(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) This is a special episode of the Feathermane
Soul Wisdom Show, specifically for Pride.
And if you are a part of my
NeuroDivergent community, and if you are also anywhere
on the LGBTQIA2 plus spectrum, then this episode
is for you.
Especially if you don't feel like you are
part of Pride or part of a community.
And I just want to tell you that
I'm going to dive right in because this
episode is full of a very important message
of love and caring and support just for
you.
You're listening to Feathermane Soul Wisdom, a podcast
for those looking to rediscover their wild spirit
in spite of life's challenges.
If you're living with a chronic illness or
NeuroDivergent or consider yourself disabled, and you're looking
to connect with your own inner untamed essence,
then this show is for you.
Your host is Kit Kaelstow, Wild Spirit Storyteller.
Thanks for listening.
And now on to the episode.
Hello and welcome.
I'm Kit Kaelstow, your host.
So it is June 2026, which means it
is Pride Month.
And this is a month where the queer
community gets to celebrate our unique individuality, our
relentless existence, our joy, and our essential being.
And also reflect on the challenges that we're
facing, as well as the ways in which
we're building and reaching out to community.
But if you are NeuroDivergent, there is a
good chance that you have always had a
difficult relationship with community or social groups, especially
if you're Autistic or AUDHD.
There are a lot of variables in being
in a group.
And one of the things that I've realized
this Pride Month, and it really was sparked
by something I read, I'll quote it for
you here shortly, was that as much as
I know that I am non-binary, genderqueer,
as much as I know my gender identity,
I really don't feel like I'm a part
of the Pride celebrations, because I don't feel
like I'm a part of community.
And there's a lot of reasons for that.
Some of them are baked into my own
trauma, my complex PTSD, rejection-sensitive dysphoria.
But some of them are also just kind
of baked into how society treats NeuroDivergent individuals.
And all of this kind of got me
to thinking about my grief coaching specialization.
And as I've been really kind of making
the connections between the grief that we experience
as NeuroDivergent individuals, the grief that I experience
or my author community experiences, grief in the
queer community, the trans community especially, that there
are just a lot of dots to connect
here.
So that's kind of what I wanted to
talk about in today's special Pride episode.
So what I read that kind of sparked
me on this was in a yoga newsletter
I receive.
And it came from a yoga organization that
says a lot of good things about being
inclusive, but yet feels really much built for
a certain body type, a certain neuro type,
a certain physical ability type.
It's like they want to be inclusive in
some ways and not inclusive in others.
And what they said was, yoga reminds us
that our individual well-being is deeply connected
to the well-being of our communities.
As we move through Pride Month, we invite
you to reflect on the ways your practice
supports connection, compassion, and belonging, both on and
off the mat.
And I sat with that for a while.
And on one hand, it sounds very good.
I mean, one of the things that I
do with yoga is I am very much
attuned into the energetic bodies, the koshas, with,
you know, the yoga's mission of yoga is
a way to know the self through the
body.
I'm very much tied into that.
And so I very much get that if
the individual people in a community are not
doing well, then the entire community isn't going
to do well.
And then inviting in the ways that your
practice supports connection, compassion, and belonging, both on
and off the mat.
And I thought about this.
And I'm realizing that there are a lot
of people this month that are feeling very
left out, and that are feeling very much
as if they're not a part of a
community.
And this has to do in large part
with social constructs, with the way people imagine
that certain genders or certain individuals should look.
But it also has to do with the
way that the general neurotypical society treats our
divergent individuals.
And so what I want to talk about
today is how to support yourself when you're
not feeling like you're a part of a
community.
I want to talk about ways in which
you can find and create your own community.
But mostly, I also want to talk about
processing and dealing with the grief that comes
with feeling like you're not a part of
a community.
One of the main reasons why neurodivergent individuals
struggle to find community is because of rejection
-sensitive dysphoria.
And it makes a lot of sense.
I mean, if you are told for your
entire life that what you're doing is wrong,
how you're presenting yourself is wrong, the way
that you're quote-unquote humaning is wrong, then
you're going to start feeling an acute ability,
an acute sensation of rejection, any time you're
starting to feel excluded.
And what that leads to is that can
lead to social anxiety, that can lead to
people basically self-rejecting themselves or keeping themselves
out of community situations.
And because of that, that means that a
lot of neurodivergent individuals don't feel like they
are part of a community in general, outside
of any small online or in-person groups
that they may be a part of that
are comprised of primarily neurodivergent folks.
Now, if you layer on top of that,
not just the current political climate, the current
climate of prosecution, and some would say outright
genocide against transgender individuals, you can also be
dealing with body dysphoria.
