By Thomas Delahunt & Dr Chloe Farahar
 For The Poetic Nursing Heart

“When trees grow together, nutrients and water can be optimally divided among them all so that each tree can grow into the best tree it can be.” Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees (2016)

In The Butterfly Farmer, I explored safety as something grown, not built nurtured through relationship rather than prescribed. A cocoon is only safe because the world around it allows it to be. It is a space of quiet transformation, a place of suspension and trust.

Lately, I’ve been thinking again about trees and their canopy, how they share the light within their branches. It recalls Peter Wohlleben’s words, and it reminds me of Chloe’s work, alive with connection, awareness, and care. Beneath the soil, roots meet fungi, fungi meet stone, and stone meets water. There is no hierarchy, only a web, each thread alive to the other’s pulse. And perhaps that is the truest form of equality: the unseen brilliance that binds us. The mycelium beneath mirrors the stars above, weaving light and life in opposite directions. Between them, we learn what it means to belong to both earth and sky.

As I sit with that image, I think of Fred again’s line:  “I found you, the one who cares.”
 Listen here

Isn’t that what we’re really doing, in the classroom, in the forest, in the poems and pauses between words? We are finding the ones who care, those who see us not for productivity but for our pulse. To build a canopy where light is shared freely, where safety grows from reciprocity.

Safety, however, does not appear by accident. It must be made. It takes intention, humility, and often a quiet struggle. Hatred breeds hatred, as La Haine reminds us; if we are to stop that cycle, we must plant something tender, radical, and alive. This work – this Middle-earth battle for inclusion – is fought not with swords, but with care, art, and listening. It is a battle of roots, not power.

Soon, Chloe and I will meet in a space I have held as safe a quiet view offered by Lizzie, a place where reflection, connection, and understanding can unfold fully. It is a space to witness tendencies, to explore pulse and presence, to discover light shared in its most tender form. There, with Steve capturing the moment on video, the canopy we share will take shape not only in thought, but in sight, sound, and feeling.

And so, I will ask Chloe: what does the canopy mean to you? How do you find and share light within the academic forest? What sustains your roots when the soil feels thin?

And I wonder, quietly, what spaces will I find next, beneath the canopy of those who care?

Response to Tom: Chloe, Sharing the Canopy

Tom, your canopy metaphor resonates. It reminds me of the difference between two worlds I’ve lived in: the “culture of autism” and Autistic culture. One traumatised and pathologised me. The other helped heal.

The “culture of autism” gave me a vocabulary of deficit. Before diagnosis even, my Autistic behaviours and way of being were assaulted. The pre-diagnosis and then diagnosis labels were etched into my skin with black markers by others.  “Persistent impairment in reciprocal social communication” – a warning label, not a description of my experience. I was communicating. They just weren’t listening in my language.

For years, we can exist in limbo. Too Autistic for neurotypical spaces – even when we mask. But also, too alienated by the pathology narrative to seek out other Autistic people. Who wants to gather around shared symptoms? Who finds community in a checklist of what’s “wrong”?

So, we drift. Not just alone, but unseen. Existing in translation, never in our native tongue.

And then we find Autistic space.

Spaces where finger flicking means “anxiety” without explanation. Where someone could see another’s near-invisible rocking and know “meltdown imminent” without needing a performance of distress.

We’re writing the Autistic dictionary. Where they wrote “special interests,” we write “specialisations” or “dedicated interests.” Where they diagnosed “high-functioning,” we recognise “unsupported.” Where they labelled “severe,” we see “distressed Autistic human.”

This isn’t semantics. It’s survival. Language shapes reality. And when they call us “people with autism” – that careful separation – they’re telling us they’d like us better without autism than with. But I am Autistic. Capital A. Like a people. Like a culture. Like something worth capitalising.

Healing from the “culture of autism” doesn’t mean becoming less Autistic. That was their goal, never ours.

It means recognising that the pathology was never in us – it was in the narrative wrapped around us and used against us.

When I’m thriving, I’m still Autistic. When I’m struggling, it’s not my neurology that’s failed – it’s the environment that’s failed to accommodate it.

