According to https://www.disabled-world.com/disability/awareness/neurodiversity/ the word neurodiverse includes an expanding number of conditions that need to be accepted as part of the human condition.
"Today, neurodiversity is broadly defined as an approach to learning and disability that suggests diverse neurological conditions appear as a result of normal variations in the human genome.
Neurodiversity advocates promote support systems (such as inclusion-focused services, accommodations, communication and assistive technologies, occupational training, and independent living support) that allow those who are neuro-divergent to live their lives as they are, rather than being coerced or forced to adopt uncritically accepted ideas of normality, or to conform to a clinical ideal.
Different people think differently - not just because of differences in culture or life experience, but because their brains are "wired" to work differently.
"Neurodiversity is not a word about autism alone. It is a word that embraces all neurological uniqueness, all rhythms of neurodevelopment and all the forms by which humans can express themselves and contribute to their world." - newforums.com/use-term-neurodiversity/"
I have worked providing accommodations for many individuals who had a diversity of brain issues, and I have a family member who is neurodiverse. That word hasn't been around that long, and so my family member struggled through numerous oddball labels and definitions -- autism, depression, bipolar, schizo-this or schizo-that -- it got crazy for us and for the family member, because none of these labels had any diagnostic touchstone. In the 90's, I accepted that reality, but in the 2000s, I started to wonder. If there's no evidence, no blood test, no MRI, no x-ray, sonogram, no nothing...then what are we really talking about here? And if the label keeps changing, what does that say about the medical practitioners who are creating and dishing out these labels?
Those are rhetorical questions, because, from my point of view, we are talking about the concept written above -- people are neurodiverse, and there are a variety of ways that neurodiversity reveals itself in humans. The answer to the second question about medical practitioners is that they are not qualified to label individuals with an "illness" when there is no diagnostic proof it exists. The symptoms vary and are vague or pronounced depending on how they affect each individual. As I often say, if doctors diagnosed heart conditions the way they diagnose mental illness or autism, they'd be sued for malpractice.
And as regards mental illness -- with all due respect to practitioners -- psychiatry is 17th century medicine.
So what's this got to do with the fiction narrative, you ask. I have been dealing with this for a while. My first book with a character with mental illness was In Albuquerque, Abandoned, published in 2016. One of the characters, a suspect, had schizophrenia. The character's challenges, the prejudices against him, the challenges of his family -- these are all examined as the mystery is solved. I communicated with several readers who had family members diagnosed with schizophrenia after the book was published, and I began to think about the situation more seriously.
Then I started another mystery novel about a family detective agency that was started to give the mentally ill family member a place to work, because her personality was different and hard to appreciate. After writing the first few chapters of the book, I stepped back. I didn't like the label, so I took the leap -- I called her undiagnosed, or misdiagnosed. As the story unfolds, her different way of seeing and operating in the world is turned to an advantage. This is when I learned about and embraced the concept of neurodiversity. The character is challenging to her family and to other characters because her behavior is not neuro-conventional, yet her unique method of operating in the uncovers information that the characters who are neuro-conventional don't see.
I created a word there -- neuro-conventional. Maybe you can find another, and the words and labels don't really matter. I guess the way I see it is the way the Burt and Ernie characters saw it in a tape I used to have when the kids were small..."Anybody Can Play." In other words, people need not be eliminated from our life experiences, our work world, our church, or our community because they don't play the same way we do. We can make room for them.
And I am trying to make room for people with disabilities -- diverse individuals -- in my fiction narrative. While I don't--yet--have a physical impairment, I will if I live long enough. I have struggled with mental health issues -- and I only succeeded in managing those issues successfully when I accepted the idea that it's okay to function differently from others.
So...all of this said, we need fiction novels for adults with characters with neurodiversity who are part of the narrative, not the subject of the narrative. We need more adult fiction with characters with disabilities who are part of the narrative, not heroes because they live with the disability or subjects of pity.
Thus, being submitted to publishers now is my mystery novel that includes Spree, who lives with neurodiversity and her family, who lives with her and her neurodiversity with love and with challenge.
Silencing Sistine by Tower Lowe
The star investigator at The Finders, a missing persons agency, is
the multiply diagnosed (neurodiverse) Spree, a Brazilian adoptee,
sister to long suffering Jack and daughter to the ever-patient Eva,
who started the agency to keep her family together. The team are
hired out of Santa Fe, New Mexico to find Sistine, who disappeared
from Miami twenty years ago on the arm of a dangerous man. Sistine’s
younger sister, Lace, hires the agency when her dying mother accuses
Sistine of murdering their father.
The story quickly moves to Cuba, where The Finders discover that the
story of Sistine is a bit more complicated than they first thought.
The Cuban government, Cuban families in both countries, and a
mysterious stranger back in the United States cloud their efforts to
locate the elusive Sistine. Spree’s quirky personality and
intuition drive the family towards a resolution, aided by Jack’s
sketches and Eva’s knowledge of human psychology.
More on the book and characters with neurodiversity in fiction when the book releases.
Thank you for following all that is mysterious and romantic in New Mexico.
