Learning from Neurodivergence
Originally posted on my old website on November 21, 2022
Content awareness: neurodivergence, trauma, PTSD, suicidal ideation, systemic oppression. Please take care of yourself! If you are struggling or feel you are an immediate danger to yourself or others, please call Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 800-273-8255 or Trans Lifeline: US (877) 565-8860 / Canada (877) 330-6366.
~
I am a body plus. A body plus trauma, plus illness, plus pollen, plus spores, plus caretakers and friends and loved ones and wild kin.
I am interested in the material incursions that are irreversible. That stain me green. That atrophy my mouth. That teach me how to eat sunlight. How to survive at all costs. Here world, let me burn the bridge to my old body on my way into your body.
I am ready to risk new shapes.
-“We Must Risk New Shapes” by Sophie Strand (1)
I find myself beginning again, with my fingertips tapping computer keys, late in the night, a cup of steaming tea on my side table and a radiating heat from the fire in my stove. This quiet time of night has been a place of bubbling creativity throughout my life, a place for my shy and colorful inner worlds to emerge. Tonight, in the steadiness of silence, layered with drafts of brisk autumn air through my cracked window, I begin writing again about my inner landscape, exploring a thread of my personal biodiversity, a texture of my animal nature: my neurodivergence.
I began identifying as neurodivergent last year and will be sharing some of my experience here. My experience of neurodivergence will look different than other kinds of neurodivergence. I will also weave my neurodivergence into a wider context of liberation movements for disability justice. I will do my best not to generalize about the experiences of neurodivergent people and simply share my own experience. I thank you in advance for your grace as I fumble through my own internalized ableism, misses of judgement, and lack of understanding. I invite you to comment below and to be in conversation with me so I may continue to learn about myself, our community and my body’s place in the greater ecosystem of diverse bodies. Thank you for your attention and exploration of this texture of reality here with me. You are welcome here.
~
This past weekend I was at a training at an urban farm in Oakland. I was partnered with a lovely elder for a sharing practice. She was sincere and well meaning when she asked, “What is your neurodivergence that you shared about at the beginning of the training? You really can’t tell.” I felt a sinking in my chest and a welling behind my eyes. I responded politely, nodding, “Mmm, yes, my neurodivergence is related to PTSD. It’s difficult to see.” A few minutes later after closing our interaction, I felt a strong wave of emotion. I cried, breathed and rocked for the next ten minutes next to a pond, visited by the sparkle of the setting sunlight.
The word neurodivergent comes from the scholarship of Judy Singer, an Australian sociologist who created the word neurodiversity in 1998 in her thesis paper. These words refer to “individual differences in brain functioning regarded as normal variations within the human population.”(2) Often, those who feel at home under the umbrella term of neurodiversity, identify as having ADHD, autism, dislexia, PTSD, schizophrenia, or other unique ways of experiencing the world. Singer writes: “[Neurodiversity] simply names an indisputable fact about our planet, that no two human minds are exactly alike, and, it is used to name a paradigm for social change.”(3) She says it is not a diagnosis. The word is ecological and political.
Identifying as neurodivergent has been profoundly empowering and relieving to embrace. Identifying as neurodivergent has also been painful to accept, woven with threads of grief related to the ways trauma has shaped me. It is woven with threads of shame in a culture that fears difference, unless it is profitable. My choice to share about my flavor of neurodivergence with you here is an act of courage, of ongoing homecoming, of self-love. You are welcome here. You are welcome here.
I take a moment to pause and breathe into my belly. I feel constriction in my left side and notice that my legs are twisted over to the right. I re-center my legs and take another deep breath in. And another. I welcome you to join me in noticing your own body and taking a breath with me. (4)
I believe, with Judy Singer, that all humans are neurodivergent. As young children, our capacity for authentic embodiment and presence is perhaps obvious to those who pay attention to children. For example, ecological writer Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder describes her young daughter as simply… “intuition. Every morning she wakes to greet a world that greets her back. She takes it all in with generous attention and curiosity. She is startled, she is awed, she is frightened, she is patient. There is a fluidity to the boundaries of her being. She is a willing pupil of a world that, in every moment, rises anew to meet her.”(5) For me, young children are incredible teachers of diverse, embodied presence, of feeling their feelings deeply, fully and sensing, and then, if the conditions provide them safety and connection, moving on to the next experience of life unfolding. As a somatic counselor, I support adults in exploring this way of being, freeing up embodied ways of expressing that were so often shamed or punished at home and school at very young ages. Together in sessions, we practice embodied presence, creating space for deep feeling humanness.
I suppressed my feelings for most of the first two decades of my life, manifesting in cycles of depression, drug and alcohol abuse and burnout. In 2017, I survived an acute emotional and psychological trauma that cracked my heart open and flooded me with intense survival energy. I found somatic (body-based) therapy and landed back in my body for the first time in years. And, woooosh, I was overflowing with emotion.
I pause again, noticing the tears flooding my eyes and the achey constriction in my back. I breathe. I breathe again and lean back in my chair, allowing it to hold me a little bit more. I take a look around the room and rest my eyes on the color blue. I breathe again.
