Jenara Nerenberg in Conversation With Maya Dusenbery

Jenara Nerenberg’s Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World That Wasn’t Designed for You (HarperOne) is a paradigm-shifting exploration of neurodivergent women — those with autism, ADHD, synesthesia, and other sensory processing differences — offering a timely, provocative examination of why these traits are overlooked in women and how our society can benefit from allowing their unique strengths to flourish.

As a smart, successful, Harvard- and Berkeley-educated writer and devoted mother, Nerenberg didn’t discover her autism and ADHD until well into her adulthood, after it had already taken a huge toll on her personal and professional life. Being a journalist, she dove into the research and discovered neurodiversity — a movement which seeks to stop pathologizing “normal” and “abnormal” brains and start embracing the variety of mental makeups we all have.

But we can’t accept what we don’t recognize, and when it comes to women, sensory processing disorders including autism, ADHD, and synesthesia 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 women are conditioned from a young age to blend in and conform to gender expectations, women often don’t learn about their condition until they are adults, if at all. As a result, millions live with undiagnosed or misdiagnosed neurodivergence, and the misidentification leads to depression, anxiety, shame, and low self-esteem. 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 autism, ADHD, synesthesia, dyslexia, misophonia, 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 feeling, they have an overwhelming excess of it).

Nerenberg also offers us a path forward, taking readers through practical ways that innovative minds in healthcare, technology, and therapy are changing the way we communicate, how we design our homes and offices, and how we better support the people we care about — which has wide-ranging benefits for everyone, divergent or not.

It’s time to treat distress, not difference. When we let the variety of brain makeups we all have flourish, we create a better tomorrow for us all.

Nerenberg will be joined in conversation by journalist Maya Dusenbery, author of Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick.

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