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to be ready for anything. >> comcast along with television companies support c-span2 as public service. >> i'm an adult service's library at the new heaven public library. before we begin, i would like to thank my department for your support especially adult service's supervisor zeth and programming partner, isaac who is also doing tech support, behind the scenes today as well as gina binam, public service administrator for her constant support and mentoring. today we are joined by two incredible authors and activists. genara is founder to have neurodiversity project and a journalist producer and speaker and the author of the books that we are here for today which is divergent minds.

if you can see it, my camera is a little blurry. thriving in a world that wasn't designed for you, our special iguest host today is melady, melady is an active, attorney, professor and award-winning author. melady has written a series of titles, how an ancient poet changed my life. you should pick up. that's a good one. if you have questions during today's discussion, feel free to enter them into the chat and you can put them in the q&a button at the bottom of the screen to ensure they don't get lost in the fold. if you're watching us on the live stream on facebook today, just leave us a comment with your questions and we will try to get those answered as well. and without further due, melady, i will let you take it away.

>> of course. i'm muted. thank you so much for having us. i'm so excited to be here to talk about this amazing book, divergent minds, a world that wasn't designed for you because i'm a person who is thriving in a world that wasn't designed for me. so when i saw this book, when i learned about this book it just screamed out to d me, i have bipolar disorder and irani american living in america during what is now thankfully over, known as the trump era and so that's when this book came out, in the middle of all of that, during the pandemic and i just want to start off saying how are you doing, somebody also put out a book during the pandemic, it's been tough, how has that gone for you? >> yes, thank you, melady, thank you for having us. yeah, i think i'm doing okay,

oryou know, now we are kind of sort of emerging out of the whole, you know, pandemic phase. we still have a ways to go obviously but it was an interesting year and i think for many neurodivergent people, the year was mixed, right, sort of this interesting time for many of us. i am reallyy glad that the book, you know, reached so many readers, so today we are celebrating the paperback. it came out in hard cover, you know, a year in march which was a bizarre timing, but the book is making its way and i'm so glad. .. ..

>> yes, the neurodiversity project started four years ago in berkley, california and it was the nexus of personal and professional for me. i'm a journalist and i was figuring out what was going on with me and my sort of mental makeup. i started getting small groups together to talk about neurodiversity and then i started inviting authors in to kind of share their research from different angles and views and we had in san francisco, we had a conference and now we're doing it on instagram, for anyone who wants to follow along. last year at the start of the pandemic before the horrific

incident with george floyd, i sat down with my family. we're an interracial family and i grew up in an interracial family and i was very multi-racial setting. like my neighborhood and my school and i was like, you know, i think this is an interesting sort of nexus, interracial life, love, friendship, and it doesn't get examined much. so i started reaching out to other writers, again, should we talk about this? we're doing this on instagram as well. we have a lot of film makers and writers and actors who are just unpacking. like interracial life to something that doesn't get talked about as much. so, yeah, we're kind of at the beginning of that as well. so, for anyone who wants to check out both of those works, instagram is the place right now. >> thank you.

so we spoke a little bit about in preparation for this, and you were talking about some-- the idea, media representations around disability and neuro divergence and notoriously, and do you see that changing and if so, who is leading that change? and how do you see it getting better? because it's still pretty bad. >> yeah, i'm so intrigued by the topic of media representation, how mental illness, neuro divergence, disability more broadly, how it gets portrayed in the media. i have a longstanding interest in film and theater and things like this. so i think you see this with many different groups, like, marginalized groups. what happens is there are stereotypes that in the public imagination that have to do

with social norms, and then you see these things and they're depicted on screen and it's sort of this constant conversation, this dynamic between what's happening on the ground and then what's happening in the media. and so, something like neuro divergence, mental illness and disability is no exception. and so, i've been digging into this research and so it turns out that with the filmed close-ups tend to be much more intent on characters that have mental illness, people who are depicted as mentally ill are way more likely to be depicted as violent, much more so than actual occurrences in real tief. life. so i think it's something we need to work against and melody, your work is a contribution to all of this.

