Blood of the Covenant

By Reverend Shelley Griffiths

31st January 2025

Towards the end of last year, I realised it was time to move house regardless of whether we sold the Ecohub (aka Ty Bliss) in Llandysul. Waiting on a buyer that could proceed left me in a state of transitional flux that intensified my neurodiverse inabilities to just wait and see how things panned out. 

Having lost both my beloved seventeen year old dog Tuki and my mother over the last couple of years turned what was meant to be a brief stay at the Eco-hub (after selling my rose covered cottage in order to buy our forever home at Vegan Valley) to over eighteen months in between my houseboat adventures. We fought hard to buy the adjoining property to our flagship project after I sold my home but sadly failed, so I was left flitting between Cardiff and Llandysul wondering what to do next. 

I feel like an over-entitled middle-class brat to say these things hit me hard when there are so many atrocities happening around the world, but suffering is suffering and we all feel it when tragedy strikes. To lose a parent, a best friend and a 'forever' home all inside eighteen months is bound to take its toll but I focussed hard on last year's grow season and kept myself too busy to give myself any real processing time. For me historically, that would have been a ticking time bomb for either disassociated burnout withdrawal or dramatic autistic meltdowns. Thankfully, I am more aware of the signs these days and am able to deal with mental health issues far better than I used to. Instead of imploding into depression or exploding into rage, I took a step back and worked out what I needed to do to cope better with what life was throwing at me. So that is what I did and am still doing, and I have to say, it's working out very well as I feel stronger and happier than I have in a long time. I stopped worrying what people thought about me and that has been liberating.

My newfound calmness could also be down to the fact that I may be out the other side of menopause. Finally! Just as puberty makes being autistic extra challenging, so too does 'the change'. Not many people talk about it, but the hormonal imbalances of menopause make the usual 'masking' autistic women tend to master over their lifetimes impossible to continue and is one of the reasons so many of us aren't diagnosed until later in life.

People find it strange to consider the idea of autistic adults having meltdowns, but autism is a lifelong condition and we do have them. They usually happen at home and behind closed doors rather than in a supermarket aisle (as when I was little) but they do still happen. With far less frequency when there is no stress or grief to deal with of course. Mine take the form of unstoppable crying interspersed with rage if anyone is unkind while I'm in this state. Signs of an impending meltdown include stuttering and a snarky tone that is not typical for me. As I am a kind person with a big heart and good intentions, I've come to know that intolerance beyond my usual 'rage against the machine' activist mindset coupled with low patience over small things that usually don't bother me are indicators that it's time to retreat and focus on my well-being.

My mother’s death was expected as she had been declining for a long time having been diagnosed with Alzheimer's over thirteen years ago. I went to see her when her breath was a death rattle and her skin so papery thin over her bones she looked like a partly decomposed corpse despite still being alive. I said my goodbyes and made my peace with her while other family members trundled through my childhood home like it was a train station. It brought about an opportunity to build bridges with estranged family members, and for that I am most grateful. Sadly it only served to further highlight how nothing had altered with my sisters, both of whom I had not seen for many years.

Having grown up in an environment where my autism was not recognised and I was instead treated without compassion for my struggles, I had hoped that with ageing would come the wisdom of knowing that to make peace may involve having conversations that are uncomfortable. The blanket ‘bygones’ and refusal to discuss things of an emotive nature does not help heal trauma. In fact, the sociopathic responses to my openness suggest there has been no apparent growth or willingness to be held accountable in either of my sisters or my stepfather whose relationship with the truth is as tenuous as it was with my mother. It should have been a time to pull together but instead it drove us further apart, with one sister trying to manipulate and gaslight, and the other ghosting me entirely.

My heart wrenching disappointment with the majority of my biological family opened some old wounds as I always had that sense of not fitting in and not being understood; of not being loved. Of being the black sheep of the family. This is a common experience for neurodiverse people in families where neurotypes clash. It was upsetting to discover that I still hold the mantel of being the outcast in a family unable to break away from toxic behaviours, but I found a new gratitude that I am not like them and in that, I feel I may have broken the generational curse of ending up being just like my mother. My sister Julia does not appear to have broken that chain but instead of feeling angry, I now find I feel sorry for her. And her daughter.

I withdrew rather than create trouble, but I do feel a sense of injustice that my sister Julia has somehow 'got away' with her poor behaviour. I'm coming to terms with how the majority of my family probably see me (how they always saw me and perhaps also how neurotypicals generally see me) and realising their inability to 'deal with me' is not their fault. Or mine. It's a lifetime of conditioned ableism so instead of running after them and begging for sisterly support, I found compassion for their shortfalls and stepped back. Lowering your expectations and not expecting people to communicate the way you do, or treat you as you would treat them feels like maturity. Am I finally growing up?

