Tag: disability pride month

disability, faith, Mental health, neurodivergence, resources

Progressive Christianity and neurodivergence

jennadewitt

Justin, Ell, and I hosted a gathering for neurodivergent progressive Christians for Disability Pride Month 2025. Though this year’s event was not specifically for asexual and aromantic people, there is significant overlap with these communities, which was reflected in this discussion. (See our previous conversations about the a-spec Christian intersection here.)  

Discussion questions:

  1. How has your neurodivergence affected your experience of Christianity? 
  1. How has your faith affected your experience of being neurodivergent?
  1. How have you been supported by your community?
  1. What challenges have you encountered in your communities?
  1. How can the Christian community as a whole better support and uplift neurodivergent people? What can Christianity learn from neurodivergent people and their lived experience?
  1. What encouragement/words of affirmation can you share with other neurodivergent Christians?
  2. What spiritual practices, resources or supports have helped you with your neurodivergence and faith?

allyship, essays

If it’s not for all of us, I don’t want it

jennadewitt

Collective liberation is not found in violent revenge and dreams of becoming oppressors. Collective liberation is not about demanding fealty and enemies bowing at your feet. Collective liberation is refusing to accept such and rejection of oppressive systems.

It is an invitation with an expectation: No dehumanization allowed. It does ask something of us, a dress code of sorts, that we bring love, real love, to the party. We come with the understanding and shared value that no one is an acceptable casualty of liberation.

Civil rights march on Washington, D.C
Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash

Sometimes we must remember the long road. We must take the closest imperfect bus to our destination when it doesn’t go all the way and march our way down the road, generation after generation. Passing along what we have gained and refusing to go back.

Collective liberation doesn’t see my freedom as your continued harm. If you are freed, I cannot be your new target to get the acceptance of oppressors. Exclusion is the thing we exclude. Vitally, we do have one thing we must agree on, that we are tyrants for: No more tyrants.

a group of people walking down a street holding a banner that says Equality without exemptions
Photo by Nikolas Gannon on Unsplash

From Cone to Kendi, from Stonewall to Sherronda J. Brown and Judith Butler and my friends on social media, from the earliest church to the women of modern books, Substacks, podcasts still resisting a patriarchal faith, we learn the only liberation worth having is collective.

If our gospel leads to death for some, it isn’t the Words of Life for any. If our work is only legitimized by those we leave out of it, it isn’t the work of Christ. We start imperfectly and evolve continually to be better. If we uphold the harm, we cannot liberate from it.

Signs saying Boys will be held accountable
Photo by Michelle Ding on Unsplash

disability, neurodivergence, Poetry, queer

Every time I get a little freer

jennadewitt 
Every time I get a little freer
I grieve who I could have been all along
It could have been this easy
I didn't know that I was wrong

I know it takes a journey
I know I needed time
But part of joy is aching
For the me I left behind

She'll never get to be this me
At 17 or 23
What I wouldn't give to give her
A life always this free

I grieve for my own body
My heart and brain got hurt a lot
So many years to get here
I did what I was taught

I grieve for the gift
I didn't know I could take,
that I could take it slow
All the friends I'd make

I needed longing met with kindness
And not just affirmation of ambition
I needed empathy and wisdom
Not expectations or a mission

I wish I could go back there
To tell her spread her wings
But she'd just say That's pretty
And buy butterfly earrings

I wish I had listened
When they sang I hope you dance
Because dancing isn't fun when
You fear every judging glance

Today I heard that solitude
Is just the liberty
From others' loud opinions
And rest starts with loving me

I know that in the future
I will look back to the me here
Mourning that I didn't know
Liberation from my fear

essays, Mental health

You deserve the help you need

jennadewitt

No amount of busyness or responsibility cures clinical depression, anxiety disorders, or neurodivergence. I believe people when they say they “just” needed (a kid, a partner, a job change, spirituality, a move) and now they feel better. But that’s not a cure for our disorders.

Sometimes in life, we do need a change. Whether it’s a weekly “me time” or a cross-country move or a new business, change can be good. But you cannot outrun your disorder. You can’t out-schedule it or out-perform it or out-laugh it. You can’t fill your life with enough people. You can only face it. Discover your values. Accept what you have been given and commit to living according to those values. Set your boundaries, and unravel your shame. Deconstruct and reconstruct and get help from people qualified and trustworthy to give it.

The only way is through. The only way is honesty with yourself and your past, present, and future. It takes lament and commitment, feeling the pain and not avoiding and learning to be whole while shattered. There is no easy out or clever trick or shortcut.

We take our meds and pay for the help we can afford and research, listen, and grow. We do what’s healthy for us emotionally, mentally, and physically. Knowing sometimes it will be a choice between one or the other. And we forgive ourselves and keep going when we hurt ourselves. We can’t outsmart it, but we find balance in the tumult. Slowly, over time. Like a raging river wearing on a rock.

We pray, “just enough for today, God.” That’s all we need. To keep breathing another day. and eventually, it is easier to breathe some days.

But we never graduate from this. We never achieve enough or get promoted out of a disorder. We can make it work and learn to live with it and do things to reduce it. But those are done in humility, with the step of facing it, saying I cannot hide in fake fine. If you are struggling this month, this year, this lifetime. It’s not too late and it’s not too early. You don’t have to wait until you hit the bottom. You don’t have a lack of will or spiritual weakness or identity of failure; you have a disability.

I don’t know that I’m there yet to be proud of my disabilities, but this #DisabilityPrideMonth, please don’t let anyone tell you that you just haven’t tried hard enough or are not busy enough or have too much time on your hands. You deserve the help you need.