From Depression To Diagnosis: Autistic Self-Discovery And Community Building

We trace Daye’s path from misdiagnosis and heavy depression to an autism diagnosis that reframed struggle as difference, not defect. She shares how creativity, AI, and community-building became tools for agency, culminating in the launch of the Neurodiversity Society at SMU.

• early life, loss, and compounding mental health challenges
• ADHD diagnosis, autism evaluation, and class barriers to access
• reframing through the ankle analogy and hypermobility link
• sensory regulation, heat intolerance, and overstimulation science
• creative strengths at work and translating ideas into design
• AI as a judgment-free collaborator and task offloader
• hustle culture, burnout cycles, and learning boundaries
• returning to school, long-term planning, and stability
• founding the Neurodiversity Society and rapid community growth
• family roots behind the lighthouse logo and meaning
• advice on environment-first accessibility and balanced “superpower” mindset

We would appreciate it if you could listen, subscribe, engage, and share this podcast
Tune in every second Tuesday at 7 a.m. Atlantic time for a new episode

We'd like to thank our sponsor...
The Big Bears Podcast is sponsored by ADDvocacy ADHD & Executive Function Coaching and Training

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

Land Acknowledgement & Mission

SPEAKER_04 0:01

Welcome to the Big Bears Podcast, co-hosted by Chad, Grizzly Bear Bunker, and Keith Polar Bear Galhorn. We would like to acknowledge that we are in Mi'moggy, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi'kmaq people. The people of the Mi'kmaq Nation have lived on this territory for millennia. And we acknowledge them as past, present, and future caretakers of this land. Our mission is to explore the intersection of neurodiversity through a two-wide sea lens, where we share stories of struggle, resilience, grit, and growth. We would appreciate it if you could listen, subscribe, engage, and share this podcast. Now on to today's episode.

Meet Daye: Early Life & Loss

SPEAKER_04 0:57

Hi, my name is Keith Gelhorn, and I am the co-host of the Big Bears podcast. I go by Keith Polar Baylor Gelhorn. That's my little avatar that I go by. Anyways, today we have Dame McKay. She's a past client of mine and a friend of mine. She's done all her graphic design for my other business and excited to have her on. She's also the she also started the Neurodiversity Sci Society here at St. Mary's University. So she'll be talking a little about that. And also talking a little about a little bit about her story, misdiagnosis, a whole bunch of stuff. So thanks for being with us, Dave.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

Thank you for having me. The first podcast that I've ever been on, so I was pretty excited.

SPEAKER_04 1:41

We are excited to have you. So yeah, why don't you tell us a little bit about where you're from and your fam life and what it was like growing up?

SPEAKER_01 1:49

So I was born in St. John, New Brunswick, and I was the first child, first grandchild, first niece, uh the first baby, I guess, in like my generation in my family. So like, and even in my my mom or my dad's friend group, I was the first baby. And that's particularly important because my mom had no one to like ask questions to when I did weird things. So, and I'm sure most parents know kids are pretty weird. They do weird things. Just some of the stuff that I did as a kid was weirder than average. But my mom couldn't ask her friends because none of them had kids yet. I couldn't ask her mother because her mother had passed, and my dad's mom had two boys. So any questions that she answered were about boys, and I was not. And so I guess that actually comes up and is relevant information a bit later. But I guess I'll start with I uh growing up, my my parents ended up divorcing when I was about nine, I believe.

