As a neurodivergent person, I used to spend a lot of time masking my unique traits, until I realized that many of the writers I mentored and worked with were also neurodivergent (and often didn't realize it themselves). They were struggling to find a place where they belonged in a world that didn’t understand them, and they needed to hear that they weren't alone.

I needed to hear that I wasn’t alone.

So, I started talking about my own neurodivergent traits, especially as they relate to writing, in workshops and in my one-on-one mentorships. The response has been remarkable. More and more writers have started to acknowledge and embrace their neurodivergence in those discussions, and I’ve learned so much from each of them about what it means to be neurodivergent, about writing, about myself.

Neurodivergence comes in many flavours, of course, with differing accompanying traits. Still, there are traits we may share, like our often-overwhelming sensory sensitivities, our drive towards social justice, an intense emotional landscape, deeper pattern recognition, hyperfocus and, of course, a tendency to think far outside the box. We might identify as a highly sensitive person (HSP), or as a person on the autism spectrum (ASD), or with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), or as in my case, as a person with giftedness—or any combination.

Here’s a Venn diagram showing common traits of Austism, ADHD and giftedness, and where they overlap.

Embrace-autism.com offers blogs about a wide variety of neurodivergencies. And here’s a link on how giftedness (a term that a great many of us struggle with) falls within the neurodivergence rainbow.

Each flavour of neurodivergence brings with it a different set of gifts and challenges, as we apply our unique minds to our writing lives. I hope you’ll take the time to explore what it means for you and your writing. Doing so has changed everything for me. In a world that very often doesn’t understand our differences, I’ve finally found not only acceptance but belonging in my community of neurodivergent writers.