Welcome to Neurodivergent Spacetime. I'm your host, Sarah Shotts. I'm autistic and possibly ADHD. I'm also an author, artist, academic and parent. This podcast is an experiment in creating a neurodivergent space. That means I won't be masking, I won't be performing different energy levels than what is natural at the time. I won't be editing to make myself sound more neurotypically professional or articulate. This is just me. So if you want to hear more about the neurodivergent experience from an autistic adult, let's go.
So here we are episode one, I had a few different ideas for how to start this off. First, I want to shout out my friend, and fellow artist Gracie Klumpp. She's the one that inspired me to start this podcast. We've been exchanging voice notes about autism and neurodivergence, and she was like, this should be a podcast. And yeah, it kind of blew my mind. I've been kind of painstakingly spending long quantities of time trying to get the communication just right. When talking about autism and neuro divergence. Last year, I really decided I wanted to write like the book of all the answers. And obviously, that's a lot to take on. So I'm kind of pulling back and looking at pieces and how I can communicate and add to this neurodiversity movement, and participate in this community, and connect with other neurodivergent people or neurotypicals, who want to learn about neuro divergence in a more accessible way with energy levels and the capacity that I have. So I guess I could just start by doing a little introduction about me, I am. And as I said, in the intro, I'm an artist. But my, my day job, I am a part time University instructor, I teach theater courses, and I also am home educating my son, who's just 24. We had him in school for a while, but it wasn't the best fit. For his neuro type, he is also autistic. And so I won't get into everything in my parenting experience right now. But that's kind of like my, that's my day to day we're doing home education, I'm making art, I'm writing books, and I'm grading grading papers. So that's that, you may hear the air conditioner. Part of what I need is to not be sweating to death out here to be able to communicate effectively. So sorry about that. I do have a really good mic now. That's like the one level up from sending a voice note. So we'll see how well it cuts out the air conditioner sound and maybe I can learn a little bit more about audio editing to like improve that over time because we are moving into summer it's just gonna get hotter and hotter. I part of my autistic experience is auditory processing differences. So actually, my sound is not like my best sense. When it comes to learning about recording podcasts and editing sound like I don't find that as intuitive as visuals and words. Those are much more my medium. But the thing that I like about ramble podcasts which I've been doing for years now over on Patreon and now on my substack with my art supporters. The thing I like about ramble podcast, if you're sending it to a group of trusted people that you have built a community with, is you don't have to really labor overstaying things just right can just like it's almost like how I free write my journal. Only I'm doing it verbally. And weirdly, I think it's kind of it's almost been like a useful practice. Like, I don't find conversation. Very easy. But in talking with the microphone over the last several years with my with my supporters of my art practice, I have built the ability to talk about my work and to talk about my books. And now here we are here to talk about neuro divergence. So I'm a late diagnosed autistic I think at an at another date. I might record like my autistic origin story, but basically Growing up, we thought I was just really sensitive. I was kind of like the Princess and the Pea. And we never talked about anxiety or social anxiety, it was just perceived that I was shy. I definitely experienced social anxiety. And as I got older, I found myself in communities in neurodivergent communities. And it was so much easier to communicate with other neurodivergent people in the art department, the theatre department at university. And so I really thought I had like, I thought, at that point in my life, I thought that my autistic traits were my character flaws. And I was, quote, overcoming them. And this was because I was in safe spaces where I was allowed to be myself. And I was allowed to work in the ways that best worked for me. And I was pretty well regulated at that time in my life, and I was thriving, getting my undergraduate degree, I moved to London, I lived there for a year getting my master's degree. Then I came back home. I mean, I guess this is a little bit of my origin story in a nutshell. And I really struggled. Without the structure of academia, I was burning myself out by trying to do everything all at once. social structure as a newlywed in like a rural southern community with very rigid gendered expectations, and then becoming a parent. All of that was very difficult for me to navigate. I was finding myself in social situations, with neurotypicals, and social situations, environments that were very overstimulating, and I didn't understand my own needs. So I couldn't advocate for what I needed. I just knew that I felt bad when I was certain places. And I felt really guilty for that. So all of that led to like a moment where I recognize some of the signs of autism and myself, my niece was the first diagnosed in our family. So I had an idea of what it looked like. But the thing about autism and any type of neuro divergence is it just shows up so different for every person. There's the saying, if you know, one autistic person, you know, one autistic person, like we are all so unique, that it's almost more harmful to no one person, because you think that you understand the whole of the spectrum, when you just have like, one facet of this multifaceted gemstone, you know, this one presentation, and if you don't perfectly aligned with that, which you won't, because we're all super individual and unique, then you think, Okay, well, I could never be that. Where, if you don't know anyone, you maybe have a little bit more of an open mind. So I had this moment where I saw my knees reflected myself. And I was like, wait a minute, like, I never thought that never made sense for me. But in this moment, I'm feeling that way. Like, let me consider this. And so I did a lot of research. This was before tic toc before this neurodiversity movement. I think the term Aspergers was still being used. So I kind of went a little bit down the rabbit hole, like learning things on the internet, reading some books, and I