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Journalist & founder of The Neurodiversity Project Jenara Nerenberg discusses her book, Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World That Wasn't Designed for You.
Jenara Nerenberg and author Melody Moezzi discuss Jenara's book, Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World That Wasn't Designed for You.
Jenara Nerenberg is is a journalist, producer, speaker, and founder of The Neurodiversity Project, hosting bestselling authors in the arts and sciences who push for innovation in research and media. Based in San Francisco, Nerenberg is a SF native who returned to the area after 6 years of international reporting from Asia and interdisciplinary graduate training from the Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, MIT Sloan School of Management, and Harvard Business School. Nerenberg is known for her warm and personal style, not shying away from delivering fierce and vulnerable insights from not only scientific research but also lived experience.
Melody Moezzi is an activist, attorney, professor, and award-winning author. Moezzi is the author of The Rumi Prescription: How an Ancient Poet Changed My Manic Modern Life, critically acclaimed memoir Haldol and Hycianths: A Bipolar Life, and War on Error: A Real Story of American Muslims.
ABOUT DIVERGENT MIND:
A paradigm-shifting study of neurodivergent women—those with ADHD, autism, synesthesia, high sensitivity, and sensory processing disorder—exploring why these traits are overlooked in women and how society benefits from allowing their unique strengths to flourish.
As a successful Harvard and Berkeley-educated writer, entrepreneur, and devoted mother, Jenara Nerenberg was shocked to discover that the sensitivities she experienced that were only ever labeled as “anxiety” were actually considered autistic and ADHD. Being a journalist, she dove into the research and uncovered neurodiversity—a framework that moves away from pathologizing “abnormal” versus “normal” brains and instead recognizes the vast diversity of our mental makeups.
When it comes to women, sensory processing differences are often overlooked, masked, or mistaken for something else entirely. Between a flawed system that focuses on diagnosing younger, male populations, and the fact that girls are conditioned from a young age to blend in and conform to gender expectations, women often don’t learn about their neurological differences until they are adults, if at all. As a result, potentially millions live with undiagnosed or misdiagnosed neurodivergences, and the misidentification leads to depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and shame. Meanwhile, we all miss out on the gifts their neurodivergent minds have to offer.
Divergent Mind is a long-overdue, much-needed answer for women who have a deep sense that they are “different.” Sharing real stories from women with high sensitivity, ADHD, autism, misophonia, dyslexia, SPD and more, Nerenberg explores how these brain variances present differently in women and dispels widely-held misconceptions (for example, it’s not that autistic people lack sensitivity and empathy, they have an overwhelming excess of it).
The book also offers us a path forward, describing practical changes in how we communicate, how we design our surroundings, and how we can better support divergent minds. When we allow our wide variety of brain makeups to flourish, we create a better tomorrow for us all.
AGE GROUP: | Teens (13-17) | Adults (18+) |
EVENT TYPE: | Virtual Program | Health and Wellness |
TAGS: | Neurodivergence | Health | BSI | Books Sandwiched In | book discussion | Autism | author |
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