WELCOME TO NEUROSPARKLE
You are not signing up for another newsletter. You are entering a body of work.
If you found your way here because a word, story, TikTok, essay, or idea made you feel unexpectedly seen, you are probably in the right place. I call people like us Neurosparklers: highly adapted, unconventional high achievers whose minds do not fit neatly inside the conventional frameworks used to explain them. We arrived here just in time but somehow consider ourselves late diagnosed. But here's the thing: the Just Right Words to describe us don't fit neatly into a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual now because we became highly adapted.
We got shit done because it had to be done.
We spent decades building careers, relationships, families, businesses, creative lives, and elaborate workarounds before somebody finally handed us words like ADHD, autism, giftedness, twice exceptional, hyperlexia, gestalt processing, or AuDHD. Some of those words explain an astonishing amount. They also tend to begin with what is supposedly wrong with us.
Each of us has our own Stack of STIQS and Individual Operating System that becomes visible when we stop looking at symptoms, traits, idiosyncrasies, and quirks and start looking at the whole cognitive architecture of where we are in the present moment: how we process, what we notice, how we communicate, what we have built in order to function, and what becomes possible once we can finally see the system as a whole.
This site is deliberately built with several doors.
See what I see as I see it.
This is the weekly dispatch. One idea, story, distinction, or Just Right Word at a time. If all you ever do is read the newsletter, you will be fine.
Read the latest newsletterFollow me down the rabbit hole.
This is the growing corpus: essays, definitions, stories, backstories, deep dives, contradictions, and ideas in various stages of becoming. The newsletter gives you the surface. Ask Auntie Paige lets you decide how deep you want to go.
Explore Ask Auntie PaigeSee the framework through story.
The Bird Brains make four different ways of seeing visible: Eagle — What Is? Parrot — What If? Owl — What Now? Hummingbird — What Next? They are characters, cognitive perspectives, and part of a much larger story.
Meet the Bird BrainsLearn how to navigate what you can see.
Some of us do not struggle because we cannot see a solution. We struggle because we can see too many possibilities at once. The Rabbit Hole Roadmap is a critical-thinking method for figuring out what you actually know, what is possible, what is available, and what you can choose from here.
Join the webinar waiting listYou may encounter words here that are familiar but used differently. You will also encounter words I coined because the existing vocabulary was not precise enough. That is intentional. I care a great deal about Just Right Words because language determines what we can distinguish, and what we can distinguish changes what we can see. So if you encounter a word like Neurosparkler, Nearlynormie, NeurosparkleGPS, Exulansis Fatigue, STIQS, TRIP, or The Chooser, you don't need to learn the vocabulary before you can belong here. Follow the link. The words are doors.
Neurosparkler
Nearlynormie
NeurosparkleGPS
Exulansis Fatigue
STIQS
TRIP
The Chooser
You will receive the NeuroSparkle Newsletter from me in your inbox about once a week. Some weeks it will begin with a story. Some with a word. Some with something I noticed that I cannot stop thinking about. My goal is not to teach you how to become more nearly normal. It is to give you language and frameworks that help you recognize what is already happening inside your own mind.and perhaps feel more seen, heard, understood, and valued while you figure out what to do with what you see.
You do not have to read everything. You do not have to start at the beginning. There isn't one.
Pick a word. Follow a question. Go down a rabbit hole.
Welcome. May you choose to see what was always there.
Auntie Paige