If you aren't aware, injustice is a grand emotion for autistic people and drives a lot of us to fight for justice. What some see as an inability to 'let it go' is somewhat of a superpower for precipitating change. Just look at Greta Thunberg to understand it better. But, fighting for the truth to be told when a funeral is being planned isn't the right time to take a stance, so I backed off rather than make a scene.

For context, I will share with you a little of the history of my siblings. We are culturally led to believe that talking openly about your less charming family stories is akin to laundering your dirty linen in public, but this narrative is pure avoidance. Narcissistic cultural norms are too often used to avoid being held accountable. I believe that if something profoundly affects anyone, then it is their story to tell without shame. Because of this cultural conditioning, it is with a certain amount of apprehension that I share with you that my sister Julia was a religious cult leader and self-professed 'prophet' for many years, and my other sister Joanna was her disciple.

During the eight year duration of 'Eli' (their cult) they persistently campaigned to have me (and others) believe my mother was evil. They cut her off for around six years and Julia worked hard to convince me that my son's brush with death shortly after he was born was my mother's wrath and that she was so evil that she wanted her grandson dead. When I refused to join their cult, I too was cut off.

Because of this, and a total lack of any accountability for the many other irrational and harmful actions Julia did in 'the name of the Lord', I found that I was struggling with the idea of her doing the eulogy at the funeral. Julia's prophesising played a part in someone dying when they believed her dreams and visions that they didn't need to take their heart pills anymore so I feel very strongly about the things she said and did in Jesus' name during that time.

It's a hot topic at the moment given that the USA is fast becoming Gilead from The Handmaid's Tale. Religion is being used to justify bigotry, misogyny and white supremacy racism so perhaps I am more sensitive to my experience of her religious extremism where she used scripture as an excuse for cruelty, saying that Jesus came with a sword that would turn family against each other.

Of course I totally understand that the years Julia spent claiming to be a prophet and hailing a Ghanaian Catholic minister as the new messiah, with a Judgement Day and his resurrection imminent, then pretending it never happened might make her reluctant to talk about the past but I was hoping to create an opportunity for a dialogue where we could both share how we felt about the funeral rather than dredge everything up from the past. When we learned my mother's death was imminent, she made an attempt to apologise for 'any time she ever made me feel unloved' but then later confessed that her motive for the blanket apology was not to heal the rift or reunite as sisters but to ensure the funeral went smoothly. The irony of apologising for being unloving then doing it again was not lost on me.

The saying ‘blood is thicker than water’ is a false dichotomy and was, I suspect, bastardised by abusers who wished to manipulate people into guilt when they tried to cut toxic family ties. It actually means the opposite as the original quote is ‘The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb’ and means that bonds formed through loyalty and shared ethics is stronger that the familial ties represented by the ‘water of the womb’. Never have I felt this more poignantly that the events around my mother’s passing.

The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.

Setting aside my neurospicy differences, family rifts are also common amongst ethical vegans who discover the truth about animal agriculture when they try to share with family members how barbarically cruel meat, eggs and dairy farming is. We often find ourselves on the outside looking in at people who claim to love us but refuse to hear anything challenging about the choices they are making. It is this sense of separation that became one of the main driving forces for us to create our vegan community. We can depend on each other when having to deal with the cognitive dissonance of what seems like a zombie apocalypse of flesh eating psychopaths that prefer adhering to the whims of their tastebuds rather than making more compassionate choices. It's what unites us in a world where religion, colour and creed are so divisive, genocide and war has been sickeningly normalised. I wrote a soapbox sermon about it in more detail in a previous blog post, but I believe discrimination starts at birth when humans steal the milk meant for calves and give it to our babies. Believing we are superior to other species is just a short hop, skip and jump to believing we are superior to fellow humans that are 'different' to us.

I do wonder now if my sisters' religious extremism plays a part in my insistence that spirituality is a personal journey. Is the fact that I do not require anyone to share my beliefs in God or Jesus a response to the fear based bullying of my sister as a cult leader who used scripture as a weapon? I personally have a strong faith and I am happy to talk about it if you ask me, but part of my ministerial work is to encourage individuals to work out what they resonate with without me evangelising. Asking thought provoking questions is more important than arrogantly thinking we have all the answers. For global unity it's time to stop pointing the finger at other religions and telling them they are wrong, but to look within and listen to your conscience instead.

Believing we are superior to other species is just a short hop, skip and jump to believing we are superior to fellow humans that are 'different' to us.

As injustice is a grand emotion for me, it took me a while to stop smarting from the way my charming sister was able to schmooze my stepfather and make me seem the unstable one. It's a fairly common gaslighting technique that people use to deflect from their own misdemeanours, and I am used to being scapegoated when I highlight an ugly truth that someone is not ready to face. It's sadly all too easy to blame the autistic 'weird' person who is either challenging a narrative, or being uncomfortably honest than take a look at oneself. I am pleased to say that I am largely over it now, but I also find that being open about these experiences is part of the healing journey. If we were all honest about what we were going through instead of diverting the finger of blame entirely at the feet of others, the world would be a very different place indeed.

