The job I was born to do…

When I first started writing it was two weeks before I turned 40 and I wanted to write about identity. This birthday felt like a looming milestone for months. It provided a really interesting presence and urgency that boosted and motivated me with intention and purpose. I felt, and still feel, really strongly about honouring my identity as I travelled towards this new decade. I wanted to focus on myself and fill the build up to 40 with affirmation and a focus on me as an individual outside of motherhood.

Now that I am here, at the other side of the 40 hurdle, I feel that I have recognised this as a phase rather than a passing milestone. It’s an era, a time for depth of selfhood, personal intentionality, and deep connection with myself. The previous decade felt like being squeezed through a portal to another life. I could say that another person has emerged at the other side of my 30s. I feel completely changede. But as I reflect more and more on identity as a core pillar of my artistic and personal exploration throughout my life, I realise that I am in fact less changed than I might think. I am clearer, I am more urgently connected to my sensory, social, and energetic needs, I am more sure of what is important to me and by extension to my family, I am more capable of articulating what I stand for and what I am capable of. But I am still the same person, just with very different surroundings and a sense of direction that is less about gaining, reaching, or achieving and more about filling myself up, rooting myself down, and expanding myself into the fullest version of who I am.

It has been a really long winded journey to get to a place where I can acknowledge who I am with pride and confidence. It has taken neurodivergent discovery, becoming a mother to two complex and inspiring beings, and acknowledging my past trauma to find a voice for my experiences. An identity that doesn’t come from my work, or from my motherhood, but instead from a depth inside of me that has driven my actions and choices in the world up to now, and continues to deepen the direction of my travels from here.

My work as an artist in dance, who I am as a facilitator and leader, and everything about how I perceive and operate in the world, seems to have been a practise or staging space for me to develop and explore my personal values, which has ultimately equipped me to do this job of mothering my children. I needed to hone the skill to mother myself too and I was doing that through my work without realising it. My children are fascinating and complex and require all of my observational ability, research and dot-joining skills, inclusive and non-linguistic communication, to give them the care that they need. But so did I as a child and I still do as an adult. This is a full time job.

I have been evolving my justice seeking, identity affirming, and care centred practice as an artist since I began working in 2005. When I became a mother in 2019, all of that activism seemed to land like a stone right in the centre of me, and it has been growing brighter and stronger with every step on the advocacy journey ever since. This essay is about how my values and interests seemed so aligned to my work, but how in fact through motherhood I have recognised that my artistic work was in fact a practice for moving up a gear and stepping into my true self in the job I was born to do.

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I have asked myself a lot recently, how it was that I spent this many years pouring so much into my dance practice and into the people that I worked with, and did not speak more readily about the strength in my core identity as an activist, as a driving force behind my work. I gently began whispering about activism and justice seeking in coaching sessions back in 2016, and social justice has been central to my personal values for longer than that, but when forging the identity of my company Luminelle, in 2019, I remember being prompted to think again about justice as a core value of the work. ‘I don’t think this sits right with your work’ was the comment made at the time. I see now that this was very short sighted.

Having explored my neurodivergence and trauma since becoming a mother, I can see that justice seeking, autonomy seeking, and personal validation of peoples’ rights is central to who I am. From this foundation, I developed my practice as a dancer due to a core need to express myself and a nervous system requirement for non linguistic ways of being.

Being drawn to community focused, socially engaged work, I have always described myself as a responsive artist driven by those involved in my projects. The facets of my projects include care, compassion, dignity, love, and trust—in the arts these things have always felt normal and important to any person centred practice. It is only now that I more often find myself outside of the artistic world that was my home for so long, that I recognise these values as pillars of justice seeking activism and outside of the norm of rigid and typical systems which are founded on perpetual carelessness.

I have long been seeking ways to change people’s understanding of communication and compassion. I have a kinaesthetic empathic skill which has enabled me to convene on a physical and sensorial level with people who would benefit from communicating beyond words. This is the foundation of my embodied knowledge and leadership as a dancer. Initially I worked with people who were misunderstood or denied agency due to the difference in their communication approaches—people with profound and multiple learning needs, people with Dementia, people with mental health needs, or those who had been through health trauma and experienced identity shifts that had affected their perspectives and world view.