You can be dealing with a situation where
due to the community you live in, due
to the state you live in, in the
US or in the UK, due to the
people around you that you either are unable
to transition or do not feel that it's
safe to transition, or to even begin exploring
how you might change your body to better
align with your gender identity.
And so you might be a transgender individual
or a genderqueer individual who would like to
make changes to your physical presentation.
And because of where you live, it's not
safe.
You don't feel like it's safe.
You don't feel like you're going to be
accepted.
Then that adds an additional layer of grief.
So I want to pause for a moment
and state that a lot of what I'm
speaking about here is coming from my own
feelings and my own lived experiences.
I sincerely hope that if you are somebody
who shares these lived experiences, that what I'm
saying actually resonates with you.
But please know that I am not speaking
for the entire neurodivergent community, and I am
very much not speaking for the entire queer
community.
So how do we deal with those feelings
of grief?
The first step would be to acknowledge that
they're there.
Grief is not something that if you're thinking
of healing, like you know, you scrape your
knee, you put a band-aid on it,
maybe a little antibiotic ointment, four to five
days it goes away.
Two weeks, a month later, it's your knee
doesn't look like it's ever been scraped.
That is a level of healing where the
issue goes away completely.
It's not an issue ever again.
Grief, along with many of the other things
that we deal with, isn't like that.
It doesn't go away.
It can lessen over time.
We can learn to live with it over
time, and it may always be a part
of us.
Now there may be a time where it
doesn't hurt as bad, where it doesn't feel
as bad.
And this is kind of described, there's a
a cartoon, or cartoon isn't the right word,
but like a mem or a diagram that
I've seen go around social media quite a
bit, that shows a like a marble in
a jar.
And when you first experience grief, you experience
it very acutely.
It encompasses the whole jar, which would be
you and your being.
And eventually as you go on, it's not
so much that the marble gets smaller, or
the grief gets smaller, but the jar or
your container, your body, your experiences, yourself, your
soul, gets bigger to accommodate the grief.
And so the grief gets lessened, because basically
you've learned to deal with it, to companion
with it.
You've learned, you've learned to almost befriend it,
rather than try to shove it away and
make it this big scary monster.
It's like the, you know, you're laying in
bed, and you see a shadow on a
wall, and you might think, you know, oh
my god, what is that?
Or you hear a noise, and you think,
you know, somewhere else in the house, and
you're like, oh my gosh, what is that?
You turn on the light, you realize, oh,
that's what that shadow was.
Or you step out to the living room,
you see that the cats are kind of
playing, you know, having the zoomies at like
2 a.m., and you're like, oh, okay,
that's what the noise is.
You shed some light on it, you've made
this, you've made it much smaller in its
environment, without actually stopping whatever's there.
You know, you're not moving what's causing the
shadow, unless it's bothering you.
Your cats may stop having the zoomies, but
they'll have the zoomies again, and you'll be
like, okay, I remember that's the cats having
zoomies.
It's the same sort of thing when you're
dealing with grief.
So step one is to actually say, hey,
I'm grieving.
So in this case, it's pride month.
It is perfectly acceptable and perfectly okay to
say, hey, this is pride month.
I am not feeling celebrated.
I am not feeling like I am part
of a community that's being celebrated.
And that hurts.
So acknowledging that, putting some sunlight on it,
putting, you know, some awareness around it.
The next step is, especially when you're starting
to deal with rejection sensitive dysphoria, would be
to actually think about, not so much, I
don't want to say reality, because what you're
perceiving is reality.
But maybe think about that narrative, and how
what you're seeing and feeling and experiencing, either
is happening or isn't happening.
So, you know, it's, it's pride month, I,
you know, don't don't know how active you
are in your communities on social media.
Maybe you're seeing a lot of people post,
you know, different things and getting a lot
of comments.
You post, maybe you're talking about your gender
identity, maybe, maybe you feel cute one day,
and you're sharing a picture and saying, hey,
I feel cute today.
And you're not getting the feedback or the
validation you want.
One of the ways to look at that,
for example, is to look at the algorithms
and say, okay, the social media algorithms are
set to promote certain things.
Is it possible that people care, but the
algorithm is suppressing my content?
And the answer to that quite often is
yes.
So then once you kind of start to
think about that and go, okay, so in
my case, I don't feel like I'm a
part of pride or the community, in part
because I don't feel like I'm a part
of community in general, unless it's like these
small little pockets that I have created for
myself on the internet.
It's not related to this.
But you know, I can think of a
group that I'm in where I very much
feel like I'm on the outside looking in.
And I don't think that that's the case.
I think that I'm a lot more welcomed
and a lot more supported than I am.
But that's just the impression I'm getting.
And honestly, because I haven't spoken up about
that, thank you, rejection sensitive dysphoria.