I have a lot of plants at home, and there is one that is particularly sensitive (some may say mardy) and droops dramatically when I forget to water it. I see this plant as a sort of alarm bell that all my other plants need watering too and find I am thankful that it shows me when I am failing my plant family. I feel that autism and hyper-sensitivity is a bit like this for us humans. Like a barometer that tells us when the weather is about to change, so too can the more observant of us highlight when things are going wrong in our communities. It means we are often not very popular when we highlight that behaviours need to change or that habits need to be questioned so that we can be more loving, more inclusive or planet conscious. Or just conscious. Of course, not everyone is ready to have their behaviour challenged or have conversations that make them face themselves so the Pariah affect of treating us as outcasts is all too common.

I hit a real low just before Christmas but as the darkest part of the night is just before dawn, I can now say that I needed that time to really understand what I was freeing myself from with my family and dreams I thought were finally coming true after years of trying. And to count my blessings as they are many. It helped me make the choice to leave the Ecohub and be closer to friends and the sea, which may not have happened if I had not been struggling as much as I was. Seeds germinate in the dark, and so too do I feel something rather magical happened to me as a result of that a period of my life.

I knew I was healing when I started painting again. It started as doodling dragonflies with metallic pens but I now feel the surge of creativity taking hold again. I enjoyed quite a few years of commercial success as an abstract impressionist under the art name Laurie Maitland when my son was little but as with most things I enjoy, it took over and consumed me until I didn't enjoy it any more. This is the curse of the ADHD hyperfocus, but I am planning to be more balanced this time around.

Despite feeling somewhat trapped in Llandysul, we still had Cwm Caredig, but what I came to learn about our giant edible forest farm last year is that when you are in charge, it ceases to be a haven and a retreat from the outside world but instead becomes a ‘job’ from which there is little or no escape. It’s hard to meditate in the woods when the walk there highlights two fallen trees, several saplings that need attention and brambles sneaking across the paths that need snipping. When you can never comfortably switch your phone off as you are always ‘on call’, it’s hard to relax and let go.

My ADHD urge to write endless to-do lists, either in one of my many notebooks or in my head meant that my visits to our garden of Eden stopped being something I enjoyed and started to become something I endured. We had a super successful volunteer-led grow season last year and met some beautiful souls but even when people are lovely, I find peopling exhausting. Despite my chatty, seemingly outgoing demeanour, I’m actually deeply introverted and prefer being alone for most of the time. Being alone recharges my social battery so that I find I then want to mix with others, but when I’m on duty and mixing with everyone all day, every day, it takes a toll; the extent of which I hadn’t realised until I came away from it. 

We fed an average of six people a day over the peak grow season; breakfast, lunch and dinner and to make sure provisions lasted, I planned or cooked most meals. Whilst I do love my batch cooking sessions, and processing food we have grown, the sheer volume of hours I committed to looking after everyone added to the burnout I am only just starting to recover from. 

I was a secondary school teacher for a few years (before I had my son twenty-five years ago) and remember how I would make it to the end of term, only to collapse and sleep for a week with what we called end-of-term-itis. After the last volunteers left last year, I had the same reaction and swore I wasn’t going to do another season in charge, but as we head into the new grow season with the onset of Spring, I have hatched a few plans (with the help of the wonderful community that has formed at Vegan Valley) and am now practising healthier forms of detachment with the security of a new home that I have settled into very quickly.

I absolutely love my new home. My writing desk overlooks a garden full of wild birds so I am in my element. Having a safe and inspirational space to write is so important that I won’t give it up again if I can help it. I haven’t had a bathtub for over eighteen months either, so to now have a tub and hot water and Epsom salts to ease my tired muscles (especially when I have a Fibromyalgia flare up) is such a blessing that I actually had a happy cry this morning. Gratitude is such an important part of healing and experiencing joy that I think I may have forgotten that at times over the last couple of years. Perhaps grief stole my gratitude, but to wake up feeling blessed once more is most welcome indeed. 

It took us so long to find our 36 acre haven at Cwm Caredig that a stubborn determination set in that we couldn’t leave it, despite having to coexist alongside the people that bought the properties next door from under us and all the challenges that brought. Our non-profit organisation Edenkind has secured several land projects and passed them onto land stewards that continue our good work, but I found myself relieved when potential buyers couldn’t raise the funds and we didn’t have to part with our beautiful valley. 

