I just couldn’t wrap up the Self Care series without talking about neurodiversity, masking, and mental health, and the perfect person for conversation is fellow therapist, coach, podcaster, speaker and advocate, Pasha Marlowe. 

In this vulnerable episode, you'll hear about the challenges and advantages of masking, understand the emotions of being neurodivergent in a world that is built by and for neurotypicals, and discover ways to foster radical self-acceptance, wherever you are. 

We're unpacking a variety of insections - from growing up with unidentified ADHD and autism,  attempting to hide emotional dysregulation and rejection sensitivity, a later-in-life recognition of queer identity, and the power of language in creating an inclusive society. 

Mic Drop Moment: 

 "It takes a physical and emotional toll to mask, to hide, to conceal anything or suppress any of our tendencies or identities or truths. It also feels, I think quite misaligned and lonely, but both are painful. Like it's painful to be judged and rejected and unsafe, and it's terribly painful to not be respected or seen and known."  Pasha Marlowe 

Mentioned during our convo:

• Brene Brown quote (in purple, scroll down) 
• Anais Nin quote
• Jamie Shields 
• Eric Maisel’s book “When Smart People Hurt”

Connect with Pasha Marlowe:

• Website
• Linked In
• TikTok 

Have you loved the Self-Care Series?  Want to hear more content like this on the podcast?  I need to hear from you!

Leave a review 

DM me on Linked In 

Did you build your business with your neurodivergent traits and tendencies in mind? If not, you aren’t alone. 

Most of us have no idea how because our educational and workplace environments teach us conformity and masking, not radical self-acceptance and doing what actually works for us.  

This might be the perfect time to partner with a business coach who is also a licensed therapist and entrepreneur with ADHD (me) to reinvent your business with YOU in mind. 

I choose to work with a limited number of 1:1 clients at a time, so I can customize our coaching engagement to be exactly what you need, no more, no less.   

It starts with a no-obligation free consultation to help you figure out why your business is not yet where you want it to be, and create a plan that takes mental wellness and energetic capacity into account. 

Want to know more?  Schedule a free consultation here by clicking here. 

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H: As two neurodivergent women, you and I have many things in common and one of the hottest topics that we have been discussing is a term that is associated with you and in the process of being trademarked, and that is neuro belonging. And the first time I saw it, Pasha, I thought I have to know everything about neuro belonging. So where shall we begin?

G: I love that. Yes, we of course have all heard of belonging, but I felt like it wasn't deep enough, it wasn't complete enough. It certainly didn't speak to me as a multiply neurodivergent person. So neuro belonging is not about fitting in or masking. Fitting in, this is a Brene Brown quote, by the way, fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be to be accepted. Belonging on the other hand does not require us to change who we are. It requires us to be who we are, that was Brene Brown.

And so I took this idea of when we don't betray ourselves, when we choose our truth, standing in our own truth and power, we can belong anywhere. Because often when we hear about belonging, we hear about showing up without the fear of judgment or people accepting us, which is beautiful, but they don't, always. And so I take it to that next level, the inside job, the journey to neuro belonging is showing up even when other people are judging me or criticizing me or rejecting me because I'm staying true to myself, to my values, to my integrity and my character. Does that make sense?

H: It does and I have so many questions and you know me, and that is very typical of me because I'm super, super curious. So it sounds like what you're saying is that the sense of belonging is internal and doesn't actually require anything of the other person or persons, have I got that part right?

G: That's how I interpret the word I coined neuro belonging, but that's not typically how belonging is talked about. Belonging is often talked about in the DEIB and I'll include A, Jamie Shields, who's a brilliant content creator, in the disability community. He wrote equality is everyone getting a pair of shoes. Diversity is everyone wearing a different type of shoe. Equity is everyone getting a pair of shoes that fits them. Accessibility is having shoes or alternatives that feel comfortable. Inclusion is feeling respected or valued, whether you're wearing shoes or not.