I found an affinity with dancing alongside people with Parkinson’s, a neurodegenerative condition which impacts identity, physical mobility, mental health, and is driven by a significant drop in dopamine production in the substantia nigra. In this community, I was in good company. Without realising it at the time, I was working at the intersection of neurological health, neurodivergence, identity assimilation, sensory movement practice, and care. This was identity based activism, and I can see with hindsight that so many of the things we explored through dance were driven by my empathy and connection with people who were seeking self understanding and acceptance.

My last large scale project, Collective IDentity, sought to bring visibility to people living with Parkinson’s and the wholeness of who they are through dance, visual arts, film and photography. We began the work with a question of identity–”who do people who have received life changing health diagnosis believe themselves to be, after the diagnosis?” This question comes with so much justice seeking curiosity. How do the systems serve and support people post diagnosis? How do we perceive people living with disabilities beyond their symptoms? How does the world change for people who can no longer access services or experiences they have been used to? And how do all these things—systems, perceptions, access—feed into self identity, and perpetuate identity limiting perspectives…

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In my life now, as a late discovered neurodivergent woman, I reflect on this work as a project of identity synthesis. As part of the practice we were developing, the community of people with Parkinson’s were collectively building shared self identity through the understanding and experiences mirrored by their community. I knew this at the time, the title of the project, Collective IDentity, reflected the shared experience of forging a new identity following the rupture of self narrative that comes with a life changing diagnosis.

I was fascinated by the pathologised nature of Parkinson’s as an all encompassing illness of body and mind, and how little the people I danced with found themselves in spaces that acknowledged the fullness of who they are without the diagnosis. I can see that there are significant parallels between this and the neurodivergent paradigm and how the biographical disruption (Michael Bury) of chronic illness, can mirror the identity disruption of neurodivergent discovery in later life, where one’s personal story is altered irrevocably. But at the same time, I can see the immense value of the shared lived experience—we in the neurodivergent community can build our sense of self from within a collective.

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If I leave all of my artistic practice, my skills, and learning in the past, and only attribute them to my paid work, then I am missing a huge opportunity for assimilation of my own identity and for the unpaid work that I am currently doing for my family, to benefit from my values, approach, and unique way of being in the world that was most actively honed in my professional career to date.

I am not currently able to work as a dance artist, as I am working full time as a mother, care giver, and unschooler. In motherhood, I have been able to recognise and give voice to the full extent of who I am and what I stand for, giving me a chance to reframe my professional skills as personal attributes. In motherhood, I have been able to join the dots between my values, my trauma, and my neurodivergent identity, and bring the expertise that I have to the table to engage with society fully as my truest self. This has not been easy and I am aware of how much I am existing on the fringes currently. But I feel more of a sense of conviction and respect for myself than I ever did when I was working as a full time professional.

I do not believe that my work has actually paused either, instead I recognise that my efforts have been repurposed towards my children. I refuse to allow the prevailing narrative to reduce the work that I am doing in the home to mere ‘Women’s Work’ or domestic labour. This is a multifaceted job that has me researching crip theory, sensory ways of being, colonialism, and feminism. To truly centre this work as valuable on a par with any financially remunerated work that I could be carrying out instead of being a full time parent, has been the greatest position that I could afford myself as an activist and has strengthened my self belief and personal integrity.

I hope in my next essays to bring further perspectives on identity, the arts, neurodivergence, and motherhood. For example, how my work aligns with inclusive or alternative education, and why it was that I ever thought that school would be the right place for us. It took me so long to recognise the parallel between my values in my work, my inclusive approach to dance facilitation, and the core beliefs that I hold around social justice and children’s rights!

Similarly I want to talk about how the expertise I hold in non-verbal communication has given me a greater ability to observe and understand my children’s complex profiles and communication needs, and therefore to advocate for them to receive the respect they deserve. As a justice seeking activist I will write about how I continue to question society’s childism and hold myself to account by ensuring my household is child centred and respectful of all voices and contributions. As a PDAer this is even more vital for the nervous system wellbeing of our home, and a democratic approach ensures that hierarchy of needs is not assumed and adult centred experiences or expectations are not prioritised (I have a future essay to share about this).

I hope you will subscribe, to enjoy joining me on this journey of exploring identity through the lens of neurodivergence, artistic practice, and motherhood.

