Breaking Generational Cycles

How does knowing, or examining your neurodivergence sit with you?

Sometimes, that carries grief, for knowing now what we did not know then. Sometimes, an exhale and relief, that gives understanding to a wordless experience over decades. Sometimes, honestly, more questions than answers. Many of us grew up held by people who loved us without language, who did their best. There were some who met us, and helped us feel love when our needs did not have a name. Others might not have been able to see beyond structures, societal conditioning and “The Box” that meant it felt more like discipline and/or harm than accommodation. Questions I see swirling around means that we are reaching back into memories and asking, “How am I filtering old experiences through the lens I have now? How did it shape who I am now? What did I wish were different?”

The more I move in community, the more I see how we are all in the process of tidying our experiences…. sorting what we felt from what we were told to feel, what we needed from what we were permitted to need. Increasingly, that sorting is happening in two directions at once: backward, through our own histories, and forward, into the lives of our children.

Looking back to move forward, how do we understand and accept our own neurotype?

Thinking of our own experiences, I wonder how you’d like to be met during those times, and how we can be part of the shift that offers that to the next generation. I’ve been at conferences recently, where people come and tell me this so proudly that they’re learning about themselves because they see it now. I want to create a space to CELEBRATE that knowledge, because so often….. we don’t. It is a quiet shift, but when we give it language, understanding, compassion, we are moving mountains. This isn’t easy work, but take this as the Mother’s Day card you might not have received.

We have been shown, through magazines and feeds and influencer grids, what affirming parenting looks like. It comes and lands on our feed, with a cutesy palette, a posture, a gentle-voiced narration or a trending audio, and sometimes that can make the rest of us feel like we are doing it wrong before we have even begun. Parenting also lies in the messy. In the “I DEFINITELY don’t have it all right” but I am learning to apologise to my children. I am learning to repair, and circle back. I am learning to accommodate and offer choices and autonomy during these vital years. I am learning to live with the mess, and adjust to children’s needs, and be flexible with expectations. I am learning the power of my own voice with advocacy and asking questions that ensure safety. I am learning to offer them experiences I did not have, and am learning regulation right alongside them. I am learning the power of relationship to guide offspring, not into making the choices that we want, but creating the foundation for informed decisions. And I will give myself grace while I am learning.

Living a neurodivergent life can be all of it at once — exhausting, fulfilling, challenging, electric, isolating, and, on the right days, quietly extraordinary. There is no single word for it, because it was never meant to be.

The question we are finally asking

At the heart of all of this is something simple and radical: what do you need to experience success on your own terms?

Many of us were never really asked that question. We were told to endure. To grit through. To survive circumstances that should have been changed, not survived. And we did…..because we had to.

But let us be precise about what that was: it was not resilience. What we are describing — pushing through pain without acknowledgment, without accommodation, without anyone asking what you needed — is something else. It is adaptation under duress. It is remarkable, and it is also a wound.

We do not have to pass that wound on.

We are not obligated to dress it up as strength and hand it to our children. We are allowed to say: this is where the work stops. This is where something different begins.

If you are in the process of naming your own experiences, I hope you find language that fits without pinching. Not every word will. Some of the most important truths about how we move through the world will remain just beyond vocabulary, felt in the body, carried in the particular way you hold a room.

That, too, is enough. You do not have to finish the sieving to be worthy of the search.