“Good grief!” exclaims Charlie Brown, often when Lucy removes the football from his attempted kick, landing him flat on his back. His exasperation seems oxymoronic. How can grief be good? We all experience grief. Grief is a reaction to any loss, big or small. It can be at the death of a loved one or…
The boy’s tongue is thick /
and inexact /
and his lips will not arrange themselves . . .
In the end, this round of antidepressants didn’t do me much good. I tried the latest kind, upped and downed the dose with my doctor, and stuck with the most promising for a year and a half before deciding to ditch them at the end of the summer. Maybe there were days when they evened…
Imagine a university-aged youth who has just experienced his first episode of psychosis, a common symptom of psychotic illnesses such as schizophrenia. Let’s call this young man Ben. Research has shown that early intervention treatment programs in young people with a first episode of psychosis can have a huge positive effect on the trajectory of…
Last spring, I had the chance to participate in a Writers at Work program at the Hay Festival, a large book festival in Wales. It was an amazing experience: for ten days, I was one of ten early-career writers treated to a full schedule of private masterclasses and events with some of the biggest names…
When prompted to think of someone with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactive disorder), most people imagine an overly active child, usually a boy, bouncing off the walls in class, unable to retain any bits of information. When prompted to think of someone with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), most imagine a quiet, perhaps non-verbal child (also usually…
Brazilian State Legislator Andréa Werner runs a one-of-a-kind office. “Our working hours are flexible, most of the team works from home, we changed the lighting in our offices to be less bright than other offices, and we also create processes to make sure people have the resources they need,” says Werner. “My team is very…
“Kill yourself!” The client repeated this countless times throughout our counselling session. This tic had been observed and discussed as evidence of the client’s experience of tourette’s syndrome, and now neither of us bothered reacting to its presence. Instead, it functioned as an indicator of the client’s stress level – utterances would increase as we…
In 1998, I was teaching middle school students in Minnesota. I wasn’t aware that Australian sociologist Judy Singer and American journalist Harvey Blume were discussing the idea of individual differences in brain variation and neurodiversity. What I did know at that time was Parker Palmer’s book The Courage to Teach. His words, written then, echo…
Toronto-based artist and illustrator Maia Hoekstra takes her sketchbook everywhere. For Hoekstra and, she suspects, for many neurodivergent creatives, making things is necessary: “It’s a survival tactic to pursue creativity,” she said. “I can’t not make. It is something inside me that has to come out. If I don’t make art, I feel miserable. I…
My wife is pretty sure I have ADHD. She’d know; after all, she’s got an ADHD diagnosis as have two of our kids and I’m a lot like them (perhaps unsurprisingly). My mom, however, is less persuaded. I was a restless kid but I always did fine in school and wasn’t any more disruptive than…
Neurodiversity has been a part of my story for a while, even as it has taken me a long time to recognize that and see the goodness in it. It wasn’t until someone started talking about the connection between autism spectrum disorder and the inability to escape fight or flight mode that I recognized a…
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