Brilliant, Not Broken: A Powerful Reframe for Neurodivergence

“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.” ~Audre Lorde

For most of my life, I asked myself a quiet question:

What’s wrong with me?

I didn’t say it out loud. I didn’t have to. It was stitched into how I moved through the world — hyperaware, self-correcting, and always just a little out of step. I knew how to “pass” in the right settings, but never without effort. Underneath it all, I was exhausted by the daily performance of normal.

Looking back, it’s clear where it started.

I grew up in a home marked by emotional chaos and unpredictability. Like many kids with developmental trauma, I became hypervigilant before I even had words for it. I learned to track mood shifts, tones of voice, the silences between the words. While other kids were absorbing math lessons, I was reading the room.

In elementary school, I wasn’t the loud kid or the front-row overachiever. I was the quiet one in the middle row—not bold enough to be in front where people might see me, and not defiant enough to risk the back, where the “bad kids” got called out, punished, or ignored. I learned early that safety meant staying in the middle: visible enough to avoid trouble, invisible enough not to stand out.

I didn’t know what the lesson was. But I knew who the teacher favored and who she didn’t. Who had a rough night at home. Who was trying too hard. Who had checked out. And who was silently hurting the way I was.

I was always paying attention—even if they said I was unfocused—just not in the way the teacher wanted me to.

I also daydreamed. Constantly. I lived in fantasy worlds that I made up in my head, complete with characters, backstories, and dialogue. I wasn’t trying to avoid reality—I was trying to survive it. And those imagined worlds were often kinder than the one I was stuck in.

So when people say things like, “That child is so distractible,” I want to pause them.

Sometimes, what you’re seeing isn’t a disorder. Sometimes, it’s a child adapting to a world that feels unsafe.

What We Call Disordered Might Just Be a Different Kind of Wisdom

As I got older, I started to realize how many of the things we pathologize—especially in women, neurodivergent folks, and trauma survivors—are actually adaptive or even gifted traits. But because they don’t fit the dominant mold of what “healthy” looks like, we call them broken.

Let me say this clearly: Different doesn’t mean disordered. And even when support is needed, that doesn’t mean the person is lacking.

Take ADHD. It’s often reduced to disorganization or forgetfulness, but for many people, it reflects fast-paced, pattern-jumping brains that crave stimulation and thrive in high-innovation spaces. That same brain might struggle in school but light up in entrepreneurship, the arts, crisis work, or tech.

Take anxiety. Yes, it can be overwhelming. But beneath it is usually a sensitive nervous system attuned to energy, risk, nuance. In trauma survivors, it often reflects the ability to read between the lines—to sense what’s not being said, to prepare for every possible outcome. They keep themselves and others safe by seeing the risks before the bad thing happens.

Take autism, especially in girls and women. What gets labeled as rigidity or social awkwardness might actually be deep authenticity, truth-telling, and sensory brilliance in a world full of noise and social masking.

Even depression can be a form of wisdom—a body demanding rest, a soul refusing to keep performing, a nervous system finally saying “enough.”

What Neurodivergence Really Means

Neurodivergence isn’t one thing. It’s a big umbrella. It includes conditions like:

ADHD
Autism
Learning differences (like dyslexia or dyscalculia)
Sensory processing differences
Mood disorders (sometimes)
PTSD and C-PTSD (especially when they cause long-term brain changes)

For some, it’s hardwired. For others, it’s trauma-shaped. And for many of us, it’s both.

In my own family, neurodivergence runs deep.

My mother lived with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. My oldest son has ADD and anxiety. My youngest is autistic, has an intellectual disability, and also lives with ADHD. I’ve carried complex PTSD, anxiety, depression—and honestly, probably undiagnosed ADD too.

We are not broken. We are not less.

We are a line of deeply sensitive, differently wired humans trying to survive in a world that doesn’t always recognize our kind of brilliance.

I know what it is to be the outcast.

I watched my mom become one—judged and misunderstood by her own family, dismissed by society because her bipolar and schizophrenia made people uncomfortable. I’ve watched my youngest son become one too. He’s autistic, has an intellectual disability, and ADHD. And I know—deeply know—that if I hadn’t chosen to value his wiring, the world might have crushed him. For a little while, it did.

But this kid plays the drums like nobody’s business.

He is fiercely protective, wildly loyal, and more emotionally intuitive than anyone I’ve ever met.
And every once in a while, he’ll say something so specific, so strange, so piercingly true, I swear he’s reading my mind — or someone else’s.

We don’t talk about this kind of intelligence enough. The kind that doesn’t show up on standardized tests or IQ charts, but lives in the bones. In the music. In the knowing.

Neurodivergence simply means your brain functions in a way that diverges from the norm. That’s not bad. That’s essential—because the “norm” was never built with all of us in mind.

The Bigger Picture

We live in a culture that rewards sameness: attention that stays linear, emotions that stay tidy, learning that happens on schedule.

But real life is messier than that. And real people are more complex.

Some of the most powerful thinkers, healers, leaders, and artists I know live with labels that would’ve sidelined them if they hadn’t learned to translate their differences into power.

Different doesn’t take away from the conversation. It adds to it.

And the next time you wonder if something is “wrong” with you,  pause.

What if that part of you isn’t broken?

What if it’s just misunderstood?

What if it’s trying to show you something the world forgot how to hear?

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