Belonging is showing up with or without shoes and without the fear of judgment. And I love that, but there is often judgment and I'll be honest, a fear of judgment sometimes. So I have to stay, and you and I've talked about this, how I experienced this in personal and professional arenas. I know I'm gonna be judged and I kind of fear it. And yet I have to stay very true to my own course, to my own character and integrity and then I can belong anywhere, even if it's lonely.

H: There's so much to this and I It's one of the things I love most about you, Pasha, is that you're such a deep thinker and you don't just stand on your own thoughts. You do research. You connect with other people. You explore the differences in your, you know, perspective versus theirs, and you're always looking to take understanding to a deeper level and I really, really resonate with that. So everything that you say, I'm like, oh, but I have like 50 questions for that. But with this is not a 50 hour podcast, friends.

So just I know, I know I would love that so much so we can belong in your framework. We can neuro belong wherever we are because we are belonging to ourselves, and we are not betraying ourselves and we are not betraying ourselves. So whether we are accepted, rejected, whether we're getting microaggressions that maybe someone less sensitive might not even notice or recognize or respond to, like, I'm belonging to myself, and I am belonging to myself no matter where I am.

I think this is so important, Pasha, because a lot of people will say, stop reading people's minds. Stop assuming that people are thinking certain thoughts about you. Stop assuming that people are seeking to reject you, exclude you, judge you, that's not happening. I just don't find that messaging to be at all accurate because the reality is not all of them are, but some of them are. And to teach people, oh, they're not thinking that, don't think that. It sort of defies our own intuition and instinct which we need to rely on a lot, I think.

G: Yeah, this reminds me of with conversations I have with people ADHDers around RSD rejection sensitivity dysphoria, which is this emotional and physical pain in response to actual or perceived rejection. So that, or perceived really bugs me as does the dysphoria aspect. But nonetheless, it it's based in actual rejections. There was actual trauma and actual rejections, which brought us to the point of people pleasing and burning out and worrying that we're gonna be rejected or sensing that we're gonna be rejected. So we might be perceiving it, but it's still based in actual rejection. So I don't, I agree with you. I don't wanna dismiss people of their actual lived experience, and I wanna give people agency to speak their truth and trust their own intuition. And if I feel like I'm being judged or rejected, I'm gonna trust that intuition and I'm gonna keep myself safe by potentially masking in certain situations.

H: So you anticipated my next question like a rock star.

G: I was helping you with the transition.

H: Oh, yes, well, you know, because we both have ADHD among other things. We both know that transitions are some of the more difficult points for us to navigate, and they tend are some of the more difficult points for us to navigate, and they tend to be where we either go blank or go off on a tangent so I welcome and invite your assistance. So you're absolutely right and it's something you and I have talked about many times and know very well, which is when we do not feel safe to be ourselves completely, to neuro belong, masking is one of the options that we have.

We can talk about other options, but masking is probably the thing that most people do when leaving or opting out is really not the appropriate thing. In work settings, I mean, you can't just walk out of every meeting where you don't feel welcomed and where you might be being criticized or judged. So for those who are less familiar with this term and all of it encompasses, let's talk about what masking is and isn't before we go into the rest of it.

G: So masking refers to the practice of concealing or suppressing aspects of our identity or aspects of our neurodivergent traits from the neurodivergent lens. It's doing this in order to fit in with norms, with neuro normativity or the norms of workplace, the norms of society. And as we all know, workplace environments center around neurotypical social skills, communication abilities. And so often neurodivergent people, perceive whether or not it is safe or unsafe to unmask and reveal or disclose our identities, our traits, our strengths, our challenges, our diagnoses, if we choose. And I think there's advantages and disadvantages to masking.

