Rebelling

Today marks the start of a new series on Rebelling called Social Security. And I’m not talking about the monthly check you (hopefully) get someday. I mean actual social security- the security we build with other humans and the environments we live in.

In this episode, I introduce the series and lay the foundation for what we’ll explore in the coming weeks: how to understand security not as something we earn or hoard, but as something we create together through relationships, trust, and community.

This series is an invitation to think about a world where we rely on each other as much, or more, than we rely on money, and where community is treated as wealth. We'll explore things like security as social (not just financial), building networks of care, trust, and mutual support, the freedom that comes from belonging instead of accumulating, and how we can begin to shift the focus from self-sufficiency to shared humanity.

Feel free to email me with thoughts and ideas: [email protected]

Schedule time with me here

In this episode of Rebelling, I’m joined by certified ADHD coach Keltie McLaren, who works with values-driven independent creatives to help them stop fighting their brains and start building systems that actually work for them.

We talk about what it means to understand ourselves, others, and the spaces between us. We talk about trust, how understanding isn’t a destination, but something we practice: through vulnerability, curiosity, and reflection, rather than control, performance, or self-criticism. 

The heart of this conversation is when we recognize that real understanding is relational, not performative. It doesn’t come from perfect clarity or knowing what someone else wants you to say, but from being seen as you are, even in discomfort or uncertainty. We change understanding from a private self-improvement project into something connective, dynamic, and vulnerable. 

Understanding isn’t all about achieving clarity. It’s about being in the ongoing conversation with ourselves, with others, and with difference. Because you don’t connect by making people understand you. You connect by letting yourself be understood.

Where to find Keltie:

newsletter: adhdembraced.substack.com

web: adhd-embraced.com
instagram: @adhd.embraced

linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keltie/

It’s been a year since my autism diagnosis. 

In this solo episode, I reflect on what the year has been like, the relief of understanding myself, the grief of what was missed, and the ways my life has shifted as I’ve learned to work with who I am instead of constantly trying to fix myself.

I talk about what changed after being diagnosed with both autism and ADHD. What it’s meant for my relationships, and how knowing myself has softened the shame I carry.

This conversation is a look at how identity, self-acceptance, and difference continue to evolve after the pink cloud of discovery floats away.

Podcasts

What ADHD Feels Like We Can Do Hard Things Podcast w/ Jaklin Levine-Pritzker

Creative Work Practices for AuDHD Artists and Entrepreneurs Off the Grid Podcast w/ Mattia Maurée

Communities

Divergent Design Studios 

The Nook 

Like Your Brain 

In this episode of The Myth of Knowing series, I talk with Jen Andrew, who is finishing a two-year program in community herbalism and works in communications at a disability rights nonprofit. She has a background in philanthropy, public libraries, peer support, healthcare, and public school advocacy. Jen’s journey includes herbalism, chronic illness, grief work, sobriety, and neurodivergent living, giving her a unique perspective on how we relate to our bodies, health, and the process of healing.

We get curious about what heals, the both/and of natural and institutional medicine, healing as an ongoing process, curiosity as a healing tool, and talk about how the myth of knowing closes doors when it comes to ways of healing. 

Jen and I challenge the idea that there is one “right” way to take care of ourselves. Healing can happen in many ways, including the unknown, the rhythms and practices we make our own, and the trust and curiosity we have with ourselves.

Links:

The Flexner Report

Terra Sylva School of Botanical Medicine

Umwelt

Sophie Strand

Staying with the Trouble by Donna Haraway

AuDHD Flourishing Episode Sobriety While AuDHD + Gifted (the reason Jen and I met!)

Rebelling website

Work with me

In this episode, I have a curiosity-led conversation with Melinda Staehling, a certified nutrition specialist and Menopause Society practitioner, to explore what it really means to “know” our bodies. Melinda, whose late-in-life AuDHD diagnosis inspired her podcast Departure Menopause, brings a neurodivergent-affirming, weight-inclusive perspective to conversations about health, food, and aging.

We discuss how social, cultural, and systemic rules shape our early experiences with food, body image, and health, often teaching us to distrust our own sense of what our bodies want and need. We challenge the idea that there is one “right” way to eat, sleep, or care for yourself, examining the pressures of diet culture, medical advice, and societal expectations.

Together, we highlight the importance of listening to our own rhythms, honoring bodily changes across a lifetime, and questioning the narratives around control, knowledge, and self-improvement. This is a conversation about reclaiming our own authority over body and health, without shame, pretending, judgment, or one-size-fits-all solutions.

Links:

Melinda's website

Departure Menopause Podcast

In this episode, the second in the series The Myth of Knowing, I talk with Dana Calder, a queer neurodivergent SVP in the fintech world, about what it means to “know” in the workplace. Work culture often treats knowing as currency—a sign of belonging, authority, and success. But what happens when certainty is a mask, and perfectionism becomes a survival strategy?