Misdiagnosis, Depression, And Searching

SPEAKER_01 3:20

And then my father ended up passing away when I had just turned 13. So that was really, really difficult to handle. I also at this point in my life didn't know that I was neurodivergent. So the things that are normally hard for everyone were they were extra hard. For me, I just didn't know at that point, at least. So I developed some pretty severe depression. And it was incessant. Like in and anyone who has experienced depression, I feel like can can also relate to like it's just like a constant pressing feeling. And but the things that were supposed to be helping me, like the different types of therapy and the medications and whatnot, like they weren't they weren't working like people were telling me that they they would that they how they were supposed to be working, I guess. And after multiple therapists and psychologists, and uh eventually I got to a psychiatrist that was able to evaluate me for ADHD, and so I got my ADHD diagnosis, and then I was incredibly fortunate that I had a friend who kind of did what I later learned is called like a peer evaluation, which I think is just one of the funniest, funniest descriptions. But when I was talking about she was uh she was talking about compression socks and and how the ones that she had gotten for recently, they weren't they weren't giving her any sensory issues. So she was really happy she talked about that. And it made me think about when I was younger, how like toddler-ish age my mom told me that I would have these meltdowns, like these absolute tantrums, crying fits, that the that my socks were hurting my feet. They weren't just uncomfortable, but they were actually hurting my feet. And as I was going into a little bit more detail, laughing at myself and also kind of empathizing with my mom going through this and having no one to, you know, compare notes with, my friend kind of looked at me and asked me some other questions about other parts

ADHD Confirmed, Autism Considered

SPEAKER_01 6:25

of my life. And we had known each other for a few years at this point, I think. And she kind of said, We don't take offense to this, but I think it would be worthwhile for you to get like evaluated for autism.

SPEAKER_02 6:42

And so I did.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

I do want to put, I want to make a side note that I am incredibly lucky. I am incredibly privileged in that I had the support that I did from my my mother. She had a she has a job where the health and pen health benefits probably health insurance is incredible. And I was able to get the majority of it covered by health insurance. But I think that's really important to bring up because otherwise I wouldn't have gotten I wouldn't have gone for an an autism evaluation. There are multiple thousands of dollars. And uh I also have I'm in a position where like financially I was able was able to pay the there was still an out-of-pocket fee, even though the insurance was really good. I was still I was able to pay and cover the out-of-pocket amount. But I really, really like including that piece in my story because that it's it's something that I like I I want to acknowledge, but also it's it's a barrier. Like it's a it creates a class divide because only the people who can afford the evaluation can get the evaluation. Except this is a side note, but unless you get it when you're before you turn 18. But I didn't. This was when I was 22, or I just turned 23. So it wasn't covered for me anymore. And that's the case for a lot of autistic women, is that since specifically for women, autism it is like it it shows up differently for women than it does for men, like a like a lot of things, ADHD included. I didn't it didn't even occur to me to

Cost, Access, And Class Barriers

SPEAKER_01 8:55

look into that as a possibility because I had been misdiagnosed with BPD, borderline personality disorder, which the the the way that that was introduced to me was way, way, way different. It was basically like you're going to have major major depression, like really, really, really bad depression until you turn about 40 or 50, and then your chemicals level up, and then like maybe you'll feel better. So it was kind of like it didn't really feel like there was anything I could do. I just had to try my best to survive until I turn like 40 or 50. And I'm I'm paraphrasing obviously. There's a lot more that goes into that, and I'm not a medical for professional, but that's that's how it felt is it felt like I was just going to have to suffer through this until I hit my midlife crisis. With the autism, though, again, once again, I was very, very fortunate to, in addition to being in a financial position where I was able to get the evaluation, since I was paying for it out of pocket. So yes, it sucked that it didn't, I didn't get it until after I turned 18. So I had to pay for it out of pocket. But that also meant that I didn't go through the provincial evaluation for autism. I went to a private psychology clinic.