H: Absolutely. I just think about all the different ways that I have masked in the past. And I think early on, you know, high school, early college and I'll tell you a story. One specific incident that's coming to mind is I'm in a college class. It's in a big lecture hall, there are probably a few 100 people there. So UCLA and it was a fascinating lecture that I was following a 100%. But because of my hyperactive ADHD brain, while attending to the lecture, taking notes on the lecture, I was also on my little desktop highlighting an article for another class and balancing my checkbook in a little corner of the desk and this was so normal for me.

I no longer multitask because I know too much about neuroscience now that I'm like, okay, that that probably wasn't the best thing. But what was, what led to masking is that for me, I was just being me. I was just doing me. I was just doing what I need to do. And all of a sudden, I just had this feeling of tension and I thought, what's going on? And I sort of glance around me, and I literally saw no less than 3 people, 1 on either side actually, one behind me, just glaring at me and I thought, what's happened? Am I talking to myself, which I sometimes did. Or did I fart and not remember, like, what's going on? And one of them just leaned over and says, will you just stop?

G: Oh, it's distracting them.

H: And I thought, stop what and she just said, just all of this. I felt so shamed, so judged, so rejected, and also confused because I was just being me. I obviously had a lot to learn at 19 years old about how my ADHD ness was being perceived by others. But I'll tell you what, I started sewing a mask that very minute and yanking it up.

G: Yeah, I find myself doing that, which is discouraging more often than I thought I would, depending on where I am, of course. Sometimes I'll mask my queerness, which is sometimes verbal and sometimes quite obvious depending on how many rainbows I'm wearing in certain states or countries. Sometimes I'll mask my, gender nonconformity and my pronouns she, they with people who I know will offer lots of feedback and negativity and microaggressions because I've seen it. So sometimes I'll mask my ADHD autistic movements when I'm presenting in front, like when I'm doing a keynote for a corporation, even though I'm talking about neurodiversity and neurodivergence. Sometimes I'll notice that it's not received as easily when I'm super fidgety. And so I see, I know my, I know myself to do this.

I was interviewed once for a movie called Freedom to Love and the interviewer said, can you just make eye contact with me? And I said, it's interesting because we're talking about ADHD and autism and I'm talking about ableism and I'm talking about how it's often challenging to make eye contact, but here's why for me, for me, and this resonated with a lot of people. It's not because I can't or don't want to. For me, when I make eye contact with somebody more in live than in person, but even still sometimes digitally, I am very intuitive and empathetic by the way, against stereotyping of autism again. I feel people's pain. If I were to look into your eyes for more than a few seconds, I will cry because I will feel and absorb your pain, your traumas.

And so when she was interviewing me, I wasn't looking at her. I was talking about vulnerable things, she was sharing vulnerable things. I was kind of looking to her forehead and so she gave me that criticism and I offered that as an explanation. And then I cried because I was trying to not cry, but then I cried. And so many people made comments after that when they watched the movie saying, oh, that resonates. It's not that we can't look somebody in the eye. It's just so much stimulation, overstimulation, lots of information coming in when we have that intimate eye contact. That's not for everybody, but for me.

H: No, that makes so much sense. And I remember getting feedback in the past when I would be communicating with a superior. And because I'm a verbal processor and the way my mind works as sometimes if I haven't already thought through how I wanna respond to a conversation maybe I wasn't anticipating, I'm literally thinking how I want to respond while I'm responding. And when I do that, I usually am looking up into the right. So I'm it's almost like I'm typing out the words or I'm writing out the words that I'm saying on a notepad or on a on a laptop. And then the person will say, can we have some eye contact here? Because in neurotypical norms, that's read as sort of deceptive or, like, withholding or you're not being you're not revealing your true thoughts or all of your thoughts.

It's like, it's just so interesting. But what's really fascinating and unfortunate is that even in a setting where you are invited as an expert speaker on these very topics, just because that doesn't make it safe. And I will say this now, and I've said it a hundred times, and I'll probably say it a 100,000 more before I stop talking on the topic, is that I trust my intuition above all else. But that took some digging because of how many years I have learned to mask. I used to be so proud of what I called at that time passing for normal or hiding in plain sight. I thought that was a massive flex. They don't even know how different I am and you know, let's unpack the risks and benefits because truthfully, in settings where we aren't really safe, it is a skill and it may be absolutely necessary.