I don't think there's been a lot of
conversations about that.
But I'm imagining that that's not what is
meant.
Obviously, I could probably fix that by speaking
up.
I could also fix that by leaving the
group and finding a group where I do
feel welcome and I do feel supported.
And so I know for myself, and this
I would say with step three is to
kind of work through this.
Why do you not feel like you're part
of a community?
Well, for me, I have not done anything
to change my presentation.
Therefore, when a lot of people look at
me, they assume my gender identity aligns with
the one that I was assigned at birth.
Because I haven't done anything to try to
change that other than I dress.
Well, I have no sense of style.
I dress in my comfortable clothes, often masculine
presenting.
And so that's just how I come across.
Which is good.
I mean, because it's masculine presenting, but there's
still parts of my body that mean that
every time I go to the feed store,
I get ma'am.
It's like, you know, and I just say
thank you.
I'm like, whatever, they don't know any better.
I just deal with it.
But I feel like because I have not
as visible in my transition, a lot of
my transition has been how I view myself
internally, how I feel about myself, the love
and care and support I give myself.
That's not externally visible.
Therefore, I don't feel like I am a
part of the trans community, even though as
a non-binary genderqueer person, I very much
am.
And I very much could encounter the issues
that my community deals with as far as
using public restrooms and that sort of thing.
Because in many ways, I am gender non
-conforming.
The thinking about it, I want to caution
you not to assume that the problem is
with you.
And I feel like I'm probably going to
have to do a part two of this,
because I could, I need to talk about
how the community at large, and I don't
care if this is the queer community, the
writing community, basically the neurotypical people need to
do better with accepting and supporting and accommodating
the neurodivergent people around them.
And that's where the neurodivergent grief kind of
collides with the grief of of being queer
at the moment.
Like grief is one of those things that
the more I think about it, and the
more I start connecting dots, it does not
fall into neat little silos.
For example, on Pet Grief Pathfinder, because I
started my journey being certified in pet loss
grief support.
And I just want to say, if you
have lost a pet and you're struggling with
the grief, I do encourage you to go
to Pet Grief Pathfinder.com.
You can book a free call with me.
There are monthly grief circles you can join.
I have a newsletter.
You know, there's support for you there.
My grief journey began there, but I very
quickly realized, I mean, even just like one
or two classes into my certification, I very
quickly realized that the other communities that I'm
a member of, being a published author, being
neurodivergent, being queer, being disabled, that there's grief
inherent and grief that happens in those communities
as well.
And a lot of it overlaps.
It doesn't, there's no, you know, it's not
like the grocery store where you have the
dairy case, and then you have the frozen
food section.
And the frozen food section is all, you
know, okay, here's your ice cream, here's your
frozen pizzas, here's your french fries.
It's not all nice and neat like that
when you come to grief.
Grief overlaps.
Grief pulls on all of our life experiences.
And so this Pride Month, you know, I'm
talking about not feeling like being part of
the queer community, but it comes from a
lot of other places.
And so as a neurodivergent individual, I often
feel like, even though I may be like
in a workplace, my reviews may say exceeds
expectations every single year, I don't feel like
a welcomed or a good member of that
community, because my neurodivergent brain does not fit
in and operate the way the neurotypical brains
work in that space.
And I think that happens a lot in
the queer spaces as well.
Because, and again, some of this is cultural,
some of this is society, but there seems
to be a focus on very specific groups
of queer individuals and very specific presentations of
those individuals.
And so what happens is, while there is
a huge overlap between neurodivergence and between being
queer, you know, again, across the whole LGBTQIA2
spirit plus spectrum, there's a big overlap there.
And so if you're in a community that
that is often forgotten by kind of the
the grand narrative that is presented by what
you see on in media, maybe the loudest
voices on social media, if you're part of
a community, if you're if you're on that
spectrum, that is not well represented, you can
feel left out.
And so I think it's important to acknowledge
the way that all of our identities interact
with each other, intersect with each other, and
influence one another.
And I think it's important to think about
how the grief that we may be feeling,
and not just this month, but any month
out of the year, how the grief that
we may be feeling arises out of the
intersections of those identities, the way that those
identities have been shaped.
Because the truth is, a lot of the
things that I feel in the about not
being a part of the queer community, I
also feel in the neurodivergent community, which is,
you know, kind of earth shaking a little
bit to think about.
Because while I am not, well, let me
back up a bit.
While I am very good at masking and
presenting on my gender identity, and yes, that
is a form of masking.
Um, where, as I've gotten older, and as
I have entered in different stages of my
life, it is no joke that if you
are in perimenopause, you're it gets harder and
harder and harder to mask your neurodivergence.
And some of that has to do with
burnout.