Dana shares her journey of discovering she’s autistic later in life, reflecting on years of over-preparing, masking, and striving to avoid mistakes. Together, we explore the hidden costs of “knowing at work,” the limits of binary thinking, and the different possibilities that come from leading, working, and living with curiosity instead of certainty.

We challenge the dominant narrative that equates competence with achievement, showing that curiosity, slowing the pace, and cultivating “other joy” is not just valid- it’s a radical act of self-knowledge and resistance in a system that claims to rewards overwork and perfectionism. This episode flips the idea of success from achievement and knowing to wonder, self-trust, and discovering joy in unexpected places.

Neuroqueering Addiction, Sobriety, and Recovery Class Info

This episode is the first in a series called The Myth of Knowing- the story that says we have to be certain, be the same, and always know the answer. But what if we didn’t have to pretend? What if “I don’t know” was an opening, not a problem?

In this episode, I’m talking about the pressure so many of us feel to always have the answer—to be sure, to be confident, to know. We’ll look at how that pressure starts early, and how it shows up in adulthood as performance, especially for those of us who’ve been marginalized, questioned, or told we had to prove ourselves.

Saying “I don’t know” can actually be a way back to yourself. A way into connection, curiosity, and real honesty. I wonder, what if not knowing wasn’t something to be ashamed of?

Neuroqueering Addiction, Sobriety, and Recovery Class

On Being episode with Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows

What if addiction isn’t a disease, but a way we’ve learned to cope? What if sobriety isn’t just about abstinence, but about sensing ourselves, how things make sense, and what makes sense? What if recovery isn’t a rigid path—but a way to reconnect with something alive, relational, and yours to shape?

In this episode, I share the story of my own unconventional sobriety outside of AA and traditional recovery models. I talk about why those spaces didn’t work for me, what did, and how receiving late diagnoses of ADHD and autism gave me the language to understand what I’d really been doing all those years: self medicating. I wasn't addicted- I was adapting. 

This is the beginning of an ongoing conversation about neuroqueering addiction, sobriety, and recovery. To make more room for complexity, difference, and care. To give us more options by shifting from the pathology paradigm to a diversity one. 

If the traditional path has never quite fit you either, I hope this episode helps you feel more seen and less alone.

I have an upcoming live class on August 24 where we’ll explore these ideas in community. Find out more/sign up

 📬 Reach me anytime at [email protected]

Ghost Walk- post I read from in this episode

SOBERBIA on Blogger and SOBERBIA on Substack

🖤 Thanks to Nick Walker for his work and the concept of neuroqueering, as well as the pathology and neurodiversity paradigm.

NEUROQUEER: AN INTRODUCTION 

THROW AWAY THE MASTER’S TOOLS: LIBERATING OURSELVES FROM THE PATHOLOGY PARADIGM

I’ve been sitting with some big questions about identity for what feels like my whole life—what we call ourselves, what’s been put on us, what we outgrow, and what still feels like home. I read three things this week (linked below),  that cracked me open, especially around the language of neurodivergence, the limits of diagnosis, and how easy it is to forget who we were before the world started naming us. After reading the first two (they are linked in order of how I read them), I got uncomfortable with calling myself neurodivergent- not because I am ashamed of it, but because after reading the first two articles calling myself neurodivergent felt...unaware. 

For a minute, I felt ignorant and wanted the words off my website. To un-name myself. Then I read the third one and it brought things full circle- identity is older and more complicated than that. In this episode I explore remembering that identity isn’t something we need to discard or defend—it’s something we can let evolve. Something that can hold complexity without collapsing under it, help us find kinship, and be a place to begin. 

on the radical power of vision and queer illegibility—a guest post on The Spiral Lab by BJ Ferguson 

Letting go of my attachment to individual diagnostic labels is part of my decolonizing journey Ayesha Khan 

How West African societies embraced autism, ADHD, and neurodivergence as spiritual gifts and communal roles—long before diagnosis existed. Lovette Jallow

 Also here's BJ Ferguson BJ Ferguson revel*ution rip

Something most of the neurodivergent people I talk to have in common is a sense of not belonging. Connecting is supposed to be natural—but for many of us, it never feels that simple. In this solo episode, I explore some of my early friendships, what it means to want friendships and relationships while not understanding how they work. I tried learning from books and TV, and by trying to decipher how other people behaved, but it often didn't make sense or work for me. It wasn't obvious. 

This episode isn't a one-size-fits-all checklist or suggestion box—it's an invitation to get curious. It's about viewing friendship, connection, and relationships not as things we’re just supposed to know how to do, but as things we can learn, study, question, and create our own ideas for.

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