Caring for each other in the neurome

The revolutionary power of kindness

Four of us are in the Quiet Room at the conference. The sound of 150 people talking excitedly in the space outside sounds like stacks of chairs falling over and over again and wafts through to us briefly when the door is opened.

One of the women is sitting across the table from me and was mirroring my sounds and facial signals of “Phew” as I entered and sat down. She asks if I’m okay to talk and we chat about what we’re looking forward to at the conference and about what we’re respectively going to be doing. It is from her in her practical creative session later that I hear the phrase “Share the learning not the story” for if you want to ethically talk about someone (in your research, or in your Substack blog in my case here) without sharing confidential details or their identity if you haven’t asked permission. She says that talking to me has helped ground her. I feel the same.

Later, one of the other women from the Quiet Room sits down next to me at the end of the day on a stool at the far edge of the conference hubbub as people are beginning to get nibbles and drinks. We chat about what we’re going to eat and drink in our hotels later and about how the day has been. At some points we just sit silently, breathing comfortably. It doesn’t feel awkward- more like it’s coming from a shared understanding that it’s been a tiring day and producing more words takes energy.

In both these encounters, and several similar ones throughout the conference, I was aware of something that feels new and emerging in the social world. Spaces where neurodivergent people can check-in with each other and recognise their mutual need for calm and safety for their nervous systems. Kindly co-regulating each other. But it’s not exactly flagged- it is subtly read. Like the mycelial networks of mushrooms, communicating via electrical signals, we were contributing to the wider modulation of the system. It does require you to know your own needs and to meet them. And to be open to recognising that others are doing that too and that maybe you can help. It doesn’t need to be explicitly stated that “I’m neurodivergent and so are you, and we might both find some challenges in this space” but maybe a shared awareness of that makes such moments possible.

The nature of the conference, which was about Creative Research Methods meant that almost by definition it was full of researchers who like to do things differently to the norm. it is run by the independent scholar and late-diagnosed autistic woman Helen Kara who seems to have helped create a “neurome” for divergent thinkers- and doers (“Neurome” is my new alternative to “biome” - if I had become a full-on academic I would be writing a paper about this word which I just seem to have invented to describe a space which promotes the well being of people of a particular neurotype!).

I had a more explicit conversation about this at the conference with Tom Delahunt who also calls himself “The Hobo Poet”. A trauma nurse who uses poetry to help other trauma nurses - and a multi-layered, multiversal neurodivergent thinker currently undertaking a PhD. We're both exploring links between biodiversity and neurodiversity and- with his personal and professional trauma experience, he is very attuned to the need for there to be more spaces of calm and nervous-system safety in a world that routinely operates as a careless nervous-system jangler for everybody. It felt like my experiences with my fellow Quiet Room occupants were an example of “finding connection in disconnection” (This phrase comes from a collaborative blog by Tom and Charlotte Grainger here: The Poetic Nursing Heart).

I’ve had quite a few experiences recently where there seems to be a sort of “ethics of care” operating between me and other neurodivergent people- who are themselves involved in various networks of caring for others, in family situations or professionally- but where we share a recognition that encouraging someone who you can see has some similar challenges to you to look out for themselves as they look out for others becomes a beautiful ripple or spiral of kindness. As one of the brilliant keynote speakers at the conference Su-Ming Khoo reminded us, during this time where there is so much individualisation and dehumanisation and where under capitalism there is more focus on what can be produced and grown rather than on how we can live an ethically “good life” and look after each other, it feels like these neuromes are also potentially places of quiet revolution.

I’m not sure where else those neuromes are, apart from Quiet Rooms. Online? And maybe in other spaces where ND people gather and recognise each other more or less explicitly. And perhaps where there are also “circuits of care” in play. A meditation room, a yoga class, a board game cafe, a community garden, a festival, a common room? Maybe there are many more of them than we realise. Spreading spores of calm and care which might even reach beyond their own sphere and become contagious for all those people who have come to believe it’s normal to live in a state of heightened nervous system vigilance and chaos.