The yo-yoing of wondering whether to stay or go has definitely affected my mental well-being as I do so take comfort in having a plan, but out of all the uncertainty of what is to become of Vegan Valley has come a profound acceptance of ‘what is’ that I wasn’t expecting. We have a wonderful community and have formed deep connections with people who share our vision, and the best part is that it’s the vision that’s the draw, not just how pretty Vegan Valley is. The idea that we can create a vegan family that live together in harmony with each other and nature, working towards self sustainability and yet still offering privacy and autonomy in a community that encourages authenticity has formed the bedrock of our community. It means it doesn’t actually matter whether we do that at Cwm Caredig or somewhere else. In fact, everyone in our small community has said that if we relocate, they will come with us and that has helped me enormously to let go of knowing what the outcome will be. I feel safe in the knowledge that we are in this together and ‘what will be will be’ is no longer a scary prospect. 

Burry Port Beach

I found a lovely house in Burry Port and had an agonising wait over Christmas and new year when the letting agents closed (for seventeen days no less!) to see if they would allow me to rent the house by the sea. Jumping through the hoops the reference agency made me do to prove I was a worthy tenant brought about the realisation that it’s actually easier to get a mortgage than it is to rent, and that’s madness. For those without my fabulous credit rating and unable to qualify for a mortgage, it means the only way to have home is to rent and it’s such a competitive market now that it’s no wonder so many people are becoming homeless. 

Creating affordable homes and sharing what we have is a big part of why we have been working so tirelessly to create our vegan eco village and we aren’t giving that up, but what we are doing is casting a net and seeing who comes forward. We need more people and more funds if we choose to stay on at Vegan Valley. Not just any people, and that’s been the issue since we started this journey six years ago. We’re very niche in that we connect best with neurodiverse vegan activists who are of an introverted nature. Having encountered the toxic narcissism of crystal hippies who flounce at the mere whiff of a real conversation and the volume of people in survival mode unable to allow themselves to be authentic around us lest it highlight that our visions don’t align, we have come full circle to where we were at the start of this journey several years ago. Only this time we aren't alone. We have learned crucial lessons. We have waded through the cynicism that comes with disappointment in people’s oftentimes poor behaviour and found ourselves to be enthusiastic about the future again. Our enthusiasm is, of course, tempered with the knowledge that in time all things become apparent. So whether we end up staying at Vegan Valley with the beautiful souls in our community (and a few newbies) that will help make managing 36 acres less daunting, or whether we sell part of the land and shrink our project, or whether we sell all and relocate to somewhere with a farmhouse (potentially my forever home?) all those outcomes are blessings. Having options is not a curse. And while I wait to see how it pans out, I will continue to count my blessings in my new abode by the sea and aim for a better live-work balance this year so that instead of heading towards another burnout by trying to do everything and fill all the roles, I will create space for others to take the lead and share the responsibilities. Working towards a non-hierarchical community being the goal. Despite my seemingly bossy demeanour, I have no desire to be in charge. Or, to be more precise, I only wish to control how my surroundings directly impact my well-being. You'll find that's the goal of most neurodiverse people and why we are so greatly misunderstood. We don't want to control you at all.

If you have been dreaming of being part of a neurodiverse vegan community that values downtime and authenticity and would love to grow food with us, please email me at info@edenkind.org or better still, complete a tribe seeking form which you can find on our website www.edenkind.org and let’s see if we align. I get a lot of applications from non-vegans, and whilst I struggle to understand why anyone that doesn’t share our vision would want to join us, I do try to respond to all applications with kindness. Rejecting people who do not meet our eligibility criteria can often trigger cognitive dissonance and feel like an attack to them as it highlights our difference in ethics, but it is never my intention to anger or cause suffering to anyone. 

My autistic desire to be honest is often at odds with neurotypical ways of handling situations. What I sometimes see as simpering disingenuousness is often seen by others as simple politeness. Whilst I try very hard not to be rude, I struggle to wave and say hello to strangers. I can’t do small talk with people, especially with those who clearly don't like me and nor can I lead people on and let them think we would invite them to join us when our ethics are vastly different. It’s okay that we aren’t all the same. We don’t need to like everyone. You don’t need to like me either. I’m not for everyone. 

We aren’t all meant to walk the same path, but wherever you are on your journey, I wish you the same peace I currently feel when you finally accept who you are and where you are. We don't need to pretend everything is okay. Because it isn't. Monumentally, globally and personally, there is so much that isn't okay. But let's not fall out over that. Instead let’s work on making things better. All of us together.

Time is running out for us as a species, so we owe it to ourselves and each other to do the best we can with what we have whether that’s resources, time or effort. If you don’t want to work on yourself or make the effort to grow as a human, just step aside so the rest of us can please.

I’m saving my energies for battles that I can win this year as part of the self preservation I should have been exercising from the start. My boundaries are now super strong and so is my resolve. The dream is still very much alive and it’s exciting to see what happens next. Stay tuned and I’ll let you know how it pans out.