With heartfelt sincerity, Welcome.

I am so glad you are here.

I was once the misunderstood, unsupported young person with unresourced family, educators and professionals.

At 15, I left the education system entirely, after years of ‘school can’t’, and found myself seeking belonging in all the places I found my teen neurokin from similar backgrounds: the juvenile court system, homeless and preparing myself to become a parent at the age of 18. Poor mental health, hopelessness and total isolation in my earlier years threatened to defeat my resolve to find a way to live differently, and to understand myself. 

I was able to turn my life around BECAUSE I am a PDA autistic with ADHD and CPTSD, and never despite it.

I share many of the experiences families share with me, thinking they’re alone. 

With 26 years experience parenting my own neurodivergent children, all four of them PDAers among other varying forms of neurodivergence, there isn’t an experience I haven’t traversed myself, or as a parent, family member or  professionally.

You’re not alone. You’re not causing your child’s challenges. Your child is not broken and neither are you. You are not weak, too submissive, or enabling your child. You are not causing learned helplessness and I know you’ve heard this many times before. 

You and I both know you have done all you know to do. You have researched, reached out, been firmer, been softer, tried all the approaches available to you, and in amongst it all you’re suffered. And I mean, suffered. 

I know it’s lonely, it’s isolating and the hardship of navigating a world that doesn’t know better, is utterly exhausting. 

By my twenties, after many years of adversity, I entered university and started carving a pathway to the life I needed to live by design. I didn’t know it at the time, but the inherent wisdom that PDA offers me lit the pathway.