Neurodivergent Narratives

So friends, am I gonna like this social space? Who’s on here that I know?

I am probably going to hurt some feelings with this, but this isn’t about shame and blame—it’s about collective accountability. Being called to account doesn’t always give us warm fuzzy feelings inside. But as much as I try to be gentle in this space when it’s warranted, I also don’t shy away from real talk and speaking the truth.

The data is showing what Black folks have known to be true all along.

Black Lives Matter was nothing more than an aesthetic for a lot of y’all.

All that “listening and learning” and other performative stuff folks did in 2020 didn’t mean crap when the chips were down. We have Proud Boys, N***s, and all manner of white supremacist hate groups that have sprung up in the past eight years. America’s mistreatment of Black people is being redacted from history curricula in public schools. There has been an uptick in anti-Black violence.

Black folks have to buy the same gas and groceries as everybody else. We have to be able to afford to live in the same economy.

And yet we somehow managed to find the moral courage not to vote for a guy convicted of sexual misconduct, who fomented an insurrection, and who is corrupt and immoral in just about every way imaginable.

The only ones riding for Black folks (and by extension other marginalized groups) is Black people, and Black women—as usual—are the ones who got everybody else’s backs.

Non-Black women often chide Black women for our lack of “solidarity” and “sisterhood” with them. These numbers are a reflection of the reasons why we are often wary of your “solidarity.” It often comes at our expense.

Imagine telling on yourselves this loud…

And now is not the time to “this white woman.” If you feel the impulse to defend, deflect, do the equivalent of white tears, virtue signal, “listen and learn,” or anything else please don’t. It’s not the time. This information is here for you to quietly reflect on.

If you didn’t vote for Trump, fine. You’re a Good Noodle. I’m not talking to or about you. Please don’t make this post about you and your virtue or hurt feelings at being lumped in with everyone else. Go and collect your people.

Image source: NBC News Exit Poll Data

Update: I updated this post to reflect the latest data, which was posted at 9:35am ET Nov. 6th. These numbers might shift some. The initial graphic I posted was from either late last night or this morning.

💯

I’m definitely this kind of autistic, except when I’m ADHDing. Then I’m anxious af and late for everything autistic me planned 🫠🥴

Tweet by DanLamorte reads:
Them - Everyone is autistic now
*Sees planes delayed, trains behind schedule, boats crashing into bridges*
Me - I don't think so

TRUTH before reconciliation.

My heart is breaking. They murdered this man. With evidence pointing towards his innocence, the public’s cries, the families cries, and even their own prosecutors cries. They still murdered this man.

This isn’t how it’s supposed to be and yet this is how it often is.

We can’t keep allowing this to happen.

And it can happen again, in less than a month to Texas’ Robert Robertson, an Autistic man on death row who has appealed for clemency. When you have a moment, look at his case.

For now, we mourn. But we have to fight. We can’t continue to allow the government to murder innocent people.


・・・
Tonight, Missouri executed an innocent man. ⁠
⁠
Our hearts are with Marcellus and his loved ones.

Another school function (first rugby match of the season for the child), another avoiding all parent at all costs.

No matter how much better I get at managing my social anxiety in other spaces, the parent small talk is one that still messes with me.

It’s so weird how parents can approach each other so easily and start laughing and chatting together. I feel nauseous just thinking about doing that 🫠🥴

Y’all before my diagnosis I was fearless! Now, it’s like I’m hyper aware of all the things I didn’t know or realise and now I’m overly cautious of fu***ng up.

It’s exhausting.

Adore this post so much. Unfortunately I don’t know much abt Brach's candy corn (I’m not American), but even I know that no one loves them more than Tiffy Fidgets and Fries!

Dear Brach's / Ferrara Candy Shop,

Hi. My name is Jess. I’m better known around d these parts as the mom in Diary of a Mom, but you can just call me Jess.

I’m the short, white lady in the photo below. The beautiful, not-so-short Black lady in the photo is my friend, Tiffany. Tiffany is awesome. She’s the award-winning, New York Times Best-selling author of an incredible book called A Day With No Words. If you haven’t read it, you really, really must. It’s an absolutely gorgeous children’s book that reads like a love letter from an autistic mom to her non-speaking autistic son. It’s perfection. But I digress.

