ARCC: Awareness, Resilience, Clarity & Compassion
Transforming What We Face Into How We Flourish Compassion-based tools and practical strategies for parents and professionals navigating neurodivergence. Learn to regulate, advocate, and create systems—at home and at work—that foster belonging, confidence, and authentic thriving.
Why Won't I Just Start? (It's Not What You Think)
The Understory Transforming What We Face Into How We Flourish Summer 2026 | Issue 35 Why Won't I Just Start? (It's Not What You Think) I once worked with a professional, brilliant, capable, the kind of person other people go to when they need something figured out, who came to me convinced she had lost something. Not her intelligence, not her ambition, but something quieter and more specific: her ability to study. She had a set of licensing exams standing between her and the next stage of her...
The Seesaw: How Much Support Is Enough
The Understory Transforming What We Face Into How We Flourish Summer 2026 | Issue 34 The Seesaw: How Much Support Is Enough Individuation and neurodivergence, and how we tell the difference between helping and hovering I was meeting a new friend's adult daughter for the first time last summer. She'd chosen not to go to college, and when my own daughter mentioned she was applying to schools, this young woman asked her, with real curiosity, why she'd chosen the ones she had. My daughter,...
When Food Becomes Another Battle
The Understory Transforming What We Face Into How We Flourish Summer 2026 | Issue 33 Short on time? Read the full piece on the blog here, or settle in and read it below. When Food Becomes Another Battle Eating disorders in kids with autism, ADHD, and dyslexia, and why the picture looks different for each Renata found out almost by accident. She was packing her daughter's lunch and noticed, not for the first time but for the first time she really let herself notice, that the same five foods...
Not defiance: his nervous system.
The Understory Transforming What We Face Into How We Flourish Summer 2026 | Issue 32 Every family has a story about the moment things shifted. For Sofia, it was watching her youngest son Pedro fall apart at a family gathering, for what felt like the hundredth time, while her husband and her older son looked on with frustration she recognized, shared, and hated herself for sharing. Pedro was eight. At home he was gentle, curious, easy to be with. In a crowd, especially when his four-year-old...
The Mask That Worked Too Well
The Understory Transforming What We Face Into How We Flourish Summer 2026 | Issue 31 Why teaching our kids to fit in can quietly teach them to disappear This issue continues in full on the blog. [Read it here →] Kara always thought she was the socially adept one in the family. Her mother was shy, painfully so, in a way that confused Kara as a kid. So without ever deciding to, Kara built herself a different way of being: confident, polite, easy to talk to, able to connect with nearly anyone....
The Child Who Feels Everything: Highly Sensitive Kids, Neurodivergence, and the Nervous System
The Understory Transforming What We Face Into How We Flourish Spring 2026 | Issue 30 The Child Who Feels Everything: Highly Sensitive Kids, Neurodivergence,and the Nervous System For parents of children and teens who experience the world more intensely than most Claire, a parent I work with, tells the story of her daughter Mara from the very beginning. Mara was a few weeks old, with an ordinary newborn diaper rash. But when Claire went to clean her, Mara made a sound neither Claire nor her...
From the Couch to a Career: Employment Pathways for Neurodivergent Young Adults
The Understory Transforming What We Face Into How We Flourish Summer 2026 | Issue 29 From the Couch to a Career: Employment Pathways for Neurodivergent Young Adults in New Mexico What Belle's story opened. What Alix Dean's work makes possible. In a recent issue, we introduced you to Belle. Whip-smart, ADHD, highly sensitive to her sensory environment, and without a diploma after years of school that simply did not fit how her mind worked. She tried a job. Then another. Both ended within days,...
Before the Summer Slips Away: Helping Neurodivergent Teens Find Structure, Purpose, and Maybe Even a Job
The Understory Transforming What We Face Into How We Flourish Spring 2026 | Issue 28 Before the Summer Slips Away: Helping Neurodivergent Teens Find Structure, Purpose, and Maybe Even a Job A practical and gentle guide for parents who can see what their teen cannot yet see Josh is seventeen, has ADHD, and right now he cannot think past graduation. Finals are ahead of him like a wall. The family trip after graduation is the light on the other side of that wall. Everything else, including his...
Edited Version. When School Doesn’t Work: Pathways to a Diploma and Employment
The Understory Transforming What We Face Into How We Flourish Spring 2026 | Issue 27 PRO 21st Annual Conference: Follow-Up Report When School Doesn’t Work: Pathways to a Diploma and Employment For Neurodivergent Students and Young Adults Belle is whip-smart. Anyone who spends five minutes with her knows it. But school was a different story. The fluorescent lights, the noise, the rigid schedules, the expectation that she perform on demand in an environment that felt physically overwhelming. It...
When School Doesn’t Work: Pathways to a Diploma and Employment
The Understory Transforming What We Face Into How We Flourish Spring 2026 | Issue 27 PRO 21st Annual Conference: Follow-Up Report When School Doesn’t Work: Pathways to a Diploma and Employment For Neurodivergent Students and Young Adults Belle is whip-smart. Anyone who spends five minutes with her knows it. But school was a different story. The fluorescent lights, the noise, the rigid schedules, the expectation that she perform on demand in an environment that felt physically overwhelming. It...
Transforming What We Face Into How We Flourish Compassion-based tools and practical strategies for parents and professionals navigating neurodivergence. Learn to regulate, advocate, and create systems—at home and at work—that foster belonging, confidence, and authentic thriving.