Wholesome Badass

In my tagline, I reveal myself as navigating the storm of neurodivergence, trauma, and toxic family systems. For the archetypes with whom I have navigated strife or rupture, I imagine this perspective may feel unwelcome because it adds context to a much simpler explanation: I was just bad. Difficult. Crazy. Selfish. Unreasonable. Context provides nuance that the simpler explanation leaves out. Whatever may have been said or done to diminish me was charged to me: I caused it, deserved it, exaggerated it, or imagined it. The tagline isn’t an attempt to excuse myself, but the closest language I have found for an experience I spent decades unable to articulate. Naming neurodivergence, trauma, and a dysfunctional family system does not make every choice I have ever made harmless, good, or right. It allows nuance into a story where my context was effectively disregarded. And I can’t help but ask, in all earnestness: if my “craziness” was the explanation for every instance of hardship for me, why wasn’t anyone’s response concern, curiosity, or support? What I am chasing is not agreement but a fuller record. More of what actually happened allowed into the room. Other people’s explanations have passed for the complete story, while mine were categorically rejected as inadmissible. If I asked questions, I was manufacturing chaos. If I offered context, I was making excuses. If I remembered something differently, I was rewriting history. I was seeking a clean signal—clarity, cohesion, some way to sew the pieces together for a story that makes sense, even if what emerged was painful or unflattering to me. Apparently, asking clarifying questions seems to threaten the prescribed narrative. Providing context is recieved as equally troublesome. So I am left trying to make sense of a story I was expected to accept, while relevant context was not allowed into consideration. Have you ever realized that what seemed like the only obvious conclusion was actually inaccurate and deeply unfair — once you had a more complete account of the story? One real-life example: I’m in a hurry and stuck behind a man in a posh new Jaguar, stopped in the road and holding up traffic for what I assume is no good reason—just entitled and inconsiderate. Then I SEE he has gotten out of his car to help a disabled elderly person with a heavy package cross the street. Nothing about the stopped car changed. The context did. I feel some of that same aha humbling energy when I think about people like Howard Stern, Monica Lewinsky, Stormy Daniels, Pamela Anderson, and others whom I experienced through a particular public narrative without bothering to question what might have been missing from it. Sometimes the framing was profitable. Sometimes powerful people had an enormous stake in which version prevailed. Either way, I accepted a conclusion before I had much interest in the fuller record. Just saaaaayin.