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Looking forward to hearing from people if they read and resonate with this piece.

Thank you, go gently.

D x

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So how does our continued dialogue impact us…

Rosie

Our conversations have influenced the unfurling of my own neurodivergence which I think I’m still avoiding a label for–partly a hang up on diagnosis, also a fear of feeling trendy, and it has been a slower uncovering because my physical disability has meant that a lot of the accommodations I need are already there, but I maybe hadn’t realized that they were also supporting me with my neurodivergent traits.

Danielle

It’s interesting how the increase in conversation around neurodivergence can have a positive or negative impact on how we view ourselves or our differences. I have found the opposite to be true, as I already had the understanding of my neurodivergence which was such an incredibly affirming realisation for me and has given me so much self compassion. I was exploring supporting my children and myself through this discovery and the dialogue with you helped me process the trauma we were experiencing around school and come to fully accept and embody my values in this area of our lives. I also came to realise my physical needs that come hand in hand with AuDHD, namely my hypermobility (hEDS) and co-occurring issues. Having a connection with you and our conversations around modelling inclusion and access as holistic and whole systems issues was really supportive in giving me the acceptance of this.

Rosie

I can acknowledge autistic, ADHD, PDA parts of myself, dyslexia and sensory processing, and I think the PDA part of myself I have acknowledged much more through conversation with you, because I think it’s been so hidden. But fundamentally for me, talking to a PDA adult to understand my PDA child has been really influential on me as a parent. Little highlights that you’ve identified with your PDA experience have aligned or raised thoughts for me to understand my own neurodivergence. But I think what’s also been incredibly supportive is that there have been times where I’ve been struggling with understanding O, and you have explained things in terms of your child self, and that has given me a lot of validation and clarity around her needs and my relationship with her.

Danielle

Hearing you talk about O in the ways that you have has also helped me with that though. That’s what is so important about this dialogue because through the conversation itself my self knowledge has grown by being able to speak to the challenges that you have raised out loud. Something such as existentialism and the way this shows up in O. Hearing you talk about this then helped me to share about my own experience and the way that poetic writing was helping me to explore and understand existential giftedness.

I think the fact that we are re-writing the narratives around our own childhood experiences, whilst parenting our neurodivergent children through a nervous system lens, and also applying that to ourselves and our self understanding–that is such a special and unique bond that we have, not to mention the choreography of thought and the interweaving of our practice as artists into this self development!

Rosie

Yes, I think a huge influence from you has been bringing in the understanding of my nervous system into this kind of constellation of knowledge. So I’ve been aware for a long time of how, as an artistic leader, the access accommodations I need are not very simple. It’s not just note taking, it’s around capacity, because my full time is less hours than other people. So everyone in my team has to really understand the project, my capacity, my access needs, and that has to filter through everything.

I think the missing piece for me was really around the nervous system and that’s come through the understanding of my PDA experience. I understand now, why when I first identified as disabled almost 10 years ago, I really felt like I wanted a support worker, or I felt like I wanted someone to travel with me, and I always sort out experiences that were with and alongside other people.

But more fundamentally, I cannot create without cocreation. I can’t. It feels abhorrent to me to walk into a room, give someone choreography, tell them to do it and leave, and that actually, my whole way of creating has come from seeking nervous system safety. I think I thought that was ‘community’ that I was seeking, or democracy. But I see that there’s something more fundamental in that for me now.

Danielle

I had exactly the same discovery and I know we both really got excited about this. For me it’s been interesting unpicking my artistic curiosities–from cocreation, to compassion, to collectivity and identity–and recognising that nervous system attunement and coregulation sits at the heart of that.

It was during the making of Kindred (child and parents immersive dance performance 2023-24) that I first identified this was what was taking place. I made the show with my own children present, and I was having to coregulate with them, as well as create a coregulating space with other adults and their children, which is a huge task. But this experience provided a lightbulb moment for me. It gave me an understanding of my practice in new ways and also the language to articulate what was happening from a nervous system lens. I’d always spoken of fostering self compassion in order to develop a compassionate connection with others. But I recognise I was also talking about developing my own nervous system regulation, in order to be a grounded regulating presence for others. I still think compassion has a really vital role in this, but I believe that compassion is fostered when nervous systems are connected. The grounded atunement to one another takes time, but when that coregulation truly drops into place, compassion can be found in abundance.

