During the pandemic I honestly didn't know if I would ever read or write again. My system was so overwhelmed with what was happening in the world. The tension, the pain, the complexities, a system that was failing its people, and me being neurodivergent, just slowly crumbling to pieces. I was getting more dysfunctional by the day, held inside an array of heartfelt grief that hurt so many of my executive functions.

My ability to read or write stopped. There was very little I could do to retain a paragraph or manage more than point-form thoughts. Immediately my thoughts would scatter into the winds of trauma response and every thought became a storm of information I couldn't hold. I honestly didn't know if I would be able to deliver something like this ever again.

Being neurodivergent is no small feat. It's a constant conundrum of dysfunction that you have to gain back over, again and again. Because loss of function isn't always permanent, and with neurodivergence, I believe it's almost never fully permanent. But regaining function gets more challenging as you get older, or when your health is already stretched thin.

The fear that comes with loss of function is real. It's hard to talk about, wrapped in shame, and it feels endless. "I can't read right now" is a hard thing to admit. "I can barely walk tonight." "I can't sleep." ...

The list goes on.

For me, as a writer for many years, this broke my heart and hurt my mind. Everything I love to do creatively, writing, dancing, painting, pottery, stand-up comedy, these are all regulatory devices. This is how I make sense of my world and calm my nervous system.

And like the Hulk's secret of always being angry, the truth about a lot of neurodivergence is that we're always dysregulated.

We're constantly having to regulate, and sometimes we fall short. So not having the main things that help me cope at my fingertips has been, and continues to be, genuinely hard.

The pandemic wasn't the only factor. Postpartum hit my brain hard too. My working memory, my insomnia, my inflammation all skyrocketed. The dysfunction started piling up. Anxiety and rejection sensitivity increased. It was a five-year perfect storm.

Through all of it, my love and understanding of neurodivergence deepened. I lived a repeated pattern I had been in before, but this time with a baby added to it. That shows a person a lot about themselves. The mask wasn't slipping. It was shattering.

For all intents and purposes, I am a very high-functioning person. I run a few of my own businesses: one in healthcare, one in coaching, and one in comedy, teaching and doing stand-up. So the decline into having to stop most of it and enjoy none of it was its own kind of loss.

People with neurodivergence are so resilient and can also seem fragile. It's a complex ecosystem of regulation, rest, exercise, nutrition, you know, human stuff. Mixed with a live wire that, if you get too close, could blow at any moment. We're strong and delicate.

Having a body and a brain like mine is beautiful and complex. I'm AuDHD with PTSD, C-PTSD, and fibromyalgia. But I have also run a successful business for over 18 years, and I can do more in a day (when I have the energy) than some people get done in a week and my creativity is off the charts.

My makeup and my upbringing give me a deep love of people and of neurodivergent minds and bodies. Getting to do this work is an absolute joy.

It can be so hard to explain that it's fine that I'm working on a collapsed arch and haven't slept properly in three weeks and my whole body is in pain, and yet I look and act totally fine. Because I am totally fine. My normal is not other people's normal.

This has made me so resilient, but it has also required me to understand myself and my signals deeply, so I don't fall into burnout when I genuinely cannot afford to.

And I have to navigate really wanting to fall apart and not being able to. That is the reality. I will most likely always be walking that fine line between functioning just enough to get by and actually thriving.

So no, I really didn't think I would get to put myself into the world again like this. I didn't know I'd do stand-up again. I didn't know I'd have a pottery studio. I didn't know if I would have a functional body and brain again.

And worse yet, I do know that I will fall apart like this again. It's inevitable. The amount I feel, physically, mentally, emotionally, is intense. It's a deep well, and that means when new traumas arrive they can set off this whole chain of events. A major loss will do it. That's how the first one happened: a series of major losses. My burnout was brutal. I have another blog about that one, but that's all in due time.

Right now I am here to say: I understand skill regression like no one's business. And my honest belief is that we have to start talking about all the realities of being neurodivergent. Just like someone in a wheelchair, our disabilities are only disabilities when we don't figure out how to accommodate for them. And in this society, a society that is the absolute antithesis of one built for neurodivergent function, it's up to us to figure out what we need and slowly make our way toward that life.

I know a lot of you are reading this and saying yes. I know a lot of you are tired of being exhausted and in pain and not knowing how to function. So let's keep moving toward clarity together. I'll share what works for me, even at my worst. And hopefully we can slowly become beacons of change for each other, leading toward a world that, in my honest opinion, only neurodivergence can build. A world that thrives and loves and is exuberant in its expression.

I want you all to be as joyful as you can be and let that big heart shine into the world.

Thank you for reading this. An article I didn't think would exist. A piece of me that I lost and regained. I am so grateful.

Much love,

Kat

Ps. If this resonates of you have a story like this please let me know by commenting here or sending me an email. Let's start talking about our normal. Let's take the shame out of something we cannot control.