Category: Neurodiversity

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Mothers Did Not Play With Their Children For 99% of Human History

Ask the Mountains

Why the absence of autonomous, multi-age playgroups makes parenting suck. (This is a reshare of Elena Bridgers’ article).

Sámi mommy breastfeeding toddler in Tromsdalen, Tromsø, Arctic Sápmi, while smoking some tobacco.

“Fasten your seatbelts, ladies and (two or three) gentlemen, because we are about to dive into the my absolute favorite topic of all time: the importance of multi-age playgroups in hunter-gatherer societies. Honestly, I get more excited about this stuff than a dog whose owner just said the word “walk.” Back when I first started reading about motherhood in hunter-gatherer societies there were two things that made me go, “ohhhhhhhh, now I get it.” One is the longer interbirth intervals that probably characterized most of human history (as I wrote about here) and the other is the critical important of multi-age playgroups as a source of substitute childcare for mothers. It was a total epiphany for me, and I suspect you may have the same reaction, because once you see how this used to work, how human childhood evolved to work, it just makes so much sense. Over millions of years, we basically evolved a perfect system involving care of children by children, in a way that was wholly compatible with their own need for play, and that we have entirely abandoned in the modern context, to the detriment of all.

But in order for you to understand why this still matters for mothers in the modern context, I need to tell you my own story about just how much I hate playing with my children (even though I love them deeply) and how misguided I was about the role of a “good mom” and what she owes her kids…

I’d rather stick a fork in my eyeball than play pirates.

Only after I had begun doing deep research on hunter-gatherer societies did I realize that this is exactly how things were supposed to work. Children are supposed to play with other children. It was never meant to be the mother’s job. But trapped as we are in single-family homes where playmates can be hard to come by, parents often end up filling this tedious and time-consuming role…[..]”

Read the full article here.

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A colourful death – Something greater

Ask the Mountains


If you knew that one day someone would be helped and inspired by exactly the trial you are going through now, would it then be easier to bear? I believe that the knowledge/thought that another person can benefit from your story; your experiences and how you solved problems and trials makes the burden lighter in a way; because then you are doing something for something greater than yourself. There is a self-sacrifice in the picture that gives momentum, and you no longer think only of “me and mine,” but also of the well-being of others. I don’t know if this makes sense – I think it’s the autumn and the colourful death and devotion of the plants to the cycle of the seasons that made me write this 🤭🍂💛

-M

Amrita Mandala, Art, Awareness, Beauty, Bodhidharma, Buddhism, Chronic illness, Culture, Dharma, Dzogchen, Everyday life, Japan, Jesus, Mahayana, Meditation, Mental health, Migraine, Motherhood, Neurodiversity, Neurological, Sápmi, Soto zen, Spirituality, Tantric, Taoism, Vajrayana, Yoga, Zen, Zen buddhism

How to Pray | Poem + video

Ask the Mountains

In a world that teaches
me first, me only, me always,
prayer is a quiet rebellion.
It begins with a bow,
a loosening of the fist
that clutches at control.

It dares to whisper:
I am not the center.
I am not the crown of all things.
I am a thread in the tapestry,
a note in the chorus,
a servant of something vast.
Something holy.

Prayer is an act of defiance
against the tyranny of ego,
against the hunger that never fills.
It topples the empire of the small self
and builds, stone by stone,
a sanctuary for all beings.

In prayer, we betray the myth of isolation.
We kneel not in defeat,
but in devotion and love.

Prayer is rebellion,
the most radical kind,
for it wages war not on others,
but on the walls within,
until only openness remains.

Through the power of prayer,
we can align ourselves with life and light itself. What a miracle.

We can call for the aid
of both ancient and recent Masters,
Beyond space and time.
Their luminous wisdom and boundless
compassion can touch our hearts as intimately as the Sun’s warmth opens flowers in the morning mist.

Prayer is not just mere words.
It is the trembling of the soul reaching for our wholeness, a candle lit in the dark, a river bending toward the ocean.
Prayer is tantra and transformation.

-M

Awareness, Health, Neurodiversity, Neurological

Stammering and how it affects me

Ask the Mountains

“Stuttering or stammering, in its simplest form, is any disruption to speech fluency. This could be repetitions, prolongations, or blocks and may occur anywhere in the word or phrase. Nerves or anxiety does not cause stuttering. Stuttering is a neurophysiological disorder. Oftentimes, it is the stuttering that causes anxiety.”

“Stuttering is believed to occur due to dysfunctional blood flow in certain areas of the brain.”

How stuttering has manifested for me:

Blockages; going mute. Also known as stutter blocks. I’ll know exactly what I want to say, but I physically cannot get the words out. They are stuck in my chest, head or throat/jaw. This has made it quite hard to communicate a lot of the time, and to make friends or be social in general. I often rehearse sentences in my head, and get overjoyed if I manage to say it out loud with fluency. This takes a lot of effort, and is why I prefer writing or any other form of communication. I also struggle some with phone calls.

The blocks makes me say “Uummm” a lot too, to kind of fill in the time because I really want to get the next word out, which is quite stressful. I do fear it makes me sound dumb or slow, and it does kill my confidence, especially if I am with people I want to talk a lot with or I know I have a lot to say on the topic we are discussing. I usually have no problem talking to animals, close old friends, chant buddhist mantras or in certain situations where I don’t feel a pressure to say anything. But those situations are rare, and I would love to learn how to “unblock” my speech, which is why I am doing speech therapy too,

Do you have a speech problem, and/or something similar? Let me know how you deal with it.

Thank for reading

Monica xx

Skulsfjord, 2019