And what worries non-Autistic researchers and diagnosticians most? Our gathering. Our refusal to see ourselves through their lens anymore.

Beneath that canopy, those marker labels that seeped into me – “cold,” “standoffish,” “unapproachable” – begin to lose their bite. Among fellow Autistic people, those words are shared, understood, and reframed. What was once isolation becomes connection. The canopy is where we scrub away the Sharpie tattoos of stigma, together, even if the residue remains.

Every Autistic person who moves from shame to pride weakens their narrative. Every connection we make breaks isolation tactics. Every space we create proves their “treatments” unnecessary.

We’re not asking for acceptance anymore. We’re building our own space.

And in these spaces – these canopies – we don’t just survive. We thrive.

So, the canopy means to me: healing and refuge. It is the place where Autistic identity replaces pathology, where community replaces isolation, and where culture replaces stigma. It is the space where we learn not how to be indistinguishable from others, but how to be unapologetically Autistic, together.

It’s not the absence of struggle. It’s understanding its source. It’s not fixing what’s “broken.” It’s recognising we never were.

And under this canopy – whether in a classroom, a forest, or an internet forum – we find each other.

Where Chloe has written on Autistic identity, culture, community, and space for Autistic well-being and other related topics:

References (Chloe)

Farahar, C. (2021, June 25). A rose by any other name would smell…of stigma (or, the psychologically important difference between being a “person with autism” or an Autistic person). Retrieved from Unit for Stigma Research, University College London: https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/stigma-research/2021/06/25/a-rose-by-any-other-name-would-smellof-stigma-or-the-psychologically-important-difference-between-being-a-person-with-autism-or-an-autistic-person-by-dr-chloe-farahar/

Farahar, C. (2021, May 13). How can we enable neurodivergent academics to thrive? Retrieved from London School of Economics and Political Science: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducation/2021/05/13/how-can-we-enable-neurodivergent-academics-to-thrive/

Farahar, C. (2022). Chapter Nineteen – Autistic identity, culture, community, and space for wellbeing. In D. Milton, & S. Ryan (Eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Autism Studies (1st ed.). Routledge.

Farahar, C. (In Print 2025). The Farahar and Foster Three-Dimensional Autistic Space: Dismantling the ‘autism spectrum’ and centring observer bias in the missing, dismissing, and misdiagnosis of Autistic people. In R. S. Herbert (Ed.), Beyond Autistic stereotypes: New perspectives on identities, gender, and experience. Oxford University Press.

Farahar, C., & Bishopp-Ford, L. (2020). Stigmaphrenia©: Reducing mental health stigma with a script about neurodiversity. In D. Milton (Ed.), The neurodiversity reader: Exploring concepts, lived experience and implications for practice. UK: Pavilion Publishing and Media Ltd.. T. (2019). Contact sans contact: Investigating a novel experiential intergroup contact approach to reducing mental health stigma. [Doctoral thesis, University of Kent]. Kent Academic Repository. Retrieved from https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/81290

Farahar, C., & Bishopp-Ford, L. (2020). Stigmaphrenia©: Reducing mental health stigma with a script about neurodiversity. In D. Milton (Ed.), The neurodiversity reader: Exploring concepts, lived experience and implications for practice. UK: Pavilion Publishing and Media Ltd.

Farahar, C., & Foster, A. (2021). #AutisticsInAcademia. In N. Brown (Ed.), Lived Experiences of Ableism in Academia: Strategies for Inclusion in Higher Education (pp. 197-215). Bristol, UK: Policy Press.

References (Tom)

Carello, J. & Butler, L.D., 2015. Practicing Trauma-Informed Care: A Guide for Teachers and Practitioners. [Publisher if known].

Herman, J.L., 1992. Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence – From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. New York: Basic Books.

La Haine, 1995. La Haine [Film]. Directed by Mathieu Kassovitz. France: Canal+.

Wohlleben, P., 2016. The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate. London: William Collins.

Fred again.., 2021. Kyle (I Found You) [Song]. On Actual Life 2 (February 2 – October 15 2021). London: Again.. Ltd. Link