and i get into it a little bit in the end with resources, but the book is about reframing our conceptions of what it means to be mentally different. whether it's autism or adhd or bipolar. how can we take change the public conversation. >> yeah, one of the things i wanted to bring up-- i initially read the book on kindle. so i have 61 highlights on kindle and tabs. at the ending, there's just this really prescient moment where you talked about the field of medicine needs an overhaul, page 212, with the number of people experiencing loneliness on the rise and more people become till and turn to

doctors, thus needing to figure out their social lives and the doctors are getting burned out and the cycle goes on without people able to open up and share about their internal lives, nothing will change and you go on and talk about connection and the importance of that and i thought it was so prescient, you didn't know this was going to come out, right? and that was part of having read it during the pandemic initially that i found really comforting in terms of the reminders. i found there's a lot of this is connected and there's so much of that in here, we're healthier, the more connected we are. and having been so disconnected for so long, how you see that evolving. >> you mean like how we're going to emerge from the

pandemic? >> yeah, and i mean-- and in some ways, people-- neuro divergent people have been good at this in a way, in terms of being familiar with a kind of disconnection that maybe people who don't have that kind of makeup are not quite so familiar with being connected and i think we've been forced to be disconnected and we're living in a world that wasn't built for us, and structured for us and in some ways, i found personally that the pandemic wasn't quite as hard on me as it may have been on some more neuro typical people for me, it was alone, and experienced depression, i've been here, nice to meet you, not my first rodeo on this. yeah, so there are lessons that neuro divergent people keep for

whom it was a real shock. and i know you've had such a great response to the release of the book and now that the paper back is out. have you heard from people like me, incredibly grateful. but i think it came out in the perfect moment that it needed to come out because i think it helps not just because of us dealing with neuro divergence, but those with this connectedness inadvertently have no control over that. >> yeah, i think it's such an interesting point that you're making. i think, yeah, i mean -- so a lot of people are finding the book because, you know, maybe they've read articles or they've seen other research about, particularly how women are being left out and a lot of research regarding neurodiversity. it's interesting. i don't know if the pandemic is

allowing more people to dive into this material? because i think like you were saying since so many of us kind of live this way anyway and are sort of outside all the time, you know, i mean like yourself, i'm a writer and i'm just like home. i'm just in my head and i'm always thinking and you know, that's kind of like normal for me. so, yeah, i think -- but i see what you're saying about maybe people who aren't neuro divergent are finding much more like understanding about their family members, their colleagues, their kids, their parents. i'm hearing from a lot of people who are saying like tears streaming down their faces because in hindsight they're realizing that one of their parents who is maybe no longer alive had x, y and z.

and it's such a healing experience to be able to put like a name to that. yeah, and then in terms of like how we're going to emerge from this whole pandemic period, i think -- i do really hope that all of us are able to take some of the lessons and things we've learned around what it means to live more quiet or, you know, not be like rushing around in this aggressive state all the time which i think that many neuro divergent people we wish for the world anyway. so, wrote something in the book and we put it up in like a quote card and i really couldn't believe how much it captured this moment and i'm going to paraphrase my own quote, but i wrote something like, i look forward to the day when what is considered a --

like, oh, let me grab it really quick. because i think obviously we didn't anticipate this happening in the context of a pandemic but i think many neuro divergents would one day hope the world would quiet down. >> i look forward to the day what is currently a hidden sensory world for many people becomes the global norm. what are labelled as sensory ailments actually hold promise for healing of fractured and traumatized worlds that is in desperate need of repair. so, yeah, so, i mean i was meditating about these topics, you know, for the last several years, like many of us, and in a way that, you know, the pandemic did force like sort of this quieting down thing. obviously it's not in the way that we wanted it all, but

perhaps it has people thinking. >> yeah, i mean, so at the beginning of the book, you note the concept of like how we need to start reconsidering what it means to be human, which really drew me in really quickly. it's on-- you talk about how knowing that neuro divergence, this is a quote from the book, make up 20% of the population, begin to shift our concept of normal disorder or mentally ill? perhaps we are really talking about humanity as a whole rather than a set of neuro typical versus neuro diverse gent people go you be diagnosed we may be looking at a different concept of what it means to be human to me. >> i feel like that different concept, you're speaking for so many people. in understanding that different concept, like what is that,

what does that open for people who have been shut out before, you know what i'm? >> yeah. so i have been thinking about this a lot lately. i think it's interesting because you know, the deeper you get into like neurodiversity research or talking with neurodivergent people and i don't know if it's me because i look through that lens and that color, it actually becomes more difficult to see neuro typicality, to be honest. the more you talk to people and people open up with you and kind of take off their masks and remove all of those layers, you start realizing like some of these things are very universal, you know? and so, i think that's important for people to know and the reason why we don't currently see the world in that

