember my words. The pine cone destroyed it. Blame nature while you can. The midterms are coming, and nine more years until AI bots destroy us.

I had this unwieldy plan-like plan, a foam sword of an outline, because I thought I needed it. Thought if I wrote in September, the month we tell everyone to hug a friend and call 988, when we post statistics and even worse statistics and the worst statistics for autistic people who thought they were just born wrong to live wrong and die wrong, then I should, at least, paint you a better world with words:

Not this, but that, I’d say. Here, a better way!

If I’m going to complain or tell you “I get it,” or “I’m okay right now, but I see why this happens,” or “I worry about my children most,” then Dartmouth guy, Bradley, the judge in my head who’s too educated to say “Go back to wherever you came from,” says, “If you don’t like it, then find a solution.”

The good news is, screw Bradley. Today I found a pine cone, stuck it in my front pocket, and texted one of my neurodivergent fairy godsisters. She took it to Reddit, the promised land of rabbit trails, and you already know….

This baby cone, the same length as the top of my house key, is likely full-grown. Its whole world wrapped inside itself—papery scales reaching up, always on the verge, or maybe content to be slanted and at rest. Perhaps this pine cone wouldn’t recover from Tide pods and a spin cycle, but it’s sturdy enough to one day house a spider, maybe a slug if it can handle the texture of slime. (Could never be me, bro. Slugs are chopped.)

I’d presumed this entire reproductive organ, this fierce protector of seeds, to be a lost or premature baby, something cute to hold and behold, when, really, she carries in her slight frame the stuff of fairy tales and forests, of shelters for the unhoused beings of her world—no questions asked, no judgment passed, no gated communities or HOAs to pose as victims of encampments. I’d almost missed her completely, should probably throw her back to the brick-lined garden.

I made her a reminder of beauty for myself, and she’s quite unconcerned with my need to slow down and notice against the hungry winds of productivity.

Yet she did remind me. Seeing her narrow and edgy form, I remembered I don’t have to know everything to tell you one thing. Do you know how doctors learn to “First, do no harm”? When it comes to suicide and being autistic, when we know that feeling like a burden and not belonging can take people out, allow me to keep it small and tight:

First, add no shame.

Today, I don’t want to detail how schools have fumbled my children, adding shame to my seeds instead of covering them. I don’t want to get into why parents saying, “As long as my kid can live independently,” is like saying, “As long as my baby’s healthy.” I don’t want to break down what it’s like to operate with a smile out there but sense a thousand times inside that you’re “doing it wrong” again.

Instead, I’ll tell you about my day: I walked two dogs—one big, one little—both an ever-loving fluffy mess of nerves. They stood still long enough for me to pick up this baby-but-big-girl pine cone. It’s not thee answer. She’s her own, remember. Still, I need you to behold her stacked crevices, how her top puckers like a mouth, a woodland-inspired O’Keefe. This gorgeous one, from an eastern hemlock, the users say, one I overlooked for forty-three years. See her and tell your inner critic or boss or loved one to quiet down, that what you have to offer this September and thereafter is enough. There’s no shame in that.