Rosie

One thing that has evolved in my artistic practice, In conversation with you, is I realised that I had been ignoring the needs of the adult, or I had been focusing only on the needs of the child. Since 2015, when I really started to try and understand and be fascinated by young children, it was mostly framed in my head as “adult ways of being, disrupted the children”. I think, through discussion with you, the coregulation of the adult, and the positioning of the adult and how we might support that, has become more of a priority.

Danielle

Yes and I think this absolutely ties in with my curiosity around compassion. For a long time I’ve worked with adults, sometimes specifically older adults or adults with a disability or health condition. My practice has always been driven by attunement to others and reflection through vulnerability and reciprocity. This, I always described as a practice of compassionate awareness and loving connection. However, I do see this more now as a nervous system coregulation.

When I worked with families, I said I wanted to support parents to compassionately connect with themselves in order to come into attunement with their children. However, I recognised during this process that I was actually saying, I want to support the parents to coregulate with their child, in order to make room for personal growth for the adult, thus leading to the creative freedom we are seeking for the child.

To achieve this as an artist I have to have genuine, authentic interest and respect for the person I’m dancing with, and in their experience of the world–which has to be true for the parent as well as for the child I think.

Rosie

I think the last thing I want to share is that there’s been a real process of validation here. When I felt like someone else should just do my job. There is someone else that could be the artistic leader for second hand dance with less complication–I feel that quite often. But I know that you have validated my role and value–you’ve said words like “but it has to be you”; “There has to be this representation in the sector”.

There’s a need for disabled, neurodivergent allyism, which I seek out with you, and other disabled, artistic friends.

We need to support each other and in doing so we maintain the development and visibility of our work.

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In this dialogue and in the thinking that led to the fostering of this relationship between Rosie and I, was the seed of an idea around neurodivergent practice. What we have begun to share here is how we have both been applying the learning around our neurodivergent traits, to the interrogation of how we practice as dance makers and artists. In the coming weeks, I will be sharing a series of essays on dance and Neurodivergent Practice. The themes I will look at include, the delicate balance of AuDHD as it shows up in my practice, the hierarchy free nature of cocreation and how that is fed by demand avoidance, and the development of cocreated and demand free performance spaces for children and adults.

As always, if you are interested in these ideas please subscribe to my Substack. All essays on life, art, and poetry are available without charge whilst I am growing and sharing this process of dance thinking.

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At the time, I was struggling with the positive disintegration of my identity. I was in the depths of neurodivergent breakdown. My family of origin was breaking apart, my then 4 year old son was suffering in the school system, I had a 1 year old daughter to care for at home, we’d just moved house to a totally new place, I was trying to maintain a grasp on my dance career despite seeing very clearly that letting go of this was going to have to be the first part of my process of starting again. Everywhere I looked felt like a crossroads not a path.

Throughout 2025 Rosie and I have explored our practice, lives, and relationships as neurodivergent artists, in a dialogue which has existed on screen, on whatsapp, by voicenote, and through the written word. In doing this, I have been able to keep my dance practice alive as a philosophical, thinking based practice, which infiltrates all areas of my personal lived experience, and is inspired by the world around me.

Rather than feeling like this is a crossroads, instead I’ve recognised that everything exists within a complex web of entangled pathways. Living, mothering, working, moving, thinking, being, both in relation with others and as an individual, are all tightly bound together in an cocreated web.

As two neurodivergent, disabled women, mothers, and artists, Rosie and I have connected over our lived experiences, dance practice and values, our conceptual thinking and the framing of our work. We have been on a thought based journey of discovery and cocreation of meaning which has inspired a PhD application, the launching of this Substack, supported writing a book chapter, and many, many conversations about schools, disability, systems, mothering, advocating, and so much more.

I look forward to sharing more with you about the conversations and ideas that have emerged in this collaborative and entangled, generative relationship. For now though, this introduction is framed through a conversation. In part 2, Rosie and I discuss how our shared dialogue has developed us as artists, influenced our practice, and shaped our ways of working. But to start us off, part 1 introduces how this dialogue came to be, touches on how the communication approach sheds light on the restrictions existing in socially normative work structures, and how crip time, mother time, and seasonal living, support us to reduce the pressure of capitalist and patriarchal work-life expectations.