way is because we have this culture of being really closed off, right? and people are not encouraged to talk about their mental health or their emotional health or challenges, or you know, needing to see the doctor for something. and we just don't have it in our culture and imagine if it was more open, right? would we be at a point where we wouldn't need this kind of terminology, normal, abnormal, neuro typical or neuro divergent. and i believe that that is the direction that we're headening and we'll get there some day, and so a lot of us who are activists and advocates and writers in the neurodiversity space, we're kind of in the early helm of this kind of thinking and, yeah. >> yeah, it makes me think about labeling. just like there's a part of the book where you note that being able to finally give a name to

experience is healing and liberating. right, at the beginning and at the end once i embrace my own labels and categories embrace that and get my friends and colleagues on board, manically-- and then i don't need them, and this idea that embracing the i believe so la makes you not need them. exactly what my experience has been to find the labels incredibly liberating at first and then what does this really mean? i'm wondering what that progression has been like for you and you write about them in the book for sure. and dependent the books release, because you're providing another outlook for them and seeing themselves reflected in the book. not through just your own experience, but through the incredible research you do to put this together, which is

based on your ability to hyper focus. like i'm so grateful for your ability to hyperfocus because you managed to put this material together not just easily digestible, but-- yeah, i'm curious about this idea of labels and how much is liberating and when does it stop being liberating and when is it no longer necessary and how that's been for you and how it's been through and how the readers responded? ments thank you so much for finding that threat and it's so cool to hear how it resonates for you and hopefully everyone who is watching and listening. i tend to describe this as like the labels are entry points. they're entryways, right? they're entryways to, you know, empowerment, liberation, knowledge, just being informed and i talk about that in the book, about just like the real importance of just knowledge and information and for me, i find that, you know, so healing

just to kind of grab onto something and do it, okay, i've got it and then you kind of absorb it. so, i think for many neuro divergent people who are kind of discovering aspects of themselves and jumping into aed vo cassie-- advocacy and it's exciting and important work and then like the quote you're reading. once it gets integrated into your life and into all aspects of your life, like your family and your work and your sense of identity. you know, you just don't-- it's just something that doesn't need to be even said as much, because it's just a part of you and people know it and then, again, it's worded like integration. so, it's not to say that those things aren't important, and i think everyone had their own

journey with this and i encourage people to do what works for them. i think that some people continue on, like you can kind of find like a new line of work or like a fight around this particular label or diagnosis, for other people it's integrated and they continue living their lives and have a different perspective and a different shift about how they see themselves. so, yeah, so, i think, you know, for me personally, it was a journey of like learning about neurodiversity and the movement. i've been thinking about this kind of approach and philosophy for a while and didn't have the word for it so that was exciting. and then learning about how women were left out of the research on autism and adhd and then this trade of sensitivity and how it was so prevalent for

people no matter what your label or diagnosis was. and then in the book i also talk about this senses getting crossed. so, yeah, and then there was like a process of opening up to all of my family and to people i worked with. and then certainly the book coming out was very healing, too, it's kind of like a release. i'm releasing this to the world and now it's been a year and i think it's awesome seeing how people respond and everyone has a different story and entryway to the book. and it's for themselves or their parents or siblings. i hear from therapists how this is impacting their clients and it's exciting, changing the

therapeutics industry and then it's allowed me to kind of move on to other things. i'm a journalist and we've got the interracial project going, and so no matter what i do in my life and professionally, the neurodiversity work is such a huge part, but it gets integrated into what i do next. and so i think it's also exciting for people to know, you know, for everyone who is watching and listening in your own life, you know, you'll have different periods of discovery and integration and so -- and that's okay, too, you know, it's okay for this becomes part of your larger story and you're not going to leave it behind, but i feel like some people feel like they have to kind of keep sticking with this one movement to something. i don't know if you've felt that? >> i felt that completely that you're stuck in that definition of what you initially saw that

diagnosis, as that label and what it actually means later on once that same is no longer with us, for someone like you who has written about it. once you write about it, you're public. no one can out you. you know what i mean? you're already out and you're owning it and not just owning it, but helping other people and again, like, we don't share the same diagnosis, but i saw myself in this book so far and this is the best book i've read all 2020. thank you. >> it was the best book and i'm so grateful to you for it it wasn't just that book, it was everyone you cited in the book and everyone i read because of the book and joyful. because other books that you cite and other writers, like other women have written other important work and you dig into

