one year later (start here)

after a year of taking Substack seriously (in my not so serious neurodivergent way) I would like to say hello and share a little bit about me

Oct 13, 2025

Dear reader,

It’s been around a year since I started taking Substack seriously, and so why not introduce myself finally. In true PDA style, this introduction was planned some time ago but the forces of nature just couldn’t quite allow it to manifest. So here it is -

a short and sweet introduction

I’m Lauren, I am a 35 year old woman living in Dubai with my husband, two daughters (7) and (3), and our two rescue cats. We are a Scottish family and we have been travelling expats for the past decade. We are a neurodivergent family and we unschool - meaning our children do not attend school.

I have two degrees, a law undergrad and an early years & primary postgraduate degree. Working with children always suited me more than life in an office. I taught in schools for 5 years before having my first daughter, and to my surprise I became at stay at home mother and home educating parent.

In those years of early motherhood I inhaled all there was to know about mothering, birthing, and parenting (as autistic women often do to intellectualise the process). Yet my child was not anything like in the books.

My husband and I knew we could longer keep up the masks anymore. We were both autistic, and it was time to explore this further. Our daughter’s diagnosis would come a few years later.

Over that time I had delved into healing work becoming a doula and learning about the ancient arts of women’s circles, womb work, herbalism and ancestral healing. I had a decent following on Instagram writing about natural birth, intuitive motherhood and aware parenting.

As I changed, the platform had also changed. I was awful at making video content. I found words that took effort and time were getting lost. My nervous system felt permanently dysregulated, caring for two children, making stories and reels throughout the day. So one day last year, I deleted the account and came over to Substack with a total following of 5 persons (thanks ladies!)

Losing that old account was a loss, but it came creative freedom. I took a break over the summer and wrote notes and scribbles in various notepads of what came into my brain that day.

One evening staying in the sunny little island of Malta for the summer, I felt a tingle to move toward the laptop once again. I began with this post about my mother’s suicide and the unknown link of suicide and undiagnosed neurodiversity. It was world suicide awareness month - as has just passed in September - and I began to put the puzzle pieces together on my mother’s death, 20 years later.

Writing about that topic was scary. It was pretty taboo.

But I hit publish, and out it went into the world.

I had spoken the unspoken.

And everything was going to be alright.

And now, one year later, I’m still here.

Which in epic content creator terms is not that much at all.

I’m autistic, and I have ADHD. I’m also somewhere on the spectrum of dyslexic and have dyspraxia. I am not great with time management, deadlines and things that need to be done because something says so, so things come to Substack as they choose to be.

That doesn’t mean I don’t want to do it of course - every day my neurodivergent brain is bursting with ideas, inventions, and creations of grandeur. It’s the steps afterwards that often feel crippling, something I am sure many ND creators feel and ruminate over.

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As a home educating mother of two sparkly and extroverted young girls, I have to grab every moment I can to create for myself - writing, painting, dancing, singing in the kitchen - the daily soul work. I’ve learned from reading Clarissa Pinkola Estes over many years, that if I can do anything in this world to make it through the day/week/year, it is to tend to my spirit in whatever creative way possible.

I live in a desert, yet I am built for the trees and forests.

I’ve lived in the Scottish countryside for many years, where my heart will always be, but get bored easily. I feel drawn to the city for people and art and music and experiences. My ADHD cries for stimulation and yet autistic side of me prefers solitude. The AuDHD balance isn’t not something easily attained.

And so for now, I live with my family and my two cats in Dubai. A city I have been coming to since I have been 14.

I am lucky to have a great community here and can easily access accommodations that support my neurodivergent family. It is sunny here, every day. There is definitely something in that Vitamin D that does not let me down. But who knows where we will end up next.

🌞

I’m here writing little stories because writing little stories is fun.

I also find that writing little stories really really hard.

Sharing these stories can be both frightening and expansive.

Connecting over the words is joyful and hopeful for all of us neurodivergents who often find ourselves alone, trapped in our minds with thoughts that seem to alien to the rest of the world.

Stories about parenting neurodivergent children, can connect us parents in ways that have changed our lives forever. If those words hadn’t been written, they never would have been found, and I am truly grateful to the accounts on here and other social platforms and the books that risked it all and said what needed to be said.

My greatest interest is in the ancestral.

In the forgotten stories and the ones we tell over and over again. I am mostly intrigued by generational neurodiversity and honoring the lineages who came before us.

I was raised by a crone - my grandmother was my world from my birth to when she passed a couple of years ago. Being raised by an elder, gave me a ticket into a deeper sense of the world early on and I hope to honor this through my writing.

I write about my mother and my aunts, my grandmother and her mother and the women past, to remember them for all of their parts that made them whole.

If we can remember that our lineages are a part of us, the stories that lie within us, it can often make this crazy modern world make a bit more sense. How many of those women before us were neurodivergent - shy, loud, misunderstood, intelligent, creative and curious - and yet the world did not know how to hold them dearly.

I believe that these stories shared can take us back to them. And we can allow their wisdom into our hearts, healing the good and the bad so our lives can be lived with more presence and understanding.