G: Yeah, to get a job, to keep a job, for example. Sometimes if we are in a, let's say a relationship with somebody who's being aggressive or violent, sometimes we mask to emotionally regulate other people, to keep other people comfortable. I mean, how many times we all done that at a family reunion? All the time right?

H: Oh, yeah.

G: And we're like, this is not the time I'm gonna pull out these, you know, to all these traits. Cause we know, cause we read the room and there there's disadvantages to it because it's exhausting. It takes a physical and emotional toll to mask, to hide, to conceal anything or suppress any of our tendencies or identities or truths. It also feels, I think quite misaligned and lonely, but both are painful. Like it's painful to be judged and rejected and unsafe, and it's terribly painful to not be respected or seen and known. And so I feel like I'm always making these decisions, like, is today the day, or is this the moment where the pain of, there's that quote by a poem by Anais Nin, and then the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

And I refer to that poem a lot in my mind, but I think it's beautiful and it makes sense to me. We have to make these decisions. And you and I have talked about this as we get older like 50 and up, like all bets off a lot of times. There's an more unapologetic unmasking that happens, which I love. And it's in my own environment that I've created, the work that I've created for myself, for the most part, I am unapologetically unmasking, but I've heard from too many people who, for example, have a parent, not, apparent disabilities, a parent neurodivergence. They don't have the privilege to hide it or mask it.

Somebody who's schizophrenic, somebody with Tourette's, somebody, with down syndrome, they don't have the privilege or ability to mask it all the time so it is apparent and can be less safe. A black autistic person is unsafe in most of the world. And so I never say depth unmasked, no matter what, you know, we have to be able to understand, when it keeps us safe and when it doesn't. But I think the goal, if I were to zoom out to a more beautiful world where things weren't pathologized and stigmatized and neurodiversity was more accepted and affirmed, then I would hope that we would be able to be less masked over time.

H: I hope I live long enough to see more of that in the world. Because the reality is that there are all kinds of differences between people, there always have been. This is true of the animal kingdom as well. And rejecting what we don't understand, it hurts everybody. It doesn't just hurt the neurodivergent person. It hurts the neurotypical person as well and I like to remind people that are judging those of us that are different. Where do you think most innovation comes from, think about it folks. It's the innovation, new inventions, new ideas, disruptive thinking, breakthroughs in science, in the marketplace, you know, in the social world, in politics, it doesn't come from the status quo.

It doesn't come from conforming to the norm. It doesn't come from maintaining standards that have been around for a 100 years while the world has been changing at an ever increasing rate. They need us even if they don't understand us and I think, you know, that could be a point of pride. I love what you said, Pasha, about really kind of unpacking the privilege of being able to mask successfully because you're absolutely right. You know, many people don't realize there's actually 3 different subtypes of ADHD. And I don't think there's any surprise that the folks who are severely hyperactive and impulsive have the hardest time masking because they have the greatest difficulty, what I call, curbing their enthusiasm, restraining their impulses. They think that they do it or they don't even think that they just do it.

And they get in trouble for it, which is why so many people who are in our prison system, many of them have unidentified ADHD, the hyperactive impulsive subtype. Meanwhile, if you happen to be female, female identifying, race is female, and you have the inattentive distractible subtype you're just quietly underachieving and being underestimated your whole life, and you're not causing anybody any trouble so you can probably mask much more effectively. But make no mistake, it's both an advantage and a disadvantage because you are I love your term that you're basically betraying your essential self. How can we have satisfying relationships? Like truly satisfying, nurturing, mutually beneficial relationships if we can't be who we actually are.