the research that's much easier for me to get a broad sense of what's happening with the movement and yet have never seen a book like this and that's partly why i was so grateful for it and it's blowing up and i'm going to ask some of the questions. and neuro diverse people, with the intermal sensory experiences and interceptions. i recall you name a lot of internal awareness weren't often very acceptable to neuro divergent folks. >> that's a great question. i don't focus a lot on meditation in the book. honestly in my own life, i'm a movement person and i think you are, too, melodi.

the type of meditation i've been drawn to are tai-chi and i love to dance and run and for me, all of this is far more heal than just like planting myself and sitting, and i hear this all the time from other neuro divergent people that straight up my meditation does not work for them. so i don't know how to totally answer the question, i would encourage people to not feel like you have to star stay inside a box of what it should be. we know as neuro divergent people we know it doesn't work for us. >> that's a great answer. and hula hooping is my meditation and i'm not staying still at all for sure. a lot of teachers and

professionals and parents tend to tell me i'm wrong when i talk about my own autistic experience because they learned it a different way and research says something else. how would you suggest responding in those situations and make people understand all the research in the world doesn't match an autistic or neuro divergent experience. >> yeah, that makes a lot of sense and i hear that all the time and i think, again, like we're kind of in the beginning of a lot of this, in terms of representation of women and girls and so this is why i think it's important to sort of take the narrative into your own hands, for one. the second thing is i don't believe that formal diagnosis is necessary or even important, to be honest. i think if we're working with a medical industry that is based

on research that is literally 30 years old, it takes about 20 to 30 years for the research to get integrated into practice, then how can you let those people tell you, you know, who you are or who you aren't? so, i think that's really huge and i think you'll find many people out there who are self-identified. as i write in the book, i did not go the formal diagnostic route because of what i'm talking about. that being said for some people it's hugely important and it makes sense and you need it for accommodations in the classroom and at work and it depends on your pick individual situation. so, yeah, we're just beginning, but for the person who asked the questions, know there are so many people out there like us. >> yeah. great answer. there's another question for both of us. what helped you integrate your

labels? do you have recommendations for supporting someone who is beginning that process of integrating the different aspects of neuro divergence? do you want to go first? >> well, i probably integrate my label with the people and you're the same person. there's a moment where i actually told my husband, you can leave. if i could leave me right now, i always leave me and him being able to say you're crazy from day one. this is not a new development for you. now you have a label for it, but you're not a different person. that's one of the things that was most helpful to me. how about you? >> that's interesting. what helps me integrate it? >> it's a gradual process. i think in the beginning for me, it was a lot of moments and i remember the day that this was popping up in all places

how women were held left out in autism and adhd and i read these things, and this captures me to a t. how come i've never heard of this. and there were the initial moments oh, my gosh, and then being a serious person and then that threat of okay, let me dive into this, let me find out what's going on, more and more and more, and so there's sort of that initial period of discovery, and then like i said, it's gradual. like, i mean, i think i put it one step at a time and absorbing information and then slowly opening up to like family and friends. and then getting more serious about it. well, for me, you know, that's how the book was born. you know, divergent mind was totally came out of this whole process of discovery. and then, just to get more and more comfortable. as you're more open, like we

were just saying a few minutes ago, it just becomes integrated into your life and so the more that you can stay grounded in like your own knowledge of who you are and you know, present that face to the world and to the people around you, then it will just naturally get integrated. >> yeah. there's a question here that says what do you have for gaining accommodations at work? i would say the same applies for school as well, but more importantly, educating our doctors on what our neurodiversity is really like? it's not like one major on the textbook, but far more complex than what we have in the textbooks, for instance, yeah. >> yes. i think accommodations are an interesting topic. in the book, i focus on the

topic of work a lot because i think it's just such a important place of agency, right? you're in the world and you're interacting and how you take care of yourself and your familiment so, margo, who is at verizon now and everyone should look her up, if you don't already know her. you know, in the book, we talked about things, you know, the usual things, where to sit in the office and having head phones and things like that. i think more importantly, it like the communication that happens. like, you know, making sure that your boss and colleagues like understand you and where you can just kind of share what you need or what you can't do and so that to me seems like the important piece because then you'll feel able to be

