Celebrating Women
Badass women, non-binary folks, and neurodivergent people
Happy International Women’s Day!
March 8th is international women’s day, but… Since gender is a social construct anyway, I’m celebrating women, trans & non-binary people, and neurodivergent folks.
So… hooray.
People of marginalized genders have to fight just to get equal access to things like mental health care, including assessment, diagnosis, and treatment.
Growing up as a female-presenting person with what’s considered a more typically “masculine” personality, not to mention unrecognized neurocomplexities, I always found it hard to fit in.
I began having major mental health struggles in my early twenties, which I now understand were primarily due to burnout, after two decades of masking and trying to play “normal”.
Even that wasn’t enough to recognize my ADHD and autism. Because I’m female and was struggling with intense emotions and impulsivity, I was misdiagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder in 2010, then in my late twenties.
This despite the fact that I had predominantly externalizing symptoms — such as emotional dysregulation, hyperactivity, and impulsivity — typically considered a “boy” presentation of…