Life-Changing Autism Evaluation

SPEAKER_01 10:32

And I was able to get the best psychologist who did my evaluation. They honestly changed my life. And I don't just mean when they did the evaluation and gave my, gave me my autism diagnosis. The way they went about evaluating me, they the way that they introduced me to my diagnosis and to autism in general really, really helped shape how I see my autism, how I think about it. And it was it wasn't anything like the the BPD diagnosis. It was, hey, so there's nothing with your brain. You just process information in a different way than most people. And it it presents differently from one person to another, like pretty much everything. Every person has an individualized experience with whatever it is that's going on in their life. And that it's not something that needs to be fixed because it's it's not broken. There's nothing to fix. And I guess the the the best analogy that I can think of, which came out, it's come up a few times when I obviously, because I talk about neurodivergence all the time. It's like, eh. So you'll hear a lot of people when you talk about like mental health, like depression and anxiety, people will compare it to, you know, you would never tell a cancer patient to, you know, just get up, walk it off, get over it. So I kind of took that idea and played around with it so it kind of fit the autism um analogy a bit better for me personally. And I think this is fitting. I like this analogy because, as you know, Keith, I rock climb. Love rock climbing. I don't drink, I I'm not like addicted to anything except rock climbing. But, anyways, it's extra fitting because I sprained my ankle. I have now sprained both my ankles. I guess I just needed to even it out. But, anyways, the analogy is essentially like

The Ankle Analogy & Hypermobility

SPEAKER_01 13:05

what it felt like with the VPD diagnosis is that somebody was telling me that I had a sprained ankle. And there was nothing really, there was nothing I could do about it. Like I could ice it and make it a little bit more comfortable, but nothing was going to heal that except time. And but then when I got my autism diagnosis, it was like I went to a specialist in feet breakage injuries, and they took a look and they did some tests and they asked me some questions. They asked me questions in a way that I have never been asked before, in a way that really felt like they understood what they were, what kind of information they were looking for. And at the end of it, they basically said, no, you don't have a sprained ankle. You're not injured, there's nothing wrong. You just the way that your muscle placement is in your foot is different. So you just need to adjust the way you walk in your day-to-day life. You just need to, you might need to take a break once in a while, whereas maybe other people don't. It also means that one of the the core, there's a correlation between neurodivergency and hypermobility, which you actually sent me an article on one time. So it's like the idea that, you know, it's not sprained, it's not injured. You have a hypermobile ankle. So that means that in some ways you'll be able to do things that other people can't. But in other ways, you might need to take a break. Whereas someone who's neurotypical may not have to. And that's okay. And so, anyways, all that to say it was, I am so lucky that I got the psychologist that I did. Because that introduction, like I'm the one who made that analogy, but like that that basically embodied what they told me, how they how they after giving me the diagnosis, how they kind of talked me through what that was going to semi-look like for me, or what what it may look like for me.

SPEAKER_04 15:34

Well, I was gonna ask, who was this psychologist? Feel free to name drop. We like building community here in Nova Scotia.

SPEAKER_01 15:42

It's uh it was at Greenleaf Psychological, I think. And it was Shay Oberto's.

SPEAKER_04 15:49

Sorry, Shay. Big shout out to Shay at Greenleaf.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

Yeah, Shay was incredible. And I also told Shay, I I I met them in person, I think definitely first quote unquote interview. I think there's another name for it, but I forget. Can't remember if I the second one was in person or virtual. But the meeting that I had where Shay gave me the like actual diagnosis, I I said, you're so lucky this is virtual.

