Staff story
I am a person of mixed ethnicity, non-white, and gender diverse. I live with multiple forms of neurodivergence. I will speak here about autism and Tourette’s syndrome, because these were among the most challenging aspects of my childhood, although they are not the only neurodivergent experiences I have. The combination of these identities has not weakened me. If anything, it has strengthened me. It has shaped how I see systems, how I relate to people, and how I understand power, stigma, and inclusion. However, strength does not remove the need for adjustment. There are expectations that are simply unrealistic for me. Writing reports in two hours, producing reflective notes in ten or twenty minutes, processing large volumes of verbal information at speed, these are not matters of motivation. They are neurological realities. No number of deadlines, productivity tools, or software applications can alter how my nervous system processes information. Adjustments are not indulgences. They are what make my participation possible. Neurodiversity is not an abstract concept to me. It is lived, embodied, and relational. It shapes how I move, how I think, how I communicate, and how I live. This topic matters to me because I have lived both the harm of misunderstanding and the transformation that occurs when difference is supported rather than suppressed. Cultural views on neurodiversity In the cultures and communities I have lived within, neurodivergence was rarely discussed in nuanced ways. Often it was unnamed, misunderstood, or reduced to deficit. Language for autism or Tourette’s existed medically, but socially it was often translated into stigma. I heard words such as “retarded” used casually about an autistic family member. As a younger person I once heard a colleague confidently state that Tourette’s “does not exist” and that “we now know that is not real.” As someone who experiences verbal and motor tics, that comment destabilised me. For a moment, I questioned myself, Do I cause this? Could I simply stop if I tried harder? In professional environments that explicitly valued inclusion, I often noticed unconscious bias operating in subtle ways. Colleagues would comment on how “good” my English was, assuming it could not be my first language. Others expressed scepticism that I might struggle with tasks they considered simple, whilst at the same time being able to speak several languages.
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