"Because therapy should feel like a collaboration and becoming, not a rehearsal and being less yourself in order to survive." - Chenai Mupotsa-Russell

In this short episode, you get a sneak peek into the audio from one of our most poetic and transformative summit talks. Our continuing education summit is now $100 off and available on-demand at learnplaythrive.com/summit

Selected Transcript:

"Normal is not a neutral baseline. It is a construct, a fiction, a colonizing force. Normativities function to flatten difference, discipline the body, decide who gets to be seen as competent, coherent, and worthy. So, when we center neurodivergent and gender diverse lives, we're not offering inclusion into a category of 'normal', we are refusing the category altogether. Divergence in whatever form is not a problem to solve. It is a truth. They are the most natural, beautiful, diverse, amazing ways of being rooted in sensation, relationship, rhythm, self-determination, expression. The problem has never been the child, the adult, the human. It's in the systems that punish difference in the name of order. 

And so, the therapeutic task is not to bring the client closer to functioning - a functioning built on an idea of a human that is so far from them and so many other people. The idea is to undo the harm that normativity has caused. It's to let go of those normativities and start to reimagine what the world could be like if we allowed for the full spectrum of human experiencing, to make space for becoming on one's own terms, however they present or move through the world. Creative practice becomes essential here. Not decorative, not soft, but radical and necessary. Sensory-based creative engagement reaches the brain, the body, the heart, the soul in ways words can't. And for those constantly coerced into verbal or behavioral conformity, art, creativity, movement becomes a language of refusal, regulation, and reclamation. The work isn't to help the client survive unjust conditions. It's to help deconstruct the conditions that made survival feel like the only option. Because therapy should feel like a collaboration and becoming, not a rehearsal in being less yourself in order to survive."

From Colour Outside the Lines: Exploring Art, Gender, and Neurodivergence Beyond the Binary with Chenai Mupotsa-Russell MTAP, AThR in the Learn Play Thrive 2026 Continuing Education Summit

View show notes and transcript at learnplaythrive.com/podcast