Heat Regulation, Sensory, And Science

SPEAKER_01 16:27

Because this answered, I told, I told them before, I told them before that if this diagnosis answers this one, there's this one particular problem that I've been experiencing my entire life. And I've had blood blood work done for it. Like I've I've had evaluations and whatever, but like they were just like, no, it just looks like that's how you are. And kind of like I was joking. I did not expect the autism diagnosis to explain this. But I looked at Shay and I said, if this autism diagnosis explains this, I'm gonna give you a kiss on the forehead. And during that meeting, I was like, You're lucky this is virtual, or I'd be a nice little smooch between your eyebrows. This changes my life. And uh that was uh I've always been really horrible at regulating my heat temperature, like my my body temperature when it comes to heat. So I overheat super, super easily. And I didn't really notice it until I got a bit older because I think just naturally I was I gravitated towards cold sports like figure skating. I did figure skating, skiing and snowboarding, and anyways, but it definitely became more of a thing as I got older. And for a while I thought, like, oh, maybe like hyperhydrosis, but the thing with that is that you sweat even if you're not warm. And I was just like, I it wasn't the the sweating, but like the the the warm, the discomfort of being warm all the time, which is great for right now when it's cold out, but in the summer, I'm going to burn to a crisp. So, anyways, uh that that is explained with the autism diagnosis. I forget the big fancy science-y word for it, but it's like dis auto some autumn some auto mean. I don't know. Anyways. There are people out there who I'm actually one of my best friends, can't regulate her cold. So we always make the joke if we could just swap half of our temperature lack of regulation, we'd make two normally temperatured humans. But yeah, she gets really, really cold really easily. So, anyways, guys at the talking about yeah, I got my autism diagnosis. And I remember my mom asking me with all the love on her heart, what this like she she essentially she was like, it's a diagnosis, it's a label. What is it going to do for you, really? And I've I've also had people make comments about like similar, but they didn't mean it in the same way that my mom did. They were kind of like, I don't really see the point in that. It's just a word. But for me, it was kind of like the the um the ankle analogy. When you're looking to treat a sprain, you're gonna do certain things, right? You're going to ice it, you're gonna put it up, you're gonna when you have hypermobility, there's different ways to go about managing that. One, because it's not an injury, you're not trying to heal something that is. broken or whatnot. You're looking for management strategies. So having a label really, really helped me figure out how to walk in my life in a way that honored me and how my brain works. And not to say I'm an expert at it at home. I'm definitely not. Still learning. We'll probably continue

Strengths At Work And Creativity

SPEAKER_01 20:24

to learn forever. Cause the other thing is that the the research in neurodiversity period across the board is in in its infancy. But specifically autism still still learning lots there. But I think one of my favorite one of my favorite little facts or tidbits I've learned recently about autism is so in general when a brain, when a human brain is going through I think it's around puberty, they go through a process called pruning. And that's when your brain goes and looks at all the synapses in your in your head squish and they identify the synapses that you're not using often and they prune them. And I think the average brain goes with like I think the pruning is about half or something. I probably shouldn't be giving numbers when I'm not 100% sure on it, but anyways but with autism they don't go through the same pruning process. We our brains prune significantly less. So on a physical level I have more synapses in my brain. So that explains everything when it comes to like how you'll hear a lot of the autistic community talk about being overstimulated because you are you are getting the same like stimulus input as everyone else but you have a lot more like brain things picking up the information. So when loud music at a concert or whatnot might affect one per well a neurotypical one particular way. But for an autistic individual they're actually same same input but they're picking up a lot more information about it. So anyways that that is probably one of my favorite pieces of like little random facts about autism that I learned because it made me feel a lot it was I was able to give myself a little bit more grace I guess when I was experiencing things like overstimulation.

SPEAKER_04 22:42

Can I ask you a question? Yeah of course yeah so when when you and I met it was like two two and a half years ago something like that and we were connected to to help do a little coaching around how to make the workplace work well for you and your employer. And there's a a lot of stigma around a lot of stigma and a lot of facts around autism in the workplace right so around 90% of people with autism are either unemployed or underemployed and usually that revolves around just a lot of misunderstanding and miscommunication my my mine I've had you've spoken with Kendra which was one of my top coaches of all time who is also on the spectrum and but I want to celebrate some of the stuff that you've done. So can you you know a lot of people think that you know they paint autism with a single brush same as they paint ADHD with a single brush. Can you talk about some of the strengths strengths that you bring because you have a lot of them and and and just to help people understand like you know if you put somebody like yourself in a position that you actually enjoy you can knock it out of the park better than anybody else. The one part we have to always mitigate is the boundary setting and you know potentially working too hard at it. But but can you talk a little bit about your strengths and and what you bring to the table because you got a lot of them and I could I could list them off but it better come from you.