How did this collaboration come about…

Rosie

So, you emailed me when you were making Kindred and we were in the middle of creating the Sticky Dance, which also coincided with the EHCP tribunal process and court date for my daughter. It wa an incredibly intense time so we didn’t quite connect at that point! But some time later I noticed that you had liked or reposted something Kristy Forbes had posted, and there just really aren’t that many people that are crossing over with arts and PDA! So I reached out.

Danielle

Yes, I wanted to connect as I felt that we were making similar kinds of work–with children at the heart of the making and performance. I wanted a peer dialogue with someone making in this way, and at the time you weren’t available–I know now this was due to your EHCP process, which I am now in the depths of myself for B! But it seemed like there was a synergy there. I just didn’t know what it was yet. It was so great to connect over PDA at a time when I was in such a deep interrogation around this, and to find someone who could have these conversations with me.

Rosie

We began an exchange on WhatsApp, and eventually were able to have a couple of phone calls live, and I remember that you were at the point of B’s first year at school, so we had a lot of exchange about our neurodivergent children as well as our work.

There was what felt like maybe a peppering of light bulb moments that lit me up in terms of the way we were thinking about life and practice. And this is where I think that the threads of cocreation of thought and entanglement feel really strong. I’m not quite sure where one of us started and one of us ended with the thoughts, or which one of us brought in the different threads. But they’ve kind of just shifted and changed as we’ve talked and the ideas have settled in my body.

Danielle

Definitely. The early conversations gave me back a vibrancy and excitement about my practice at a time when things felt really out of reach and heavy. I was contemplating how my PDA profile has infused so much of how I see cocreation and hierarchy free leadership. I think it has impacted the design and implementation of all of my projects and ideas. Then you and I spoke and I remember tentatively saying to you “I think my cocreative practice is a reflection of my PDA and it is a neurodivergent practice” and we both just got so excited that we were thinking the same things!

What followed felt like such an important joining together of minds.

I like to think of it like a dance process of thought choreography. We shared how coregulation, sensory ways of being, democracy and hierarchy, free leadership, crip time, and all these theoretical underpinnings were such an important feature of our work and lives as artists.

I remember this fizzy, excitable feeling staying in my body and driving me to want to write! It was the catalyst to get my Substack moving (I had been thinking about it and writing in the background for nearly four years!)

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How has this communication approach influenced your ways of working…

Danielle

There is an inherent neurodivergent communication style that goes right to the heart of deep and reflective issues and doesn’t skirt around the edges with small talk or introduction.

I have found over recent years that the best friendships and relationships I have are with those ND people who are willing and able to do this equally and with the same urgency of sharing as me. Since we began this process of thought development and sharing it has always been so easy and possible to dive straight in and this has been really cathartic and inspiring for me. It is validating as it cuts out all the ‘expected’ social conventions about how we should communicate and is much more clear, which is how I prefer to communicate.

We’ve had so many light bulb moments, so many discoveries of how we apply our practice in our daily lives, so many moments where we have supported each other with our thinking. All of this has been possible because we bring our whole selves to the dialogue and trust each other. This comes from a shared communication style too. Being unafraid to share and be seen by each other.

Rosie

Voice noting really allows, I suppose a monologuing–a kind of unfolding of ideas without interruption. I think there’s safety with the unfoldingness when both sides understand the parameters. The vulnerability that we have built allows ideas to develop while they are being verbalised and being able to say things that then might change. There’s nuance and deep feeling in this and it removes a need to be clear and ‘right’ that can feel really scary to me in shorter or written formats. The fear that comes with leaving a message and then worrying “what did I get wrong? what wasn’t clear?” With dyslexia for me comes a deep sensitivity to if I’ve expressed myself in the way I meant, that’s a learned reaction but also kind of deep rejection sensitivity.

What I really know now which I didn’t know, maybe five years ago, is that in groups larger than three, I stay quiet. As a child at school, I could not put my hand up. It was physically painful to do, to feel that everybody might hear me and I might get it wrong. I remember maybe five or six years back in the dance industry, there were discussions around quiet leadership, or ‘female’ leadership, and what that meant. And I was intrigued, but never really got behind it, because I didn’t like the genderedness of it. I remember going to an event, and I can’t remember what the event was about, but I had a lot to say. I had a lot of thoughts and there was a panel discussion afterwards, but I could not say anything.