yourself and to ask for what you need and there's, you know, another thing i talked about in the book and elsewhere, the importance of acceptance. when people who are autistic or neuro divergent feel accepted by themselves and by the people around them, their levels of anxiety and depression go down. you'll be able to do your work better if you're feeling better and i think that communication piece is really important. i would love to see schools and universities and workplaces have introductory neurodiversity training for everyone. i don't think it needs that much. people need to be educated and the information out there and i definitely recommend that and some places are doing that. some of the bigger companies, but it needs to be more

commonplace. >> yeah, the more of us who are in different industries, the better that becomes. like i provide accommodations for all of my students, some of them their disabilities, they don't want to go to the disability resource center and say this is my disabilities, can you provide whatever that disability is and other professors are willing to provide accommodations and they don't need the legal specific route to get those accommodations so there's another question here from sarah who asks, what is your vision for evolving treatment and support for the neuro diverse community? >> so, everyone probably knows, so the word treatment is tricky, we don't want to get into fixing talk and stuff like that. if we're talking about practices that support well-being, that's a great

conversation to have. so in terms of the evolution of where that's all going, i mean, i interviewed a lot of therapists for the book and so, you know, grace, who is here in california, she's great and she, you know, she makes sure that there are no-- that there's no food in the office, for example, so it's like, you know, people's senses aren't getting overwhelmed and she keeps the lights very low and she makes sure that the fan and the ventilation are not too loud and then she also keeps soft materials and she's very attentive to what would feel therapeutic, again, for an adult. which is important. a lot of the neurodiversity is about kids and boys. and it's important that we have practitioners who are seeing

the adult population. so, yeah, and honestly, i feel like a lot of neuro divergent people kind of fiend their own like hodgepodge of like wellness or like-- they kind of have to put something together and like knowledge for you and i, it sounds like you both love stance and movement and helps us feel grounded and that kind of thing. again, for me, i find a lot of time in nature and always going on walks and hikes and certainly, the sort of classic therapist can be helpful, but again, the therapist is not involved around like sensory stuff and neurodiversity stuff, and there's going to be limitations. and then, you know, i'm intrigued by some of the like somatic practitioners out there and again, i feel like a lot of

somatic practitioners, something increasingly, there is an element in the kind of like somatic world where people want to pin everything to like trauma pan where they just want to say, oh, you're having this because of x. and this thing used to be looked at and like, you know, and i just like really disagree with that and i really think that that's quite horrible, and i actually-- there's kind after resistance in some of that therapeutic community because they've been trained, really, to only see things through the lens of trauma. so i think that's dangerous, i really do. so i want to caution people to -- if you, you know, encounter that to know that that actually is a bit extreme and that's something that we want to push against. and in the book divergent mind,

i start off by looking at the history of psychology and psychiatry and the errors that were made when people did become so fundamentalist and wanting to pin everything on one aspect of ones life or existence and that's the kind of thing that we really want to get away from and it's also why i feel so strongly that individuals can, you know, again, put together their own narrative or pieces that they find truthful and healing and not submit to one -- i hope this makes sense. it makes sense. would you say that the book itself is you creating that own narrative for yourself? i sense you throughout the book, and people have cognitive therapy and you maybe not quite as much as well if you notice. but now, the research, the

stuff that is so frequently pathologyized and i've heard doctors is an i don't google it. not that google isn't the best place, but read a book. this book was so therapeutic to me and i think that people forget that. and it's therapeutic to you in terms of being the writer, was this part of finding that narrative for yourself as well? >> yeah, i think so. i think i was just talking with steve silverman, the other day people probably know the author of neuro tribes and we were talking about my journey and i was saying how, you know, writing this book was kind of like an investigative journey. i'm a journalist so this was my chance to dive in so it very much was a simultaneous process like i'm on this journey of like discovery. i'm going to figure out what i need to know and what's

empowering for me and yes, like what is it-- what's the story that i need to reclaim and how can all of this information help everyone else out there who is on the same journey? because there's so many of us out there. and, yeah, so that's what came out was just this personal story and, yeah, a real hope for other people to find their own sort of healing journey. >> if i could just jump in, and this is a question for both of you. do you have, aside from your own -- reading for a while, do you have any other recommendations of books that people can be that are, you know, up-to-date and reflect more accurately the experience of being neurodivergent than necessarily like a scientific textbook or something more scientific? >> do you have a feeling--