G: Yeah and I think our relationships, friendships, partnerships, our circles get smaller as we get older right. I become more just discerning as to who I'm going to, unmask with or use my spoons up with right? And, I feel like a few people in our corner on our team who understand us, accept us. We don't have to ask for accommodations or say our support and access needs. We don't have to disclose all of our diagnoses because we have conversations based in trust and respect and agency and autonomy and we understand each other. We know that if we're gonna go out to dinner, my friend and I, that we know we're not gonna pick a loud, room.

I know that one of my friends, is, has difficulty hearing out of one side of her ear, I'm not gonna put us near the kitchen. She knows that I get distracted by a lot of lights or traffic or parking difficulties. And so she's gonna find a place that has like a big parking lot nowhere near the center of the city. And so we make these accommodations for each other without really any discussion or, shame or stigma anymore. And I feel like if we have just a few of those people in our lives, be it friendships or partners, it really helps. And if you don't have that yet, connecting with other neurodivergent people is a good start.

But I will say I don't resonate and connect with all ADHDers or all autistic people or all queer people, like we still have to really figure out who we wanna be in community with. I'm in community with a lot of neurotypical people who I think are fantastic people and, but that's because they're curious learners. That's because they're willing to listen, willing to say, I don't know, or tell me more. That's interesting, I love that. those are my people, that's who I wanna be in community with.

H: These are such good points. And I don't think people talk about them enough. I think one of the reasons why, a couple of reasons why I'm kind of coming late to that part of the party is because my communication skills are my greatest strength. And so the way I've used communication before I even realized I was neurodivergent. It's, like, pretty wired in there and developed. So learning how to use more inclusive language, it was a blind spot I didn't even know I had. And because I was successfully masked for so much of my life, it's something that I'm, you know, kind of going into and wanting to be sensitive about because language is very, very powerful and we can hurt people inadvertently.

G: Yeah, I think words matter. They can empower us or disempower us and I get some criticism for instance on LinkedIn when I talk about words such as the very common misconception that neurodiverse and neurodivergent can be talked about interchangeably. Not true, there are no neurodiverse individuals. There are neurodivergent individuals and people are like, well, who cares like, why are you getting hung up on this? And because there's, it matters because of what it means, what it represents neurodivergent diverges from neuro normativity. We're all neurodiverse as humans, all neurodiverse and so if we, so it just matters.

I think words hold a lot of meaning and power and then I take it a little bit further and I talk about the neurodiversity paradigm versus the pathology paradigm. So we've been in, especially as mental health professionals, you and I, we were trained in the pathology paradigm through the DSM, the Bible for all therapists where everything is labeled disorder or dysphoria or deficiency. And rather if we say difference that already, like even if we just drop the disorder, even if we just drop the disorder, instead of saying autism spectrum disorder, autism bipolar disorder, just say bipolar, post traumatic stress disorder, post traumatic stress, like legitimate responses to human experiences. I feel like that would be a really good start, different rather than disordered.

And there's other terms that like when people say, what are your symptoms? Or what are your conditions that's more pathologizing than saying traits or experiences. You know, if we talk about the symptoms of ADHD, that kind of implies that it can be treated or should be treated, that there's a problem. And for some people they do want treatment, but that's not true for everybody. And it's not for us to decide, like, who decided what was ordered and disordered? Well, capitalism and colonialism, white supremacy and patriarchy, blah blah blah blah blah. But anyhow, then we talk about things like low functioning people, right? Functioning according to who low high as if there's a value judgment in it.

So rather than saying low functioning people, I say we have a low functioning society that doesn't yet accommodate for all people, for all minds. And so it's subtle changes, but not really. I mean, you know, it's really coming into our mindset and our own personal paradigms and ableism, internalized ableism about the right way, the ideal way, who should be fixed, who should be treated, who should be medicated, who should be quieted right? This is again, hopefully we'll see it in our lifetime, but I'm seeing a trend. There less people are saying mental illness. They're saying mental health challenges. That's a good start, right? There's so it's happening, but there's a lot of resistance because if we lean into the diagnoses and or the disordered aspect of it, we get support.

