I went no contact with my parents for six months 14 years ago. They reached out to me.

I have to admit that at the time, my life was a mess and I needed to be able to unravel it. My mother refused to accept my PTSD diagnosis. I remember one day, she forced it out of me because I had to take the car to the mechanic, and I noticed something when I brought it home. She asked me why I went a certain way, and I didn't want to tell her, but my father did. She asked me why, and when i told her about flashbacks, she told me not to tell anybody else or they'd laugh at me. I said that my over the back neighbour's father wouldn't. He was a Vietnam War Veteran and also had PTSD.

My mother is a lot like her father, who was quite a hard man. I have memories of my mother sitting opposite me at my grandparents' place with a wooden spoon and hitting me if I talked or didn't use cutlery 100% correctly. Her father used to do the same things to her. Yes, I have some warm memories of my grandfather, such as helping him sterilise beer bottles to make his home brew, and I remember he stuck up for me, on April 16, 1984, when my brother, wanting my mother's attention, told my mother that I'd a visiting Telecom technician that my little brother was naughty.

My family dynamics were complicated, though. My paternal grandparents lived further away, and we didn't see them very often. They also gave me more when I was born (they gave me $50 and some toys), and they came and saw me at the hospital. My brother was a few weeks old before my grandparents saw him and they only gave him $20 and a blue elephant. I was never allowed to forget that.

My mother was abusive in that she blamed me for being abused at school and she would punish me for my neurodivergent quirks, like stimming and pacing.

One thing that my mother used to do that wasn't fair was, she wouldn't allow my grandparents to see me as someone who was growing older. I remember, when we went to visit them, I wanted to sit and talk to them, and one day, I told her that it wasn't fair that I wasn't allowed to and was sent out to play cricket in the summer and football in the winter, with my brother. My grandparents weren't the "children should be seen and not heard" type. But my mother said, "But you shouldn't be inside with your grandparents! You should be outside." I was 13, at the time. I was scared of going to see my grandparents by myself, lest I be accused of being disloyal. I remember, one year, my grandparents gave me $20, and they gave my brother something else, and my mother made me break the $20 and give my brother $10. If she had come to me and said, "Okay, for Christmas this year, I'll give your brother something extra to make up for it."

I still find myself in conflict with my mother as I have been taking positive steps. I remember, six years ago, she was carrying on about something I was doing, and she made the comment "Normal people don't do that," and I said, "Normal people don't exist." Her response was, "I wish I knew who was filling your head with this garbage." I said to her, "It's not garbage. It's a fact." It was her unwillingness to accept that society has moved on. I have had to put myself in charge of my own mental health and well-being and my mother has refused to accept my autism diagnosis until my sister-in-law intervened. Here, again, my mother is like her father. He was the type of person who, if you told him something, he'd say it was nonsense, yet he'd come home from the bowls club and say, "Oh, by the way, Bill Murray said that you should do this," when you'd been trying to tell him that for the past six months.

I tell people that growing as a person is more important than growing up and that maturity is elastic not static.