>> yeah, so you can go to the twitter feed and you'll find a list put together. i'm not just saying that because my latest book is on that list, but there's a stellar list that i'll retweet right now. and answer that question. oh, thank you. yes, it's true. on twitter, i do often shout out other books and, yeah, i put together a list and a lot of people seem to appreciate it. these were books, actually, that came out in 2020 alone, they were all written by neuro divergent authors and in different fields and we watched that information and yes, it used to be in the realm of psychology and there's a chef on there, there's an academic on there, there's a virtual reality expert on there. that's what we want to see

neurodiversity knowledge and expertise integrated into the wider world. in terms of my recommendations on top of what i've shared on twitter, you know, i actually think that maya, she wrote about gender bias in medicine and focused on autoimmune issues, but it's really an important work and i always recommend nick walker. and nick has done a lot of blog pieces, actually, around neurodiversity terminology and changing our perspective within psychology. and then, i always recommend neuro tribes and, yeah, there's a lot. and i list several in this book as well. so, yeah. >> thanks.

do you want -- can we go to the other questions? there's a bunch more, there's not enough time to go through all. did you pick some, rory, or do you want me to-- >> i'm always needed when i don't-- >> you can pick one to start and i'll look through. >> i haven't read through all of them, but there's one here about gradually integrating my labels, while including others, however, it feels i'm becoming more of a target at work. it doesn't help that my psychiatrist believes in increasing drugs as a, quote, fix. how do you avoid becoming a target? that's an interesting question. >> that's very interesting, and i don't have all the information exactly what it means to be a target. i don't know if they're talking about workplace bullying or someone using a neurodivergent person as a scapegoat, which is

horrible. so, yeah, i mean if you're able to try different psychiatrists and that's made the difference, right. and again, unfortunately, since a lot of this information is so new and it's not so integrated it can be helpful to kind of do your own research and i mean, a lot of even like medical papers are available on-line and i know people who literally have to do that and it can actually also be helpful to literally like take divergent minds with you to your therapist office or psychiatrist's office which i've heard of people doing, to be like, hey, look, there's research behind all of this and you need to know what this is about. so, yeah, so this is kind of a hard and tricky question to answer without having all the

information, but check out the different psych trises, if possible and to work. >> and they have to list and put in different psychiatrists and see whether or not, how much money they take from big pharma and so you can see how much money they're getting from big pharma, at least last i checked. there's a great question whether you're offering training sessions or if you have a group that you would recommend in terms of formal neurodiversity training. >> yeah, i mean, there's different kinds of neurodiversity training so it depends on the specifics. i certainly, you know, will give props and do events like this and i've offered a few classes in the past and, yeah, it really depends, but people can reach me.

my website is divergent list.com and i have a contact there and i heard from someone this morning who wants me to share some of this perspective. an academic conference which is exciting and i would love this information to be able to penetrate different fields, right? so, yeah, feel free to reach out to me on the website. >> i'm on jenara's website and i pasted-- you said you're not on twitter so i pasted the information i was referring to into the app. it's right there. so, yeah, there's so many questions. >> so many questions. >> i'm going to get to one because they're related. anonymous, but one melody and jenara, any plans to make a work book.

line jenara, will you be publishing resources with the audio book to download. >> i'll answer that quick and then about the work book. the audio book is available. you know, i hadn't thought about putting a pdf together of resources. the resources section appears in the paper back and the e-book, that's an easy option, you can download it on kindle and apple books and google books. and so, yeah, so all the resources are kind of out there, it's just a matter of finding the right format. in terms of publishing a work book to go along. divergent mind is kind of an interesting mix. it's journalistic and investigative and it's practice and takeaways.