decided, Okay, I think this is at least worth doing an evaluation. So I paid for that. And it was confirmed by psychologists that I am indeed autistic. And that was, I have dyscalculia also. So numbers just like fall directly out of my brain, but it was several years ago, um, my son is, will be four. So it was at least five or six, seven years ago, something like that. several, several years ago, and after the diagnosis, it basically changed nothing like it just planted a seed. That very slowly began a transformation of the way that I see myself. And I maybe got rid of a pair of shoes that were uncomfortable. But because I was able to at that time, I continued to force myself to mask I didn't mention that I was autistic. I didn't ask for support, I didn't change anything about my life, I would go out and do things that really took it out of me. And then I would come home and like, sleep it off for a week, like not be able to function and luckily I work from home so I have like some flexibility. And when I get my work done, I was already working from home at that time. So until it's kind of like only after my son was born and also realizing that he is autistic as well, that I started to kind of reframe this idea of pushing myself to mask my autistic traits to realizing what I needed and what supports I could ask for, and changing from like a deficit based mindset to a neurodiversity affirming approach. This is really new for me over the last couple of years. But I realized when my son was autistic, that I didn't want a model for him that he had to do things that were hurting him like I was doing things that were actually physically hurting me, emotionally hurting me psychologically causing me damage. And I was not asking for what I needed. So the thing that I want to, to model for him is self advocacy and asking for supports, and to see the strengths and neuro divergence and not just the perceived deficits, the differences that are not supported in certain environments and certain communities. So that's basically my story. That's why I'm here. Um, I just think the more that we talk about it, the more people can realize, I think a lot more people are neurodivergent and autistic and ADHD. If you're not familiar with the term neuro divergence also includes OCD, synesthesia, dyscalculia dyspraxia, dyslexia, all the ia's, basically, it's if your brain is perceiving something in a different way, then you're neurodivergent if you're hypersensitive, you're neurodivergent. And the specific diagnosis, particularly in my case, isn't always helpful. They gave me that paper, but I didn't tote the paper around and say, hey, look, can we turn off? Can we not have five different TV iPhone, like all these conversations going on at once? Like I'm getting really overstimulated. No, I just sat there and suffered through it, having a little bit of awareness of why it was hard, but not asking for what I needed. And, yeah, I just think if we can connect and share our stories, that more people can see that they are not broken, and not just worse at life. And it's, it's that we're actually experiencing things in a different way. So actually, later this month, I am launching, I guess this is the first time I'm publicly announcing this. But I am co creating a book about sensory processing with a neurodivergent friend and illustrator. Actually, it's Gracie who inspired me to start the podcast. So you'll be hearing more about that soon. And that book is specifically about sensory processing, which is something that most neurodivergent people experience in an atypical manner to neurotypicals. Lots of lots of words there. But it's basically how we all experience the world differently. We feel things differently. We hear things differently, and what's going on in the brains that causes that and also what we can do to help when that becomes painful or makes it difficult. So this is going to be a picture book, Gracie is a really talented illustrator. And I was so excited when she came on board for this project. I was inspired to write the first draft. When we were talking to my son's then school. I really feel like it's something that a lot of people just still don't understand. We right now there's a little bit more more awareness of autism and neuro divergence than when I was growing up. But still, a lot of it is really stereotyped and misunderstood. People who are professionals now were educated in a time before this new research coming out that is really illuminating. And yeah, so I'm really excited. I am not going to make a rigid schedule for this because this is neurodivergent space time. It might be irregular. But I am hoping by making this podcast in a way that's comfortable for me and accessible for me, offering myself the support that I need to do this that I can show up that I can show up. And I'll do so when I can. And I'm excited to talk about neuro divergence with you. This is hosted on substack. If you would like to support the podcast, you can pledge $5 a month that goes directly to helping me pay for transcription services, which I'm really passionate about because I do have auditory processing disorder as part of my autistic spectrum. As an extra perk, if you subscribe, you'll have access to discussion threads and comments. For each podcast episode, I am keeping that private, I find that there can sometimes be a bit of trolling in certain online spaces. And I think when we're talking about something as intimate as our brain that we need to feel safe to show up in the way that feels right for us. And so I am keeping that limited to the paid subscribers for now. So that it just feels nice and safe for everyone. And everyone that's participating has agreed to the code of conduct. So that's it for today's episode, be sure to subscribe. If you want to listen to this in your podcast app, you can absolutely do that I will include the links for how to set that up down in the description below. And if you'd like to follow me on Instagram, I do most of my posting @sarahdshotts. That's where I post about my art process. I do have an Instagram for @neurodivergentspacetime, but I'm kind of putting that mostly on hiatus and testing out the waters over here on substack. I've got into a little bit of a perfectionist loop with my Instagram there so I might post there but it will probably mostly be pointing to Substack this is this is my main little home for this project for now. And I am so excited that you're here. Please let me know if you're listening podcasting can be super lonely. If you can't pledge but you'd still like to support the podcast. You can always share it with a friend and I'll see you next time.
