Neurodivergence & Writing

I remember when I had my brain scanned and was told that my brain speed is as fast as humanly possible... it was not a surprise to me.

My body has not been able to keep up with my brain my whole life. My reactions were really fast and I really benefited in sport - but they are unconscious. School was a struggle... though I passed with really average grades... until I learned typing, and I had the chance to go to Uni and only study what I wanted to study. Hello High Distinctions and Distinctions! No one was more surprised than me!

What I know now is that my really messy writing was my body's attempt to getting what was pouring out of my brain at a million miles per hour onto paper with an apparatus (my poor hand) that could not keep up with it. I was always in trouble for my messy writing, and it took me ages to get my "pen licence" (showing my age) because when I slowed things down enough to try and write neat, my brain was waaaaayyyy down the track in my thinking process, and I couldn't get my flow happening. It was so frustrating.

Then I learned to touch type and my whole world opened up! Yes my brain was still faster, but now I had prompts for when my brain had gone too fast to get the spelling & grammar correct in my attempts to keep up. I literally would read my work afterwards and go, "holy shit... was that actually me?", in awe of what was in my own brain after going through school where it was instilled into me that writing skills were a sign of your intelligence ... dummies.

Now its a common occurrence that I will record my thoughts (because ADD - my mind jumps from a topic to another) and send them to myself many times throughout the day, and I have a scheduled time in my calendar each day where I go through them all and allocate what needs to happen further with it.

Yes my amazing neurodivergent brain that has access to shut down parts of it so that I can hyperfocus my attention on the interesting thing that is in front of me - how grateful I am to have it! It's why the work we do is important so that we can get into our flow states in the areas our brain feels are important to us (and no flow happens when our brains feels its not important to us!).

My son was diagnosed with Dysgraphia 2 years ago. I picked it up during a Covid lockdown. Dysgraphia is a difficulty with spelling and written expression. Children and adults with dysgraphia often have difficulties with handwriting, spelling, grammar, punctuation and organisation of written tasks. Dysgraphia is also known as a specific learning disorder in written expression.

But here is the thing - my son LOOOOOVES to write stories. It's one of his special interests. So he writes his notes then types them up (as he hasn't learned to touch type yet), and then creates the drawings for them, etc. We "never-at-home-school" so there are no time frames or comparison, and therefore at this stage he doesn't feel disabled by his Dysgraphia at all.

If only we could all just lean into what works for us, at school and work. My neurodivergent brain actually can't understand why we don't!

Sending big love

- 'WC' T ♡