Beany Brain: loving our jumping-bean brains!

Welcome to this issue of the Beany Brain! I hope today’s newsletter will bounce us up as we contemplate the upsides and challenges of being neurodivergent, a little beauty, some creativity, and just general yeehawesomeness.

Table of Contents

• Beany Brain: loving our jumping-bean brains!

  • Welcome to this issue of the Beany Brain! I hope t …

• Happy Birthday to Beany Brain!

  • One Year’s Worth of Jumping

    • Yeehawesome!

  • Wonderful Wednesday

  • Today’s Beany-full Summary:

Happy Birthday to Beany Brain!

It’s been one year of Beany Brain, folks!

So of course I baked a cake, and my dear husband sang the birthday song. He’s my biggest supporter and cheerleader. Thank you, Stephen.

And he took this photo:

It was such a hot day yesterday that I’m surprised my chocolate mousse cake didn’t melt. I certainly was.

Over the years I’ve started and given up on many projects. ADHD can be a catalyst and it can be a wall of awful. (A waffle? It can certainly involve waffling.)

Heck, it took me 14 years to do a cross-stitch of the church in Marlow where we had our UK wedding. I halted the project for years at a time in between feverish bouts of needling.

So when I start and regularly continue with something, I become inordinately proud of me wittle selfy.

I don’t know when Beany Brain will finish, but my first newsletter dropped on August 1, 2024. I had worked on teaching myself how to use Beehiiv, the newsletter platform, for a while beforehand, even taking a weekend course on newsletter-ing. It felt daunting and exciting at the same time.

Remembering back to that time, our air con downstairs in our main living/dining/kitchen was broken for 2 weeks, and our boys were overseas. Stephen and I were basically camping in our bedroom, which also functions as his office normally. We had dragged a table and a dining room chair up there for me to eat at and work at, and we used our fold-up outdoor chairs to make a little corner living room for ourselves for chillaxing moments. I tried to spend as little time as possible downstairs making food, so we had lots of salads with a protein like boiled eggs, beans, fish, or chicken.

It worked. We survived.

And that’s where Beany Brain was born.

Dear BB supporters, thank you for sticking with me this year. I’ve learned a lot about my own brain and I’ve felt loved and cheered on by your private messages about how it’s helped you too.

I trust that whoever is supposed to read it will read it and be encouraged.

My subscribers have doubled since the first newsletter, and I have had zero unsubscribes, which warms the cockles of my heart. If you have a friend who might be helped by BB, please do pass the link on: www.beanybrain.com.

Happy birthday to all of us, then, and hugs and blessings and extra beans too.

One Year’s Worth of Jumping

I’ve jumped from one subject to another the past year of Beany Brain, starting with focusing and filtering (if you’re neurotypical, your brain is better at focusing on what it needs to and filtering out the rest), and this quote from a study at Brown University:

That pretty much sums up my first year of Beany Brain so well: We’re complicated people and we can use workarounds, but also, we just really need to have grace for ourselves and each other.

That’s the basic pencil nub of it all.

Some of my favorite BB bits have included:

• Beany Brain #5: observing and questioning our intrusive thoughts (which unfortunately can go hand-in-hand with neurodivergencies). You can pop your intrusive thoughts into a cloud and watch them blow away, or you can do what I do and picture them being chomped by Ms. Pac-Man!

• Beany Brain #9: Spoon Theory. This has helped me tremendously. You can picture your output and input, your needs, as spoons. Have you run out of spoons for the day through social interactions or confrontations or loud noises? What will give you more spoons? A quick nap? A snack? A quiet reading time?

• Beany Brain #19: RSD (rejection sensitivity dysphoria). Being able to recognize and name why I deal with rejection in the way I do has been so extremely helpful. Knowing that it is connected with my neurodivergencies has given me a lot of relief.

• Beany Brain #32: Full of funnies. Sometimes we just need to guffaw.

• Beany Brain #37: recognizing the Wall of Awful and how to climb over it.

Well, folkses, my preciouses, again, happy one year together! I’m raising a cup of green tea to you all. Kanpai!

Yeehawesome!

Yeehawesome! is a happy-brain roundup in each issue of Beany Brain. What’s happening that’s good in brain land? What’s bringing me joy?

1. Here’s a sensory tip that might help you too: I still brush my teeth 3 times a day, but I’ve switched to flossing in the morning after breakfast. For years I’ve done it at night before bed, but I realized I was skipping sometimes because I was just too tired and it’s not something I enjoy, sensory wise. I’ve wised up, know myself better, and I’m officially a Morning Flosser now.

2. Ginger beer at The Ark Cafe here at the Methodist church in Marlow. It’s so good that the wasps like it too.

3. This video made me cry: Johnny in the Northeast of England is autistic and has an autistic child, so he understands how haircuts for autistic kids can be traumatic. He has a mobile barbershop business, meeting the kids where they are in their own surroundings and giving them the gift of time, up to 1.5 hours for each haircut, letting the kids go at their own pace and style. Absolutely amazing.

Beany Brownie Points and Extra Bonus Funniness

Wonderful Wednesday

Wonderful Wednesday was a day once a year in college when they would suddenly and surprisingly call off all classes and we’d play all day. The cafeteria provided special fun food and we’d do stuff outside like slip ‘n slides and jello wrestling in sumo suits. This segment of Beany Brain is dedicated to that memory of silliness and fun—no words, just a photo from the week that I’ve taken or found that reminds me to let the joy in. Since Beany Brain is published on Wednesday every week (at least, Wednesday in Japan), I hope you enjoy this Wonderful Wednesday.

Today’s Beany-full Summary:

• Happy birthday to Beany Brain!

• A rundown of a few of my favorite newsletter bits from the last year.

• Thank you for reading, BB subscribers!

• Go forth in Beany joy. What will help you feel yeehawesome this week?

Thank you for reading this installment of Beany Brain! You’re very welcome to hop on by any old time.

If you’re enjoying Beany Brain, please share with a friend or seventeen at www.beanybrain.com. Cheers big time!