A Neurodivergent Life: What Healing Looks Like Beyond the Diagnosis
The Space Between Posts
It’s strange, coming back to write again.
Not because I ran out of things to say, but because the words had to catch up to me.
The past few months haven’t been about progress — they’ve been about staying in motion.
About what it means to keep showing up while everything inside you is being reassembled.
This isn’t an announcement of arrival.
It’s a record of endurance.
A moment to be seen, and to offer that same sight to anyone else still in the middle of it all.
The Language of Diagnosis
ADHD has been part of my life since I was a kid.
Bipolar II and Complex PTSD joined the picture about ten years ago, and this year, Type 2 Diabetes added itself to the roster.
I don’t list these as a résumé of disorders — they’re more like a map legend.
Each one explains a few of the strange symbols that show up along the way: the shifting energy, the bursts of clarity, the fog that rolls in without warning.
They help me understand the terrain, even when it still surprises me.
The past few months have been a slow negotiation between medications, energy, and identity.
I’ve been tapering off some of the psych meds that shaped nearly a decade of my life, while easing into new ones.
Each change brings its own rhythm — dizziness, fog, vivid dreams.
I’ve stabilized my blood sugar, learned what my body needs, and am trying to listen without judgment when it says, “Not today.”
It’s not a clean process, but it’s mine.
And for once, I’m not trying to fix it — I’m trying to hear it.
The Shape of Motion
When my thoughts start to spiral, I drive.
There’s something about the hum of tires on wet Maine roads that feels like permission.
The world narrows down to headlights and the shape of the next turn.
The air changes as I leave Portland — salt and pine trading places in the dark.
Passing through Old Orchard in late autumn feels like driving through a memory: shuttered arcades, empty boardwalks, gulls still circling like they missed the memo that summer’s over.
Sometimes I listen to music. Sometimes it’s just the sound of wind pressing against the car.
The motion steadies me. It doesn’t erase anything; it just reminds me that I’m still capable of movement, even when my mind feels still.
These drives aren’t escapism. They’re navigation.
A way of saying, I’m still here.
The Architecture of Care
These days are held together by small check-ins.
Luke asks if I’ve eaten.
Mom calls about my glucose numbers.
Andrew sends a meme that makes me laugh out loud.
And then there’s Hobbes — the cat who decided his new favorite sleeping spot is wedged between the mattress and the wall.
He’ll sneeze like a startled goose and look personally offended that sound came from his own body.
It’s absurd, grounding, and sometimes the highlight of my day.
None of this looks like balance, but it’s structure — the quiet kind.
The sort that keeps you tethered when you’re too tired to hold the rope yourself.
Where Curiosity Still Lives
Curiosity has always been the through-line for me — it’s how I survive.
I think back to the Friday Nicktern Screenings I ran at Nickelodeon: a theater full of interns, popcorn, and nervous excitement.
Each week, we’d host a different guest — animators, producers, even voice actors — and the Q&As would always surprise me.
The interns’ questions were bold, insightful, human.
They had this way of cutting straight to what mattered.
Those moments reminded me that curiosity isn’t just a professional trait — it’s a form of courage.
Years later, in Australia, that same curiosity guided me into conversations with Indigenous artists and elders.
Listening to them speak about land and sound changed me.
It made me realize that learning isn’t always about adding — sometimes it’s about quieting down enough to hear what’s already there.
That same impulse is here now — softer, slower, but alive.
It’s what drives me to write, even when the words take their time showing up.
The Work of Staying
Some days are steady. Others, I’m just trying not to disappear.
But every day, I practice staying — through motion, through stillness, through the static hum of recovery.
I test my blood sugar. I take my meds. I check in. I rest. I drive. I write.
I remind myself that staying isn’t failure, it’s work.
And in that work, there’s an unexpected grace.
Even when I feel fogged and distant, the world still reaches back — through a cat’s sneeze, a text from a friend, the glow of a dashboard clock at 1 a.m.
Life keeps signaling: I see you.
To Be Seen
I’m writing this because I want to be seen — not for resilience or strength, but for being human.
For showing what it looks like to live in the middle of a sentence instead of waiting for the perfect ending.
Being seen isn’t about recognition; it’s about belonging.
It’s about someone reading this and thinking, me too.
If you’re there too — in the in-between, in the noise, in the work of staying — I hope you know that it counts.
You’re not behind. You’re not broken.
You’re alive in the process of becoming.
And maybe that’s what healing really looks like — not the light breaking through, but realizing you’ve been walking in it the whole time.
And here I am again, in the space between posts.
Not waiting anymore.
Just living.