We get accommodations. We might get medicine. We might get the access support or support that we need, that we that we need to survive. And so the worry is if we take disorder out of the conversation, people won't get the help and the accommodations they need. There's also a controversy around, putting certain mental health challenges under the neurodivergent umbrella, because people are like, no. Mental health is pathologized. Mental health struggles are definitely pathologized let's say something like schizophrenia. So we don't want to put something like ADHD or autism under that same umbrella because then people will pathologize that as well. Well, they already do, first of all and I would argue we're trying to depathologize and destigmatize all differences right? Is that making sense?

H: It makes a 100% sense. In fact, as a matter of fact, one of the things that I decided to do when I put my therapy license on inactive status I'm still a licensed therapist is one of the reason one of the many reasons why I decided to do that was because I wanted to voluntarily relinquish my legal right to diagnose people. Yes so I use some of the same language you do, Pasha. I prefer to say, when were you identified with ADHD, or when did you identify yourself as ADHD? I'm also very keen to use accurate language. For many years, people would say, oh, I don't have ADHD, I have ADD. Okay I don't wanna correct you, but I'm going to because the term is ADHD, and there are 3 different subtypes.

G: Exactly.

H: And they've been classified as pathology. I mean, ADHD, autism, these are not mental illnesses. These are considered to be mental disorders. You and I are talking about them as mental differences, which have strengths and struggles. But it's sticky it's a tricky, sticky business because on the one hand, like, does it matter if you are officially diagnosed? Can't you identify? Well, I think it matters if you feel you need an official diagnosis to be able to claim that part of your identity with confidence. If you feel you need that, by all means.

But to me the best reason for getting officially diagnosed with anything is because there may be medication or other forms of treatment that you want access to through your health insurance because this is how the medical model works. We are talking about the medical model because outside of medication and treatment, how we identify ourselves, whether we think of these things as symptoms or traits, whether it's a diagnosis or an identification, none of that really matters unless you need access to something that involves a third party and the medical model.

G: Yeah and it definitely needs to be stated that, and I definitely honor lived experience and self discovery, self diagnosis, mainly because it's completely inaccessible, financially inaccessible. There's wait lists of years often and often the people who are diagnosing are coming at it with their own implicit biases and their own lens of potentially the pathology paradigm. And so a lot of people are being misdiagnosed. They'll spend $1,000 wait the 3 years, they'll get there and they'll leave with anxiety and depression, not ADHD.

Or, you know, it's very, it's still not a perfect science in any way and neurodivergent is not a diagnosis, right? Neurodivergent is the umbrella that includes a lot of things that that are diagnosed. And I also want it before I forget, neuro does not mean brain, neuro is nervous system. So we talk about diversity of minds more than diversity of brains, which allows us to then bring in the very real aspect of a lot of neurodivergence that is not up in our brain or in our head at all. It's our whole body, the way I move through the world is also part of my expression of my neurodivergencies, right, or my multiple neurodivergencies. And so I just want to a lot of people say neuro means brain and it's not true.

H: This is a really good point and it acknowledges and incorporates and includes the fact that emotional dysregulation is part of the lived experience of many neurodivergent people and autistic people, people with ADHD. Rejection sensitive dysphoria, you mentioned earlier, that is related to the emotional dysregulation that many people experience. But you also don't have to be neurodivergent to experience that because no. And many queer people who are not neurodivergent experience rejection sensitivity, highly sensitive people, empaths, highly creative people, gifted people. I'm curious because I know if I don't ask you this right this very second, Pash, I'll probably forget. I mean, we'll have we we'll have another conversation later, but I'm just like, do you personally think that individuals who are identified as gifted are part of the neurodivergent universe?