and for divergent mind on its own, what about you, melody? >> for my latest book, i'm not planning on a work book, but i'm putting the -- translating it into farsi. so if you want the original from those books in farsi will be up on my book shortly and that's the closest to a work book. i would love to do something together, yeah, i would love to do the training and i know you speak at conferences all the time. my dream is for you to go to every university, come to mine first, and do these trainings. and you think of trainings and i've been to trainings, it's like a white guy giving me diversity training and i'm like, fine, i'm okay with that. the people doing the training,

it's too frequently, they aren't-- it's one thing to be well-versed in something and another to identify in that whether it's relation to race or neurodiversity and for me i can't buy in. you've read a lot of books, but you haven't lived it and for me with divergent mind what came through you lived it. you can read plenty of textbooks that, i mean, one just don't integrate so much material into one ultimately short book to give you all of that in one place. but just don't have that perspective of recognizing. and i mean, you were diagnosed later in life, too, so that kind of like, this is something you figured out later and it was-- there's legitimate anger on it, why women are not part of this in terms of anything other than

just being pathogized as hysterical. there's not the space, maybe i interpret the world differently, maybe that's not a disorder, maybe it's a gift and i can figure out how to navigate the world that wasn't for you. and i saw you doing that over and over again, and i think that's what makes this book so special among other things you're coming from that perspective and you're not just coming from the outside. >> thank you. yeah, i mean, like we were saying before. representation is huge, now? and you know, and that's also like a wire issue. i'd love to see more neuro divergent creators and writers in every field. we talk about text and i want to see hollywood and media and film so we can see our stories on wider screens. that's really important. yeah. >> and you guys said earlier,

you're cool with staying a little later with us. is that still the case? maybe we can get to a couple more questions? >> yeah, yeah. yeah, i can take a few more. melody, are you okay on time? >> i'm great. >> and i also want to say like what melody just said, i totally agreed and we talked about this before we went live. i love this book it may be one of my favorite books of all time now. i've never felt so understood and so acknowledged and validated before. i had the sense i'm not alone, like i'm cracking up now, and so often happens and when you need the books and written by professionals in the field that don't have the lived experience. they just have, you know, the academic background and it's so different hearing from another woman who was diagnosed late who knows what this is like because something, you know,

when you're neurodivergent and you don't know that you're neurodivergent, you know, there's a tendency to feel very lost and misunderstood and off and you don't know what's going on. i'm glad you wrote this book and framed this in a way to acknowledge it's not a deficiency, it is a gift. that's something like i was diagnosed autistic at 31. and i had a hard time accepting it at first because offing i read sort of implied that it was some kind of a deficit and now i'm very proud of my autism, but i'm so glad you wrote this book so hopefully other women with that experience don't have a hard time accepting things and they can realize that it makes them more beautiful. >> thank you, rory. >> and taking over the question. thank you for sharing and that's so important and i'm so

glad to hear that and it resonated so much. >> i have a question here, this is from anonymous, have you heard about the next for autism fundraiser, with jimmy kimmel, mark wahlberg and it's blowing up since the autism speaks is problematic in so many ways, so many nonprofits fon neurodiversity and autism have controversy and problems. and those are the well-known ones. which are formed by neurodivergents than stereotypes. >> the questioner asks, this happens a lot. like a cause will be taken up

and then it gets controversial who is at the helm, like the fund raising organization, or a film. so, again, it goes back to what melody and i were talking about, representation is so huge, and i think people in the wider world need to take that really seriously and so, yeah, i don't have like specific recommendations around like certain organizations or anything like that and i've had seen a little bit of this on twitter recently. but, again, i think it speaks to needing to shift the conversation as much as possible, you know, to putting these kinds of efforts into the hands of people with lived experience. and i think that's just going to take time. you know, i think the twitter

community and the neuro divergent community at large is very good at being vocal and really expressing the issues well and so, yeah, i think -- you know, i think a lot about this kind of thing in terms of history and looking at how things eventually come together and get integrated into the world and it does start with the individual actions and the collected actions bills and so i think we'll see it soon and i think we're going to be reaching a turning point. i think it's been really exciting, you know. melody and i have connected recently multiple times and there's a lot of other neuro divergent writers and creators and filmmakers and producers and it's just going to keep sort of pushing where more of us get to kind of help design these things and so i would

just encourage everyone to keep going. >> yeah. go ahead. >> i was going to go into another question, so, if you have-- >> ours as was about masking. you write about masking and how i was interested in it as an unconscious reaction to white supremacy. neuro divergent or not it happens all the time and especially with women and i wondered how much farther out you can take that. >> yes, yes, i think that's a great question. yeah, so, you know, for everyone watching or listening, so, masking is, you know, this sad term we use a lot in the neuro divergent community where it's like, what does a person have to do in order to kind of get on in the world and what kinds of things do we have to hide to kind of appear normal?