My life is now a journey of slowing down enough to stay with my inner landscape, re-learning how to be present with myself, and to practice coming back again and again. This is the way of regaining a sense of safety for me, in my body and in the world. This is also a part of my activism, as I learn ways to divest from a disembodied, ecocidal culture addicted to urgency, production and extraction, cultural agreements that my body never agreed to. As a somatic counselor, I share this practice of slowing down with others, with the prayer of creating a different kind of culture together. A culture of presence, that listens to what is occurring in our bodies, in marginalized bodies, in the earth body.
Somatic therapist, Resmaa Menakem, describes trauma as anything too soon, too fast, too much, or too long without enough of something reparative. Survival energy can get stuck in the body and lead to what is sometimes called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This is my flavor of neurodivergence. I use the term PTSD as a way to name and share my experience, acknowledging the limited utility (and violent history) of pathologizing the human experience. The experience of PTSD will be different for every body. For me, it has involved panic attacks, invasive thoughts and suicidal ideation, high anxiety and overwhelm, cycles of deep depression, and memory loss.
I pause here to notice my connection to my chair, the pressure and the warmth of my seat. I take a breath. I take another. I look around at the room I am in, noticing the shapes and the colors, resting my eyes on something that brings me a sense of pleasure or comfort. You’re welcome to join me this practice. I take one more deep breath. Here we are.
It’s difficult to write about these experiences of mine, partly because my life is so, damn, beautiful. I get to play, learn, pray and love within an incredible community of creative, spiritual and earth-loving humans in a small town on the edge of redwood forests and ocean in Northern California. My immediate family, my cat and my home are all healthy and I have abundant support to focus on offering my healing practices into the world. These extreme, internal weather patterns of mine continue to arise, though, and they invite me into consistent re-connection with my body, the place where all of these experiences occur.
Just as the extreme weather of Northern California fire season has taught me how to listen to the earth’s wind patterns, so too does my neurodivergence invite me into tracking my breath, my heart rate, and the places my muscles hold tension. This ability (or superpower) is called interoception, the ability to perceive the internal state of the body. The more I am able to notice what is happening in my body, the better care I can offer myself and others. It supports me in better communicating my honest needs to others. Recently, that communication of needs has been useful when navigating group space, often inviting me into self-advocacy.
Identifying as neurodivergent has woven me into a sense of belonging within the Disability Justice movement, a term and political movement created by Black, brown, queer and trans members of the Disability Justice Collective, founded in the Bay Area in 2005 by Patty Berne, Mia Mingus, Leroy Moore, Eli Clare, and Sebastian Margaret. Patty Berne writes:
“Disability Justice activists, organizers, and cultural workers understand that able-bodied supremacy has been formed in relation to other systems of domination and exploitation. The histories of white supremacy and ableism are inextricably entwined, both forged in the crucible of colonial conquest and capitalist domination…A Disability Justice framework understands that all bodies are unique and essential, that all bodies have strengths and needs that must be met. We know that we are powerful not despite the complexities of our bodies, but because of them…” (6)
I pause here to notice the way those words land in my system. I read them again, out loud this time. I notice a buzzing confusion and disbelief. I breathe. I notice a settling now and my connection to the bed that is holding me. I notice warmth in my chest and a sense of welcoming, of homecoming. Wow. I am welcome in those words. All of me is welcome.
As I come out as neurodivergent, I also acknowledge the privileges that I carry: being able-bodied, the invisible nature of my neurodivergence that allows me to mask and generally pass as neurotypical in public, my whiteness, my class privilege that allowed me to study Disability Justice in higher education and access trauma healers, the family support that allowed me to create my own businesses with schedules that support my body… I am also doing my best to somatically notice if an expression of need comes from a place of entitlement (an ancestral “fight” trauma response) or from a place of deep self-honoring. This practice entails being in circles of self-inquiry and accountability, with trusted friends, mentors and elders committed to loving relationship and liberatory, cultural transformation.
I choose to stand with and center the queer, trans, Black, indigneous, people of color (QTBIPOC) leaders and cultural workers who have been surviving within an ableist culture by practicing mutual aid for decades before the COVID-19 pandemic made it a more common idea. I recognize their consistent demands for more accessible schools, work spaces, community spaces and systems of care. They are the teachers that I am listening to and supporting as more and more of us are being impacted and shaped by the traumas of our ecocidal culture. There is much that I, that we, dreamers of healing and liberation, can learn from them.
As the nonbinary, femme, autistic, disability and transformative justice movement worker and writer Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha asks in her new book, “What if, in the near future, the majority of people will be disabled—and what if that’s not a bad thing? And what if disability justice and disabled wisdom are crucial to creating a future in which it’s possible to survive fascism, climate change, and pandemics and to bring about liberation?” (7)
Pause. What do you notice in your own body as you read those questions? Are you breathing? How is your heart rate? Can you feel the temperature of the air on your skin? Invite a breath into your belly if you can. Notice the rising and falling of your breathing body. Here we are.
