I always find it interesting when people leave me comments such as “I thought this was a page about NeuroDivergence,” “I thought this was an Autism Page,” “Stop talking about politics,“ or “Stick to Autism and NeuroDiversity Content“… especially considering that when I started my blog and mainly spoke about Autism and NeuroDiversity, people would tell me things like, “You’re more than your Autism,” and “Don’t you ever talk about anything else?“

I AM the NeuroDivergent Rebel

What people failed to understand about the NeuroDivergent Rebel blog is that I AM the NeuroDivergent Rebel, and my blog is about me, my observations, feelings, life, and my thoughts.

Additionally, while Autism and NeuroDivergence are significant to who I am as a person, I am (as was often said in the early days of my work) “More than my Autism and NeuroDivergence.”

When I started my blog, I had just learned I was Autistic (a few months before my 30th birthday).

Back then, in a very stereotypical Autistic way, Autism and NeuroDiversity had become my one, narrow, hyper-focused topic of interest. As a result, in the early days of my blog, NeuroDivergence was almost all I spoke about (because that was the part of myself I was dissecting at the time).

I am Nonbinary (GenderFluid).

A few years after being diagnosed Autistic, as I continued on my self-discovery journey, unpacking all the things that were performative in my life, I started to pay more attention to how I felt about gender and began to explore what being Nonbinary (GenderFluid) meant to me.

When I started to share more about my Queer experience (being GenderFluid, Pansexual, and Polyamorous, and how these experiences were intertwined with my NeuroDivergence), the first waves of “Stick to NeuroDiversity“ started.

I received so much pushback when I started sharing about my experience as a Queer NeuroDivergent Person that I almost split my blog into two separate blogs, one about NeuroDiversity and the other about the intersection of NeuroDivergence and Queerness, trying to make myself more digestible (for an audience that was stuck in black and white thinking, struggled with nuance, and lacked intersectionality).

Ultimately, I decided that I shouldn’t have to chop my identity into smaller pieces (so that people who only like parts of me wouldn’t choke).

Plus, since the kind of people who didn’t want me to talk about being Queer (and wanted me to “Stick to NeuroDiversity“) didn’t actually support Queer People (and thought being Queer was something shameful, that should not be spoken about openly), I eventually decided that those people weren’t the kind of people I wanted in my life or my space (especially, considering how many NeuroDivergent People are also Queer).

When people tell me not to do something, it only makes me want to do it even more.

True to my rebellious nature, the more I was told to “stick to the topic of Neurodiversity,” the more I wanted to discuss other topics, so I kept talking about my Neuro-Queer intersections and started banning people from my spaces who had a problem with the fact that I was opening up and sharing other parts of myself with the world. Those people weren’t my people (if they only liked one facet of who I was).

You can’t please everyone, and trying to do so can really be maddening (due to the impossibility of the ask).

Moreover, multiply marginalized people shouldn’t have to chunk themselves into smaller bites (so that people of privilege aren’t made uncomfortable by things they don’t understand).

The shirt will be available until November 30th (when my winter shirt is released).

Get yours HERE (at www.bonfire.com/neurorebel-rebel-refusing-assimilation-shirt3)

Get yours here!

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I say, let them choke.

No matter what I do, there will always be someone out there who wishes I would do (or be) something different.

Years ago, I learned that being uncompromisingly authentic will simultaneously attract the right people, while repelling the wrong ones.

I’m “letting my freak flag fly.”

I spent most of my life (before learning about my multiply-NeuroDivergent mind) trying to project an idealized, socially acceptable persona to the world, which left me feeling hollow, depressed, and surrounded by people who didn’t know (and wouldn’t have accepted the real me).

In recent years, becoming radically authentic (and refusing to be what others want and expect of me) has been a freeing (and lifesaving) experience.

I’m done assimilating and trying to be palatable for people who crave what’s bland.

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