Blog by Dr. Catherine Bell, GP and coeditor of Kaleidoscopic Minds

Kaleidoscopic Minds is an anthology of poetry written by neurodivergent women. The poets featured in this collection belong to a generation of late-diagnosed, undiagnosed and misdiagnosed women with lived experience of ADHD, autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia, OCD, and tics. The editors believe that poetry is the perfect medium to capture and amplify the voices of this underrepresented group and, through their words, we hope to raise awareness of how neurodivergence can present in women and girls.

The piece of writing that first connected the editors of Kaleidoscopic Minds was an excerpt from ADHD 2.0 by Dr. E. Hallowell, MD and Dr. J. Ratey, MD. At this time, many of us in the poetry community were responding to the UK National Poetry Day campaign “I choose poetry, because…” and coeditor Stephanie Farrell Moore, a neurodivergent actor, writer and voiceover artist, shared the excerpt on her Instagram account in September 2021:

Being a poet might best be defined with [this] trio of descriptors: creative, dreamy, and sometimes brooding. “Creativity,” as we use the term in connection with ADHD, designates an innate ability, desire and irrepressible urge to plunge one’s imagination regularly and deeply into life—into a project, an idea, a piece of music, a sandcastle. Indeed, people with ADHD feel an abiding need—an omnipresent itch—to create something.

Stephanie wanted to share her experience of being diagnosed with ADHD in her thirties and how important creativity, specifically poetry, had been to her mental health. Stephanie’s description of the “itch…to create” resonated strongly with me, as I was finding it difficult to put my finger on why, in my thirties, I had been drawn to writing poetry. She prompted me to look back on my life experiences through a different lens. This awareness of an “innate” creative force and the reframing of a life, or specifically a childhood, in response to recognizing one’s neurodivergence are common themes in the poems featured in Kaleidoscopic Minds. In her poem, “Diamonds,” Kate Larsen-Daw recalls:

I told my mother once

That I found it hard to write in prose

The words, I said

Kept falling out as poems.

Despite concerns about overdiagnosis voiced by some within the medical community and mainstream media, it is estimated that 15–20% percent of the world’s population are is neurodivergent. However, owing to a lack of awareness and recognition, only a minority are formally diagnosed with a neurodevelopmental condition (such as autism, ADHD or dyslexia). Women and girls, as well as global majority groups, often fall through the cracks. Neurodivergence is unrelated to age, sex, race, social class, and intellectual ability, but the deficit-based diagnostic criteria for neurodivergent conditions are still largely based on a white middle-class male population. This means that signs of neurodivergence more commonly seen in women and girls are often missed or misinterpreted; these include emotional regulation difficulties, internal restlessness (rather than physical hyperactivity), and cyclical fluctuations in symptoms. The greater tendency of women and girls to mask neurodivergent traits in order to conform to social norms (a process often requiring a huge amount of conscious or subconscious effort) can also prevent recognition of their neurodivergence.

It is sadly acknowledged that neurodivergent individuals are at an increased risk of co-occurring mental health issues, such as anxiety, depression, eating disorders and substance misuse, particularly those whose neurodivergence goes unrecognized into adulthood. However, the medical community’s primary focus on deficits and comorbidity means that the strengths of neurodivergent individuals are often overlooked, such as their creativity, their observational skills and, perhaps unexpectedly, their empathy. Kaleidoscopic Minds reminds the medical world that the neurodivergent experience is not just that of disorder and illness. The book explores themes of identity, acceptance, as well as the paradox of the neurodivergent ‘“spiky profile’” (a term used to describe the disparity between neurodivergent individuals’ strengths and challenges).

The editors of Kaleidoscopic minds believe that when the spiky profiles of the neurodivergent are acknowledged and a “difference” rather than “deficit-based” approach is taken to their difficulties, their strengths have space to emerge. In the words of Amy Harris in her poem, “ADHD and Me”:

we’re thinkers and feelers

creators and doers

we’ve got sparks and rockets in our shoes

and we let our minds go wherever they may choose

Kaleidoscopic Minds is available to order on Etsy at KaleidoscopicMindsUK. It features a foreword by neurodivergent author Rebecca Schiller and cover artwork by neurodivergent artist Ailsa Turner-Gibb. Profits from the sale of the anthology will be donated to the Autistic Girls Network, a UK charity that campaigns for better recognition and diagnosis of autistic girls and for the rights of non-binary young people, supporting these groups in feeling understood.