I’ve had a weird week.
On Saturday, while playing a spirited, borderline-competitive pickleball match (or three), I collided with my almost-11-year-old and managed to dislocate/hyperextend two fingers by landing on my hand backwards. As I was going down — in that slow-motion moment when your body knows something regrettable is coming — I thought, “Oh, this is going to hurt.” But there wasn’t enough time to fix anything. Crunch. Two fingers pointing in directions fingers do not point.
Luckily, my husband — who is both a nurse anesthetist and disturbingly unfazed by what I call “home surgery” — pulled them back into place. They were swollen, purple, furious — and, of course, on my dominant hand.
Do you know how much you do with your fingers?
Life handed me a minute to find out. And by minute, I mean, six days and counting.
I had big plans for the week: creating stained-glass ornaments for my shop, working on crafts, catching up on holiday prep for my Moon + Stone Healing Studio Open House on the 29th… but my hand said nope. As they say, we plan and God laughs. Instead of rushing around, I spent a morning at radiology (nothing broken, thankfully) and the rest of the week staring down all the things I wanted to do but couldn’t.
There’s a strange kind of Buddhist meditation in that liminal place — being unwell while daydreaming about all the tiny, boring, daily tasks you wish you could do… and remembering that when you’re well, those same tasks feel like they’re coated in anthrax.
Yesterday, I slept most of the day because I pushed my fingers too far the day before and the pain was intense. Ice, malachite, and unconsciousness were my only tools. By 3 p.m., even my hair hurt — my personal signal that I’ve crossed into the land of overstimulation, hypersensitivity, and the urgent need for dark rooms and quiet.
In short, if you haven’t figured it out already:
I am a Highly Sensitive Person. And I am absolutely, unmistakably neurodivergent — definitely ADHD, maybe a touch autistic, and probably a handful of other things I haven’t explored yet.
A few weeks ago, I was talking with a friend about ADHD, and she said she wasn’t sure labels mattered. And I understand that, I do. But I keep thinking about being a Highly Sensitive, neurodivergent kid in a “normal” world. My inability to do what other kids did with ease made me believe my brain was broken, and even further that I was broken. Grossly incapable, even when a therapist told me I was hard to work with because I was “a little more than capable.” Was I, though? I was burnt out and imploding when I went to see him. I was there specifically because I was not capable.
Truth is: I was the smart, “gifted” kid who could never keep it together, who forgot her homework, or whose dog literally ate it. The one who got constant lectures about “wasting my potential.” I remember a teacher yelling at my sister that she would never amount to anything and knowing — deep in my bones — he was yelling at me too.
That became a shadow wound I carried for decades, experiences filled with tiny humiliations and secret shames I tucked away like contraband:
I struggle with executive function.
I struggle with “normal life things.”
I cannot close cabinet doors (I literally don’t see them).
I forget basic tasks while spending hours alphabetizing my spices by region and use.
I am not wired like most humans.
I struggle to function in a world built for neurotypical speed and linear thinking.
I was always either too much or not enough. Always ON — dancing, performing, cartwheeling around town, jumping off furniture, kissing my mom’s hand until she lost patience (and honestly, who could blame her? There were two of us doing it — twin chaos).
Eventually, you internalize it. You can’t fit in. You are weird, loony, loud, sometimes too reserved. You believe with all your heart that your brain is defective. You believe you are defective. And maybe you start drinking because bourbon quiets that inner bully for a moment. Or I did. I did all those things. Can anyone relate?
It wasn’t until a few years ago that I learned I was neurodivergent — ADHD (a weirdo hyperactive woman) — and when I discovered the framework of Highly Sensitive People, something inside me finally exhaled. I saw myself clearly for the first time: the overstimulation, the big feelings, the intuitive knowing, the sensory overwhelm that makes even your hair hurt.
Finding the right language for my brain helped me begin healing that wounded, too-much child inside me. And I am still healing her. Every day.
All of this — the injury, the overwhelm, the (literal) hair pain — threw me back into thinking about what it means to be both Highly Sensitive and neurodivergent in a world built for people who… aren’t.
We talk about ADHD, burnout, overwhelm, sensory issues, autism, trauma patterns, emotional intensity — but rarely do we talk about the spiritual layer underneath all of that. The gifts inside the wiring. The magic inside the overwhelm.
For most of my life, I thought my feelings were the problem. My brain was the problem. I was the problem.
But now I know something I wish someone had whispered into my ear when I was seven years old, turning cartwheels in the living room:
My sensitivity isn’t a glitch — it’s a guidance system.
My neurodivergence isn’t a deficit — it’s a design.
Highly Sensitive People (HSPs) have what psychologists call sensory processing sensitivity — essentially, we take in more information and process it more deeply.
Neurodivergent brains (ADHD, autism, AuDHD, gifted wiring, trauma-shaped wiring) also take in more — more sensory data, more emotional signals, more patterns, more meaning.
Put HSP + neurodivergence together, and you get the deep-feelers, the intuitive ones, the pattern trackers, the artists, the healers, the truth-tellers, the mystics.
Not broken.
Not defective.
Just different. Designed for depth.
The Spiritual Gifts of Sensitivity & Neurodivergence
1. Hyper-sensitivity = intuitive knowing
Your nervous system picks up information before your conscious mind can translate it. This isn’t “overreacting.” It’s energetic intelligence.
2. You’re an emotional barometer
You feel the emotional weather of a room before anyone names it. This helps heal, guide, attune, and connect.
3. You’re a natural transmuter
You metabolize emotion — personal, ancestral, collective. This is healer work, even when it doesn’t feel glamorous.
4. The veil is thinner for you
Dreams, intuition, synchronicity, tarot, spirit nudges — they come through clearer because your inner world is active and alive.
5. Built-in compassion
Your heart sees the wounded child inside others. Sensitivity is emotional intelligence in its highest form.
6. Neurodivergent bodies reject misalignment
You cannot force yourself into toxic environments or inauthentic relationships without paying an emotional or physical price. Your wiring demands truth.
7. It’s a soul contract
Many of us come into this life sensitive on purpose — to heal ancestral lines, to soften the world, to create art, to anchor compassion, to help others feel.
Being sensitive and neurodivergent isn’t an accident. It’s a calling.
You Are Not Broken. You Are Built for Depth.
If no one told you this as a child — or an adult — let me tell you now:
You were never too much.
You were never not enough.
You were always the exact right amount.
Your sensitivity is sacred.
Your neurodivergence is a gift.
Your depth is your design.
I’m grateful you’re here — in all your too-much, not-enough, beautifully wired glory.