Now, I know and understand that my quiet leadership is more about my neurodivergence, and I accept it as well. I will happily have small group conversations - that is where I thrive. In larger groups the discussion can feel performative and without detail - but also impossible to physically access with my disability and caring responsibilities. In some ways, that’s what this is. It’s like a small group conversation that I feel safe to raise and learn things.

Danielle

I am living most of my day to day with my children (age 6 and 2) and I have very little connection with the world outside of my life as a mother, but my brain is on fire with thought at all times. Thinking about dancing and thinking about the application of my life learning and neurodivergent discovery with my dance practice. In itself this is a practice of dance thinking, and I have been able to explore and share that with you through this exchange.

I also think it brings to attention the ways we communicate and work as neurodivergent, disabled humans. I cannot work a linear 9-5 day and I cannot sit at a desk to do it. Inspiration strikes me at different times depending on what I am doing, where I am at any given time, and what the rhythms of the day are like with the children. On some days I get pockets of time to sit but mostly I need to work when I can, on the go - voice record my ideas, write them in a phone note or on a list in a book to attend to later. With our dialogue it has meant I can note the ideas to someone else and we can expand on the ideas and explore routes through, into, or around them together. We’ve shared lived experiences, reading that we’ve done, practice based ideas and concepts, all by whatsapp. This feels informal compared to the expected norms of office working but it is absolutely valid and a much needed way into working for me.

Rosie

Yes, so there’s vulnerability and safety, but also an acceptance of crip time–which we’ve been writing about together. I’ve had an awareness of how this features in my life for a long time, but it’s become much more present now with my caring responsibilities.

Our version of crip time might mean that we are messaging each other late at night and there’s an acknowledgement that’s just the time that it’s been able to happen, because other things have unfolded during the day. There might be a burst of messages, but there’s also been weeks where we haven’t said anything to each other, and that’s okay. There doesn’t have to be a linear continuity.

I feel it’s about inspiration and intuition, and maybe that’s also what I value about this space. My intuition feels so highly valued

Danielle

Yes I agree as I feel that the synergy in our relationship and ways of seeing, being, and thinking, means that I can trust my intuition is so validated with you.

As a woman and a mother I have never been more sure that my intuition is my greatest asset. It speaks to an inner world of deep knowing which has been conditioned into silence. Becoming a mother, and then even more deeply in the process of neurodivergent discovery, I’ve learned to listen more deeply to the intuitive voice that is coming up in times of stress or challenge.

In our dialogue, I’ve been able to share the messages that have come up from my intuitive and sensory world, and test those out in a held and validating space. It is rare to find someone who can help support and reflect from such a similar sense of the world. It’s the kind of validation of my world view that I have always needed!

Rosie

Yes! What comes through really strongly for me is witnessing. Particularly in terms of encountering unjust systems like support for our children, access to work, kind of any of the bigger, broader systems. Being able to share my rage with someone is very small relief, and I think there’s a lot of care from both sides around what’s needed in those moments. Is it just, release? Is it support or redirection? Is it validation? I think these, and probably many other things. But there aren’t many people that can really get the challenges of being a neurodivergent parent to a neurodivergent child within a neurodivergent family living in a neurotypical world. So that space of witnessing feels really important, and also very dance-led.

Danielle

This has been vital for me. Navigating unjust systems has been one of my biggest challenges as a parent to neurodivergent children. Every parent in this system will see it differently, but one thing I have seen is that it is always a fight. And for ND adults discovering their voice and fullness of their identity for the first time, standing up in a fight alone is so deeply draining. Having your support and validation, holding space for my disgust, rage, fury, disbelief, and all the in-between grief, has been such a lifeline. Through my relationship with you there has then been the space and vulnerability to bring the individual experiences and relationship to our practice as person centred artists and humans. Coming from a dance and arts background in general, especially from an inclusive or community facing artistic space where facilitation is meticulously interrogated, cocreation is at the heart of everything we do, and young people, children, adults, everyone who encounters our work is invited in a curious and accepting way–makes dealing with school systems and all systems, much much harder, more jarring, and more painful.

