Dear Cami

After the absolute wild abandon of summer, October brings a return to comfort. To routine. To ritual. So when one of my dearest AuDHD friends sends a letter that is more a cry for help than a tidy question, it feels like magic to tell you about the small rituals I live by.

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Dear Cami,

Can you tell me more about your journaling process? I forget to eat. What’s your relationship with food like? Where’s a good place to get started with meditation?

— J. Tanner

Dear J. Tanner,

It feels a little strange to address you by name here. I usually rename my letter-writers, but you asked me to keep it. So here we are, just sitting with that strangeness. Which is, in its own way, part of the ritual of writing these letters: noticing what feels awkward and making space for it.

Those who know me probably know that journaling and meditation have been central to my recovery from an autistic shutdown/nervous breakdown. For anyone who doesn’t know that part of my story, it matters enough to say out loud: these are not accessories to my life. They’re the framework holding me up.

You asked about journaling, food, and meditation. They are different practices, but for me they share one truth. They only work if I treat them as ritual. Sacred. Not reflex, not response. 

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Journaling

My journal is simple. Same brand every time. Same color. Same page type. Same model. Reliably available, always the same. There’s comfort in knowing exactly what I’ll hold in my hands. No surprises, no second-guessing. This cuts down on both decision fatigue and the impulse to buy stacks of super cute and clever journals that will never get used. On the inside I keep it stripped down: the date, always with the day of the week because I forget, and a tiny checklist of my own personal human minimums.

Meditate.
Medicate.
Move.

Sometimes I doodle a little “cartoon Cami.” Sometimes I add a note that feels like it might matter later, like tracking new medications or special occasions. Sometimes it’s dots covering the page because my nervous energy needs somewhere safe to go. Other times it is literally just the date and three checkmarks.

The ritual is not about filling the pages. Nor perfecting anything. It’s about showing up for them. 

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Food

My relationship with food is complicated. I love food. I love to eat. I love to eat the things I like, and I’m excited to try new flavors when I’m in the right mood. But most of my life, it’s been a struggle for me to eat regularly at all, let alone in a healthy way.

Disordered eating is common in both Autism and ADHD. When you have both, it can feel baked into the deal. My hunger cues are not gradual. I am either fine or about to collapse. Also, I get unpleasantly hangry.

So I give myself minimums here too. If I cannot manage anything else, I eat a protein cookie. Is it organic, local, or blissfully handcrafted from goat milk and late-summer blackberries? No. Does it have enough calories, protein, and fiber to keep me going until I can do better? Yes.

The ritual is remembering that fuel matters more than perfection.

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Meditation

When I first started meditating, I wouldn’t even call it that. It sounded too official, like I needed permission or a certificate. But practice does not need permission.

The hardest thing for me is giving up on making something perfect long enough to do it. Respecting that some days my mind is quiet and still. Other days it’s chaotic and messy. I sit with both. When unguided meditation feels impossible, I switch back to my tried-and-true meditation app. (Yes, I really should have followed through on releasing my beginner meditations on YouTube. I digress.)

You start meditating by doing it. Even if it feels wrong or messy. Even if you feel ridiculous. Just sit down, close your eyes or soften your gaze, and breathe.

My practice is to meditate for at least ten minutes (but ideally longer) each day, usually sitting in silence with noise-cancelling headphones, because the world does not stop making noise just because I’m meditating.

The point is not to master stillness. The point is to keep practicing.

That’s the thing about rituals. They’re practice, not perfection. You can sit a hundred times and feel nothing. But then one day when you are falling apart, your body remembers. You close your eyes, breathe, and find that well-worn path that keeps you going.

Ritual is what weaves journaling, food, and meditation into something that can hold me. Between remembering what I did yesterday and remembering to eat today. Between comfort and chaos, summer and fall.

Needing sameness and repetition is often painted as a flaw. But it can also be the answer. The strength. The rhythm that keeps us alive.

That’s the thing about rituals. They are not about perfection. They are practice. You can do them a hundred times and feel nothing. But when you hit that patch of I do not know what to do, the ritual is there to catch you.

October invites me back, whether I get it right or not. Ritual does that too.

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This column only exists because of your letters. Got a messy, tender, or impossible question? Good. That’s the kind I want. Ask me.

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Cami Kaos is a writer, autistic woman, and former tech community organizer who spent more than a decade building inclusive spaces in an industry that rarely made room for people like her. After burning out from constant caretaking and code-switching, she turned inward—to reclaim the parts of herself that were silenced to make others comfortable. Cami writes about identity, survival, and neurodivergence—not always without apology, but with growing conviction. These days, she’s not interested in holding it all together anymore—just holding what matters. You can find Cami at camikaos.com. Bring snacks.

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