G: I think anyone that diverges from society's idea of normal, in big quotes, it can identify as neurodivergent. I think one of the aspects of giftedness is often that kind of 2 E, twice exceptional dynamic where they can be very successful in one area, that whole spiky profile and then disabled in another. And so I think sometimes when, parents of gifted children ask for help, they get kind of poo pooed on. Like, why does your kid need help, your kid is brilliant. Your kid's a genius. Your kid's a musical master and they struggle with life skills or they struggle with social skills or they struggle with writing or reading or math or who knows what and so, yes.

H: Belonging, they struggle with belonging. In fact, there's a there's a book that I often mention by Eric Maisel called, Why Smart People Hurt. And because when kids grow up being different, in whatever way they are, they get the message loud and clear from a very early age, you're not okay because you're different. Even if that means you have 50 higher IQ points than the kids you're in school with. And the teachers are really rough on gifted kids too because sometimes those kids are able to think faster than the teacher does. And the teacher feels intimidated by this 10 year old in the front row who's constantly raising their hands.

G: Oh, yes, I had a child who had that experience, but just picked up on math, in a way that nobody could understand. So he was asked to sit in the back of the room and just do busy work or draw because he finished in 30 seconds what it took some other kids or the teacher hours to do. And then, you know, the teacher would get frustrated. They wouldn't have worksheets that would even accommodate his mathematical intelligence. And so fortunately, this is one of my success stories and I think a good lesson for parents, my kiddo, who I would I never formally diagnosed, but I believe autistic, drew thousands of hours of drawing cars because that's all he cared about is cars.

He drew them in the back of the classrooms. He drew them after school before school. He didn't socialize as much. He wasn't the, you know, kid who was, popular. People put him in the friendship club because they thought that he couldn't create, you know, keep friendships. He drew, he drew, he drew. And then finally, one day he signed up for a drawing contest through Ford to design a futuristic Mustang. And he threw it and he sent it away. I did not know this and I get a call from like the Ford executive saying your child who lives in a barn, by the way, in New Hampshire and only sees pickup trucks and Subarus has won the international upcoming car designer of the year award, and he's getting a scholarship to college and Ford will hire him out of school to design cars and that is what he's doing living in Detroit.

He draws cars just like he did when he was a kid. He makes a ton of money doing it. He loves it and he's flourishing. Now that's an unusual success story but had I said, you're brilliant at math. You should do something mathematical. You should I mean, like so much came easy to him academically. What he loves is drawing cars, what he focuses on and breathes and then, you know, that's where he gets lit up. And so I feel like that's a good message to give parents, you know, who have our own expectations, our own fears, our own internalized ableism, our own stigma and beliefs about what the world is and who we want our children to be.

And are they gonna be okay? Are they gonna survive the real world? You know, he didn't know how to do a lot of things I would consider as adulting. He figured it out and maybe not independently, maybe codependently, maybe with help and I think that's fine. You know, we're all like aiming for our children to be financially independent, live on their own, be independent like, that's okay if they're not. That's okay if we need to live with people, that's okay if we need help and support needs right? So we don't, that's not the goal. Who said that was the goal to be independent always. I'm not independent in all the ways. No way. Nope. I'm not doing my own taxes ever, ever.

H: Yeah. That's the most strenuous thing I do each year and I've done it. I don't know how many times and I still hate it and struggle with it and spend far too much time doing it. But to your credit, you understood that your son needed to be supported to be who he is and not converted. And I think it's a sad fact that, you know I mean, most of these conditions are genetic. And before I was officially diagnosed with ADHD by a child psychiatrist as a grown ass woman, I passed it on to all 3 of my kids from 2 different marriages. So I'm the common denominator, and one of them still hasn't been officially identified, the other 2 have.

Each we have 3 different subtypes in this family unit and I prefer not to say I have regrets because that's a colossal waste of time and energy. But had I known that in my lifetime, that it would be possible for me to not only be open about who and how I am, but to be able to use that openness to connect with people who accept me more readily, more completely with a deeper level of understanding than I have ever experienced, had I known that and had I known this was genetic and had I known that I passed it on to all 3 of my kids, I think I would have done a better job of encouraging them to figure out who they are and how they are and double down on that.

