A Multiplicity of Difference

The Journey to Self-Discovery & Multiple ND Identification

At 36 years old, I finally put the pieces of the puzzle together, made sense of my brain, including all its nerve endings that extend from the crown of my head to the quick of my toe nails. All the nerve endings that criss-crossed and wove themselves around my organs and muscles had a story to tell me. The muscles that hugged my bones and joints were holding back secrets for a little over three decades. To be honest, I was listening, I just did not connect the necessary dots.

Throughout my life, my mind was focusing on pleasing my family, my friends, and my mentors. They had given me several strategies to achieve my goals in life. And I took those strategies to the max. Because, why not? I had nothing to lose, and everything to gain. I was 32 when I received my PhD in Education. I had taken one year off in the 25+ years I had been in school. And because I was in the dark about my neurodivergence, my nervous system was screaming at me to take a break.

When you are in the dark about neurodivergence for several decades of your life, you do not consider the various moments of inaccessibility in school, work, or family spaces. Only when you self-identify as ND, do you start to uncover how exclusive school, work, and family spaces have been to you in your life. You begin to start looking at how you managed to thrive and build more confidence year after year rather than falter or become defeated and lose your way. I credit my parents and my older brother for my success in school. I truly enjoyed school. I have always had this unconditional love for learning, for growing against all odds.

This attention to a clear sense of purpose and sheer blind optimism is necessary because to be a multiple neurodivergent is to experience the world in various hypocrisies. For example, as a 36-year-old, I cannot not memorize one-digit multiplication problems, or one-digit subtraction or even one-digit addition problems. However, I can understand derivative functions through the lens of graphs and various visualizations.  Maybe you just discovered one of my little quirks. I am dyscalculic, so that means I cannot memorize numbers very well. Yes, that includes phone numbers, addresses, and passwords. It does not mean that I cannot solve problems. I am an excellent problem solver! And I have always considered myself an artist, a creative type drawn to aesthetics. I appreciate mathematics in much the same way. I like to focus on positive and negative space. This is a bit of a hypocrisy because I often do not physically balance or align myself to people and objects around me. My proprioception is ever so slightly off so I run into people on crowded streets or in dance clubs.

Following directions is tough even with visuals, and I often forget my right and left. In the car, I have memorized that the turn signal “up” means right and “down” means left. I have these little strategies as my way to achieve my goals in life. You may have discovered that folks with Dyscalculia, Dyspraxia and Autism experience issues with balance and their body’s orientation to space and other objects. So do I, and I do not fault school administrators for missing the intricacies of my nervous system. There’s simply more common knowledge now about the human body and how it moves and takes up space. However, the mind, its decision making structures, and selective consciousness is still pretty blurry for most scientists. On the contrary, many folks with ADHD are accustomed to selective consciousness and decision-making structures that keep us zoning out or laser-focused. I use homing mechanisms to keep my eyes locked on a screen for hours at a time. And much like a pigeon, my mind takes a journey on the wind and then it decides to head back home. The homing mechanisms are “stims.” For me they sound like repetitive percussion beats or they feel like repetitive body movements. This repetition like the ticking of a clock reminds me where I am and where I ultimately need to go.

The reason for why my life experience as a multiple neurodivergent is full of oxymorons and puzzling contradictions actually has a lot less to do with me and more to do with the maintenance of simplistic ideas about very complex human beings. In my view, there is a narrow understanding in the current scientific community about neurodivergent “conditions” and how they halt personal growth and self-expression. In my view, there is less understanding in the scientific community about cognitive abilities to problem-solve outside of traditional mathematical equations (many of which I cannot memorize). Most of the ND people I have met are heavily influenced by personal growth, their full freedom of self-expression, problem-solving, and agency. Since all neurodivergent people are full-human beings, I would expect that they would share the same values as most other full-human beings.

Weaving Culture, Race, and Gender Identity Into The Multiple-ND Experience

To experience the world as a mixed-race, multicultural woman in the 21st century is also a deep delve into intricate hypocrisies. I often watch streaming television services, and none of the programming demonstrates my intersectional experience as a woman with multiple neurodivergences and multiple cultural and racial identities. I will just mention two of the hypocrisies to help you to see the world ever so slightly like me.

1) I can’t dance. I am of African and Native American ancestry, and I cannot do viral dance TikToks, twerk, or even do a choreographed group electric slide at weddings. I feel incredible when I dance. Even when I lose my way as I twirl away from my partner or I bounce incessantly up and down on my toes to techno music. That is because I can appreciate dance as a spiritual exercise as much as it is based on physical coordination, balance, and keen kinesthesia.

2) Second hypocrisy, I am an excellent leader and decision maker. I was made to believe that I was indecisive, unorganized, even fickle about my life choices. My career path has been non-linear, and I love it. The reality is I have strong agency and will power so much that I had to teach myself how to take breaks. I had to re-learn relaxation, because often I felt that I did not have enough years to accomplish all of my life’s goals and aspirations. I want to do all the things, I am very ambitious.

But this second hypocrisy has more to do with societal expectations for BIPOC women in countries that are still healing from culturcide and genocide. It does not have to do with my personal desires for autonomy and never-ending thirst for knowledge. Rather it has more to do with inequities in the private, public and sectors of the ultra private, that do more harm than support ND BIPOC women. I have met many like me who are battling CPTSD and trying to heal from intergenerational traumas.

So why would I disclose my multiple neurodivergent experiences in addition to my gender, race, and multiple cultures?

Access.

In this short blog article, I wanted you to access knowledge about me and my life so that you will champion others like me.