Tiffany runs a page here on Facebook called Fidgets and Fries. She writes about all kinds of things there, in ways that are so engaging and compelling that nearly 40,000 people hang on her every word. We laugh with her, we cry with her, we root her on. In short, we are invested in that woman’s happiness.

And that is where you come in. We need your help.

Tiffany is addicted to your candy corn. When the candy corn wars start, that woman capes for y’all like nobody’s business. NO ONE is going to disrespect Brach’s candy corn on her watch.

She eats it all year round. I mean, sure, this is the high season, obviously, but I’m telling you, she hoards it and guards it with her life so that she can have it every month of the year.

So Brach’s, we need your help. We need you to sponsor Tiffany. Give her a racing suit with patches on it or whatever y’all do. Make her your spokesperson. Crown her the Queen of the Corn. At the very least, please, please send her an obscene amount of candy corn. She’s earned it. Seriously, I’ve never seen one person talk this much about candy corn. I’d say it’s a problem, but it’s only a problem if y’all don’t step in and help us help her get her fix.

She and her little family have been through a lot this year. They need this. So we need it for them.

If you need more incentive than all of that, I’ll happily make a post about your candy corn here on Diary in return for whatever you decide to do. I can’t promise that all 345,000 of my readers are fans — as you must know, candy corn is a pretty divisive topic — but I’m thinking we’d hit enough candy corn loving folks to make it well worth your while.

So what do you say? See you in the comments? (Please?)

Yours hopefully,

Jess

*** READERS: Please help me get Brach’s attention by tagging both Brach’s and their parent company, Ferrara Candy Shop in the comments. Thank you!!! ***

{image is a photo of Tiff and me at the JFK Memorial Library a couple of months ago}

Yup.

This makes me think of how much I can’t stand the term “tough love”. Wtf even is that?!

Exactly. We need to do better.

Hey friends,

Do people actually like their birthdays or not?

For me, it’s a mixed bag.

I genuinely *want* to like my birthday, but I think deep down I still hold so many problem stories around it. Then every year something comes up and I end up feeling pretty awful for most of it. So the problem stories continue, as if I manifest them into being.

the limitations in my expectations happy birthday… to me

Hey friends,

What's new over here on FB?

I know I've been away for a while, but I think I'm slowly inching my way back. Baby steps.

In the meantime... some news!

The book I've been writing for over a year and a half is finally in PRODUCTION!**

As it turns out, writing a book is quite difficult. Then after you write it, you also need recovery time because you have limited capacity for anything else after that (at least for me anyway who writes with the speed of 10 snails), so I needed to take time off and I probably still do, but...

At least for now, I can almost breathe again!

The book is called...

It's Never Just ADHD. Finding the child behind the label (by Sage Publishing) Due out in February 2024.

It's my very humble attempt to change the conversation about ADHD by including intersectionality at the forefront of it so that we can better support children in education. Because I can't handle any more conversations that don't attempt to even consider the experience of the whole child while learning how to meet their learning needs. Or how internalised biases keep so many children from being seen or getting support altogether.

I've got a lot of thoughts on this topic but for now, I'll just stop there. But as always, thank you so much for sticking around as I went MIA to write and for your support (with a special shout-out to my patrons!)

Sandra

PS. I'm thinking I might share some posts on what I've written about in the book. Or perhaps the writing process itself. Or maybe both... What do you think?

**For those that don't know what production means basically, it's going through the publisher's formatting, edits and markups to get it ready for publication. I have about a month left of not looking at the book before I get it back to view their edit suggestions and make the changes they want me to make.

[ID: A Patreon post that says: "My book has finally gone into production and that means I have a little time to share the final cover with y'all on here first..." With a little circle picture of myself and a subtitle that says "Book cover REVEAL" Posted by Neurodivergent Narratives. End ID]

Book cover REVEAL | Patreon Join Neurodivergent Narratives on Patreon to get access to this post and more benefits.

"I wish I was being dramatic, but I’m not, because when my account blew up in June 2020, I was not expecting any of it. I was definitely not prepared for any of it either. That kind of attention was way too big for my body to handle. I did not have the capacity for any of it. Up until that point, any writing I had done had stayed safely hidden within the pages of my journals. I had a cosy 500 people following me and it felt just enough. Before that, my writing only came out for such special occasions as essay writing (I’m an English major) or birthday cards."

on being creative cuz maybe it's not a label i gotta earn