Because in the early years of my parenting journey, I just did what I saw people around me doing, which is try to get my kids to fit in. Two of my kids are highly creative, and they're all very original thinkers. Now as adults, that's all worked out. None of them has had to spend extensive time on the therapist's couch. But it's been a journey for all of us to learn to accept ourselves and we've all kind of done it separately, but together. I see a lot of this happening in families, not as much as I'd like, where sometimes grandma gets identified as being on the spectrum or ADHD or both and now is having some of the most meaningful conversations with their kids and grandkids of their entire life. So real healing can come from this within families and I it's never too late.

G: Oh, I was just gonna say that when I work as a therapist or coach in whichever capacity talking to my clients and they say, oh my goodness, like my kids are grown, had I known about myself? There's this grieving and shame and regret. And first of all, we did the best we could with what we knew, but also it is never too late to say I have learned something new. I'm learning and I'm learning, I'm learning, and I'd love to have a conversation with you about how I language things when you were younger, if I used words like lazy or distractible or unfocused, if I gave you, friction or judgment around your resume, which by the way, is like 20 different jobs, look, seemingly scattered.

I love talking to ADHDers about the resume because of course, an outside view looks like you went from selling knives to children's theater to therapy like, how did that work? But there's a common thread in all of our adventures and journeys and the path is not straight. It's wiggly, which makes it better and more dynamic. We know the common thread. Maybe it's service to others. Maybe it's love animals. Maybe it's human interaction, whatever the common thread is, you will see that in your resume. Even the ADHD years with 3 months here, 6 months there, 1 year.

And that takes a lot of shame out of the experience, applying to jobs, thinking I have nothing to show for all of my work or my intelligence or my gifts or my strengths, nothing on paper, it would seem that way. It feels that way and my parents might reiterate that to me. And then I'm not waiting for the day that they come out with this, but I'm gonna do this for my own children. We can't control other people but we can do that for ourself. We can be 95 and have a conversation with our child to realized and discovered and apologize for it and work towards, you know, repair at any time and we can continue.

H: You and I use some of the same languaging around this learning and unlearning. As long as this brain is still functioning, as long as I can still rub a couple of gray cells together, I choose to be on the path of continuous personal evolution, and it always requires learning and unlearning and humility. Humility saying, actually, I don't know as much about this as I thought I did. Or I don't know anything about this because it wasn't even on my radar. Will you share with me what you know?

G: Yeah, I love that. That's a sign of a good leader, you know, to lean into that I don't know in humility and the best conversations I've had recently are people who are like, this is such an awkward question, Pasha, but I feel safe asking you, why do you say you're queer if you are married to a man? How do you, why do you use she, they? That's confusing. What does that even mean? Or, you know, why do you call yourself, autistic if you're able to blank, blank, blank and I love these questions. I love these questions because they're willing to be curious and learn.

And then it opens up a conversation that I think when we feel safe unmasking, like then we have, I think, the responsibility as neurodivergent weird queer people to then liberate others to be their full out neurodivergent queer or weird self, right? In whatever form that takes like we can liberate others by, by standing in our truth. And that is harder when we're younger, I feel like so I love this about aging.

H: I do too. I absolutely there's some parts on that that are not so fun. But this is the part that one of the parts I love the most is that we, you and I, although more me, I'm at that legacy stage of life. And what I want to be known for is helping people who are different embrace that fully, practice radical self acceptance of themself and others, and, like, spread the word that just because you're different doesn't mean you're less than. What makes you different makes you special. And you can own that with your whole heart. Yes, it takes practice. Yes, it takes courage. Yes, it takes seeking safety. But I think it's well worth the journey and I know you do too.

G: That's a beautiful legacy.