Some of that has to do with the
fact that, you know, you reach a certain
age, and you just don't care anymore.
You know, masking and fitting in just isn't
as important as it used to be in
certain contexts.
But I have noticed that the ways that
I don't feel don't fit into feel like
I don't fit into the neurodivergent community is
also ways that I don't feel like I
fit into the queer community.
And that comes down to gender dysphoria.
That comes down to how I feel in
my body, the messages that I've taken in,
and how I'm working to work with those
messages, to do the wild spirit storytelling, and
the work that I do with wild spirit
storytelling, and the work that I do with
grief with the grief pathfinder.
Because that if there's one thing that ties
together my grief this month, it's the dysphoria.
It's that I don't look like somebody who
gets attention on online.
I don't look like somebody who matches my
gender identity, and I don't believe I ever
will.
Um, for many reasons.
And so because of that, this month has
been very difficult.
And I got a little more personal in
this episode than I think I thought I
was going to.
But I'm also sharing again in the hopes
that you are not, you know, that if
you're listening to this and you're resonating with
this, that you're not alone.
I said in the opening that this was
going to be a big old message of
love and support for you.
And I feel like what I have said
maybe has not been.
But where I want to go with this
is that when we acknowledge the grief, when
we kind of dig under the surface and
find out what's causing the grief, we keep
asking that existential question, why?
What we can do is instead of meeting
that grief with recriminations, with feeling bad, with
feeling like we missed something, feeling like we
should do something better, we can actually meet
that grief with absolutely radical, absolutely enthusiastic, absolutely
ecstatic self-acceptance.
Radical acceptance.
Note I didn't say love.
If you can meet all of that with
self-love, that is amazing and wonderful and
I'm so happy for you.
But I don't want you to feel like
that if you're not at the point yet
where you can meet that with self-love,
that you can at least meet that with
self-acceptance, radical acceptance.
And radical acceptance is not giving up.
Radical acceptance is not accepting the status quo.
It is saying, you know what, this sucks
right now.
This is what I'm feeling right now.
This is what I'm dealing with right now.
And it's okay not to be okay.
And I know that's kind of a cliched
statement, but it's also a good starting point.
When you're dealing with grief, to say it's
okay that you're not okay allows you to
feel your grief, whatever form that takes.
If you're breaking down in tears, if you
want to scream into a pillow, if you
can go to a remote area and just
scream your frustrations into the woods, that's even
better.
I've been known to do that since I
live very remotely and it is very helpful.
So I highly recommend screaming into the woods
if nobody's around to get concerned.
Screaming into a pillow, you know, giving squishy
hugs to your cat or your dog, crying,
however you can express what you need in
that moment.
I encourage you to to find out what
you need and to express that.
Self-acceptance just says, hey, it's okay that
I'm not okay.
It's okay that I am feeling these things.
And if you can, self-acceptance is saying,
I am here for myself.
I'm going to support myself through this and
I will get through this.
It may not feel good.
It may suck.
As the meme says, this may pass like
a kidney stone, but it will pass.
But that self-acceptance that you are loved,
you are not alone to yourself is super
powerful.
And that's the message that I guess I
want to leave everybody with today.
You are not alone.
You are amazing.
I know you may not feel it right
now.
If you're dealing with the grief of pride,
you may feel like you don't belong.
You may feel like you're isolated and alone.
You are not alone.
You are amazing.
It is okay to grieve.
It is very human to grieve.
It is very natural to grieve.
And I say that in the sense of
nature and the wider world.
Animals grieve.
It is okay.
And once you acknowledge that, and once you
acknowledge those emotions, I feel like doors are
going to open.
So I'm going to make a note next
week.
I'm going to talk about what the community
can do to support us.
The neurodivergent community.
What the queer community can do.
What our online communities can do to support
us.
And how you can stop masking.
Because the other part of radical acceptance is
accepting yourself exactly how you are.
And who knows?
I might even share another story.
Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you so much for listening.
If you are a member of the queer
community, I want to wish you the happiest
and most joyful pride.
I am with you.
I am celebrating with you.
And if you're in my neurodivergent community, I
would love to invite you to my neurodivergent
grief circles.
They happen once a month.
You can go to feathermanesoul.com slash events
and find out when the next one is
and sign up.
I would love to have you join me.
Thank you so much.
Don't forget to like and subscribe.
Until next week.
You've been listening to the Feathermane Soul Wisdom
Podcast hosted by Kit Kaelstow.
Learn more about feathermanesoul at feathermanesoul.com.
As a wild spirit storyteller, Kit is passionate
about helping those who are neurodivergent, disabled, or
living with chronic illness rediscover their own inner
wild spirit.
Visit feathermanesoul.com.