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In part two of this conversation, Rosie and I discuss how our cocreation of thought has influenced our practice individually, and I’ll be sharing the themes of my series on dance and neurodivergent practice. If you’ve enjoyed this piece and want to get the next instalment straight to your inbox, please subscribe. All posts on dance, cocreation, and neurodivergence are available for free.

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I am a complex being. As I approach 40 this year, I am looking back at the life I’ve lived so far, and wondering why it has taken me so long to honour and accept this. I am an AuDHD woman with a strong heart and a gentle activist presence. I love to move, my body needs movement and rhythm to regulate. You’ll often find me singing or swaying—I never stand still. I need to talk, I need to process my emotions externally, but I am also mute in many situations and find socialising very challenging. I am deeply feeling, soul and heart led, but I interrogate everything fiercely. I follow complex thought webs and find great excitement in joining dots when creating and thinking. I expect myself to learn about everything that is meaningful to me and spend my life constantly questioning everything. I am most at peace in nature, I take strength from the interconnectedness of the natural world and feel there is a lot more to explore here for me around entangled human ecosystems of care. As an artist cocreation is a special interest of mine and in my life too I believe that coregulation and cocreation come hand in hand in neurodivergent, low demand living.

I am led by intuition but feel I am stepping into my power only now, as a mother for the first time—still 6 years in I find it hard to make big steps even when my intuition is telling me to. I feel intensely sensitive to other people’s energy, I can read a room just by standing in it, and I hold delicate and spacious energy for other people and their emotions. This means that I have a huge heart, like an unending jug into which people are able to pour their thoughts and feelings and I am able to hold compassionate space for this. I express a lot of my experiences though movement and words often come out poetically. I am naturally musical, use music and rhythm to regulate, and I can make up any song, about anything, on the spot, at any time (this is a skill I learned I had as soon as I become a mum!) I consciously coregulate with my children—I open my heart to their experiences, attend to them as whole human beings, and provide a curious and care filled home life for them. I live a sensory life—my memories are auditory and sensorially stored. I am drawn to layers of texture, to abstract light, and to darkness in small spaces of intrigue—mossy crevices under fallen logs, sunlight on old stone walls. I seek out the things that are usually hidden.

I am an existentialist, calling to question the deep why and never resting in shallow acceptance. As a PDAer, I feel intensely uncomfortable within, or as a witness to power imbalance. I call out injustices that do not serve me, my children, or others who I feel are being unfairly penalised for difference. I am not prepared to please others for their comfort and I am consistent and committed to seeking fair and equitable justice in whatever situation I am in.

I have spent the last three years de-assembling my life through neurodivergent discovery, unmasking, tearing down expectations and patterns that no longer serve me, and growing full sized; alongside my wonderful husband who has paved the way for me through his quiet groundedness and acceptance. Supporting my neurodivergent children I have chosen a path of responsive and honest coproducing of our lives together. I feel like as much as they are learning about the world through new eyes, I am also seeing everything for the first time with them. I have no desire to teach them the ways that I have learned things, I am learning more by listening to their interpretations of the world than sharing mine.

As I have written about before in my first introduction, I have taken a break from my full time role as Artistic Director of my company Luminelle. Not because I don’t want to dance any more, quite the opposite, I miss it! But I am exploring many parts of my creative expression that I had not unearthed until now. navigating parenthood with my son who has struggled immensely with masking, school trauma, burnout, and eventually leaving school, I have had to give myself permission, (or rather my body forced me to face up to the need), for a break. Which is where you find me here on Substack, weaving threads from writing, motherhood, dancing, cocreating, and drawing complex webs tying all this together through a deep interest in neurodivergent ways of being, creating, and thinking.

In the next posts I share here, I’m going to start talking more about these threads, how I see neurodivergent ways of being intersecting with creative practice, and how my own artistry has been taking shape as a thinking practice, during this time when thought is one of the only ways I can explore my art. The first few pieces also shed light on neurodivergent communication and the need for community and interconnectedness. My close friend and colleague Rosie Heafford (Second Hand Dance) and I, will share our recent thought base cocreation of ideas. I hope you will join me for that! Please do subscribe and share if these posts are resonating with you.

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Thank you for being here.

Danielle x