it can really take a toll on someone after a while and it's kind of that that pressure builds up and it kind of ends up falling apart or shutting down and then many of us reach a point where we're like, okay, not going to do this anymore, it's not working for me. and i totally agree. i think-- so there's something i put a little bit in the after word of the paper back of divergent mind is the way that what we call like neural normal intersect. what we think of as normal is often dictated by like whiteness, right? and so this acceptively proper detached, closed off kind of

like not real energy and way of interacting with people and many different words for this, right, but i find it really, really important and really critical to connect those two because i feel like collectively, right, our country is reconciling with this and then sort of we have these subpockets like the neurodiversity community that is talking about this. there's an energy like what is this? why do we expect people to behave a certain way or act a certain way and who decides what is normal and what's not normal and what's behind that? is there a patriarchy or white supremacy? is there a conversation and i'm excited for that to be out there more. and, yes, again, i'm really excited to see where we go with this and i think that artists are going to be important in this process, i think the more

that, you know, really creative people integrate these kinds of shifts in perspective in their work, again, in like films, media, art that you see in exhibits, and even like social media aspects. i think that the more that these expectations get unpacked, then the sooner they will kind of dissolve. >> so, on that note, shiloh had a question and i'm not sure since you're not necessarily a filmmaker if you'll be able to answer this one, but shiloh asked, i loved your book, totally agree with you both about media representation, i absolutely loved so many neurodivergent individuals have beautiful ideas around a better future for humanity. how would a neurodivergent person with the idea of a sit

com collaborate on a script? . >> that's a great question, thank you for asking it. so, i actually am thinking about this a lot. i actually have friends who are-- mostly friends of color who are collaborating within hollywood to change the narrative around race and media representation, which is so awesome and so we've been in conversation around how to do the same for something like disability representation, mental illness representation, neurodivergence representation so that's something i'm actively thinking about and really excited to follow up on. i think it's going to be a gradual process. you know, it kind of getting to know the industry better, learning like the-- like shiloh was saying the kind

of sizing people, where we can all put our skills together and put our heads together what would this look like? would we have like an incubator or, you know, in hollywood you know they talk about pipelines, basically pipeline creators, like how do we make that pathway easier, i know, for people to go from story ideas to being in a writers room onset. and so, you know, for people who are watching or listening, feel free to reach out, you know, if that's something that you've had experience in this industry and would like to look into that, there's something i am thinking about a lot. for anyone who is ready to jump in right now. there's always like fellowships and just so much incubaors and competitive and usually you have to kind of know someone or someone needs to put in a

recommendation so that can be tricky, so we'll see, we'll see if we can build something. >> so i want to be respectful of your time even though you said you can stay a little later. maybe one more question, i'll let melody pick it out and then we can wrap it up. >> ooh, i get to pick the last question? >> yes. >> no pressure. >> so here is one. i'm not particularly interested in the diagnosis, but i do want to learn more about my self i don't think i fit into one of these labels, but your box helped me realize that my experience with anxiety, sensory overload, social confusion, et cetera, points to neurodivergence. i don't need work accommodations i have a great work setup, but what should i

do to figure out my neurodiverse against? >> it's a really good question. i think the question is what do you need to do? is there anything to do? it really depends on the individual. is someone just seeking to be better understood, to feel -- or to kind of have a name and a label for your own self-knowledge, then there's a lot out there. there's my book, which really helps with all of that, to give you a lot of information and shared stories from other women. you know, or are you looking for a certain kind of therapeutic approach, like help in your life? certainly, some people turn to certain kinds of therapists or even medication. again, i just really encourage every individual to do what

works for them. so, it sounds like there's something that the question after it's speaking so even get clear like what you're seeking. are you-- do you need help with something? how can you link with the right therapist or the practitioner for that? if you're wanting more knowledge for yourself, pick up a couple more books. ... yourself so yes it really depends but divergent minds are great for someone who just wants to figure stuff out and doesn't need this exact medical thing we are challenging that notion so yes

>> thank you, melody and melody and lori, this has been really great. >> if you choose to research, you'll find professor bell, he's a law professor who died in 2011, one of the principal originators of this much discussed time. derek bell appeared on footnotes to discuss his book about the permanence of racism. >> the late dear dear self love book note plus. >> the late derek bell of notes plus. >> weekends on c-span2. >> we document american stories

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