What Is Neurodiversity?

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June 11-17 is Neurodiversity Pride Week.

Neurodiversity is a natural kind of human diversity, but it is stigmatized.

Our society needs to expand what it means to be acceptably human.

June 11-17 is Neurodiversity Pride Week. Why, you might wonder, is such a pride week important?

This month, I turn 50 years old. With the help of hindsight, I can see that the story of my life is one of neurodiversity. Diagnosed with ADHD in the first grade—a near impossibility for a girl in the early 1980s—then diagnosed with bipolar disorder when I was in college, exactly when people show symptoms. Diagnosed with autism in my early 40s, part of the “lost generation“ of autistic adults.

The story of my life is also one of hiding my neurodiversity. In middle school and high school, I hid because I was embarrassed to be myself. The times when my true self slipped through, I was socially punished. Even then, I knew I wasn’t quite right, never fully a part of the social group that was ostensibly mine, a freak, a weirdo. I tried so........

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