~
Those elder’s words at the training last weekend triggered an intense wave of sadness for me. Instead of automatically suppressing it as I might have done in the past, I noticed the wave of tenderness and took empowered action. 1. I noticed what was occurring for me (a welling of tears behind my eyes and swelling of my chest) 2. I co-created with reality to find supportive conditions for my emotions to flow (walked to the pond and found a seat tucked away from the group) and 3. I surrendered to my tears, undamming my inner waterways and airways, allowing my emotion to move (cry, breathe and rock my body).
While I removed myself from the situation in order to emotionally release in private, I lay a prayer on the fire that my neurodivergence becomes more visible and that I am less afraid to share about it with other humans. Writing about it is one step I’m taking to embrace this part of myself. I’ve learned that bringing shame-filled parts of myself into the light can often result in some of that sticky shame melting away. In the light, I can better listen to these parts, learn their shapes and textures, turn them over and over in my hands, and maybe even finds words to share and teach about them. Perhaps even honor them and protect their birthright to be welcomed into the community of belonging.
In my own, small, embodied life, held by bay tree, borage and red-shouldered hawk, I have been slowly learning when and how to advocate for my neurodivergence in my human relationships. Here are some pathways through the woods that I’ve found:
asking friends who talk really fast to slow down and pause in conversations; disclosing my neurodivergence to new friends, family members and partners, and using Spoons Theory to explain why I might cancel plans if I don’t have enough energy to show up (8)
disclosing my neurodivergence at the beginning of workshops, classes and trainings so I feel more permission to engage in resourcing movements and sounds, like rocking, stretching, shaking and humming
writing a list of people who I can reach to when my invasive thoughts enter into suicidal ideation, inspired by Mia Mingus and pod mapping (9)
strategizing with dance organizers before joining partner dance floors to create the conditions where I am less likely to have a panic attack due to overstimulation and the hyper-tracking of new bodies, especially cismale bodies (10)
naming and being adequately compensated for emotional labor and the recovery time and self care that it takes to settle my neurodivergent nervous system after holding space
taking 5-HTP, a B-Complex, and Ca-Mag-Zinc supplements every day to support my endocrine system and brain chemistry; seeing an herbalist for support from the plants and tracking my menstrual cycle so I can anticipate when I might need more rest or more support
being gentle with myself when executive dysfunction prevents me from getting daily tasks done, like cooking all of my meals or doing the dishes (so many dishes, y’all!)
~
Being honest with my most intimate community about my neurodivergence has felt shakingly vulnerable. And, every time I share and am received whole-heartedly, a thread of shame loosens its hold on the muscles of my heart and my breath comes more easily. I feel more at home. I can access more of my dignity and birthright in being here. In community. As I am.
I believe my highly sensitized body, when well supported, allows me to be a more attuned space-holder for others. It allows me to feel emotional impact when others might skip over the feeling held within a story. It allows me to sense the pain of the earth being poisoned all around us and listen to the wisdom of plants and trees. It inspires my art: my writing, my dancing, my singing, my rituals. The neurodivergence of my animal body tells me when to savor the beauty of a sunset on the beach by asking my friends to be silent with me for a few moments. The neurodivergence of my animal body is my way back into deeper listening to the earth and her creatures in a time that requires we all listen in order to survive. To remember we are the earth.
We all have our pathways home. Listening to and honoring my body is mine.
Pinar Ates Sinopoulos-Lloyd, co-founder of Queer Nature reminds us: “Let it be known that neurodivergence is a gift. This slowness is medicine for all bodyminds that are collapsing from capitalism. ‘Crip time’ unravels and challenges white supremacy at its core...Here is to abolishing sanism and ableism for our neurodivergent communities. Here are to seeding dreams of worlds where we do not have to ever mask again. Here is to our multi-species kinships who keep us alive - whether it be to our houseplants, the night sky or our creature kin.”(10)
May my own unraveling, in all of its mess and beauty, compost oppression within me and around me. May it be of service to the awakening of all beings to our earthling natures in this time of ecological collapse and transformation. May the teachings of my own bodymind be a part of the Great Turning towards a life-sustaining culture. May I practice over and over again, the simple (but not easy) act of embodied presence. In this, my one precious body.
May it be so. Breathing in a deep breath into my belly, and surrendering to the exhale.
With gratitude and love and a kittie in my lap,
Gaia
~
lineage notes
gratitude to my mentor, somatic therapeutic guide, tayla shanaye, the first scholar I’ve seen who writes about trauma in a healing way, by sharing her process of somatic practice while she is writing, and inviting her readers into shared practice. read everything this brilliant human writes! IG: @taylashanaye
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, The Future is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes, and Mourning Songs (2022)
Patty Berne, “Skin, Tooth, and Bone - The Basis of Our Movement Is People: A Disability Justice Primer, “Reproductive Health Matters 25, no. 50 (May 2017): 149-50.
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/spoon-theory-chronic-illness/
https://batjc.wordpress.com/resources/pods-and-pod-mapping-worksheet/
Patriarchal systems, rape culture and the collective experience of traumatized, physically violent or highly neglectful cis-men blowing their pain into trans, queer and female bodies and/or enabling violence to occur due to a lack of solidarity and intervention exacerbates my personal experience of PTSD.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CbYz7HYL_lB/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