SPEAKER_02 24:11

Thanks,

AI, Iteration, And Neurodivergent Tools

SPEAKER_02 24:12

Keith Yes I uh I'm very good at tooting my own horn when it comes to work stuff.

SPEAKER_01 24:25

Well I guess the first thing that comes to mind is creativity. That's a big thing I and with neurodivergence across the board not just autism but also ADHD I I love art. I love right now I'm I'm playing around a lot with that graphic design you know as we move more into the the technology of this age continues to progress I'm trying to gain mix my love for art and creating with like applicable skills and uh graphic design and graphic art is definitely one of those things. That is actually one of the first things I I worked with you on was uh some graphic art for your trailer.

SPEAKER_04 25:22

And so I run a I run something called the call it the ADHD road trip and then another part of it was the advocacy neurodiversity network. And I've been trying to think of so I go I bought this trailer off a buddy of mine who also has ADHD and he made it into like a van life stealth trailer. Things amazing but it's just like a 14 by 12 trailer looks like nothing right like a little cargo trailer. And I've been trying to figure out how to get the ideas out of my head onto a piece of paper and he tried using AI and everything. I could I just couldn't do it right and anyways day and I were talking and I start just describing I said I want a map of Canada and I use his roller coaster which is like an emotional roller coaster on my on my logo and then we talked about the fact that I was from BC but I'm now in Nova Scotia and sh she's like just give me a couple days right and then she has a roller coaster with with like a car launching off of it starting in BC the Trans Canada Highway going all the way across to Newfoundland where I was headed for my trip for the month and like you know give me a couple days I'll get you something to it and I see this thing and I'm like holy shit it was like verbatim as to what I was thinking on this amazing graphic that she she pulled together right and you know that's not why we connected originally we connected to work on some some work stuff in your your old thing but she mentioned something about graphic design and and it was amazing. I think that's another thing that neurodivergent people possess is that we get each other so it's not there's a lot of empathy there. There's also a lot of just like kind of subtle understanding of of each other and we were able to pull that off and it's funny you bring up as the technology's moving on the creatives are getting getting more involved right I didn't I couldn't connect with chat GPT really other than the fact that it was pretty eat you ask it a question but it would ask you clean you'd ask it a question it would tell you what to do but then you still had to go do it right and so for the first year and a half it made no sense at all to me right and then St. Mary's university here did a did a they opened a an AI lab where basically anybody from the university or the public could come in and start tinkering around with AI and not have to pay for all the tokens that really add up when you add you know most of these programs you can ask you know three to five questions to but past that you got to start spending a bunch of money right but but what I did realize

Hustle Culture, Overwhelm, Boundaries

SPEAKER_04 28:08

from from just playing around with it was that again I'm not talking from a personal perspective I could iterate as much as I want and nobody was there to judge me. So I could like you know I I basically built a website with one prompt and a half a page that was like everything coming out of brain and putting on this thing and then I I had this revelation I was like I think this AI revolution is probably started by people probably and and what I think is going to happen is because we have those curious brains and you know and nobody's bugging us we can sit in silence and do our thing that that it's actually going to be the thing that flips from these that industrial revolution where you know you come in there's a shepherd and there's a a bunch of sheep just doing what they're told to those of us who do have that creative side to be able to kind of keep iterating and figuring it out and have it work for us. I was curious what your perspective was on that as well just from a one creative person to another because one of the things that happened with me is I I lost my creativity. I as an entrepreneur I own this busy call business called advocacy so it's A D D V O C A C Y and we coach neurodivergent youth and adults who struggle with ADHD and autism learning disabilities and everything else. And I always wanted to help people that was my thing but the busier we got then I suddenly became a manager and and it turned into a job and then once I had a job was like I hate this right and and everybody talks about like this hockey stick with entrepreneurship that you're you know you gotta you just gotta keep building building building but as soon as it became a job my brain just shut off and I was watching I was actually watching a I don't I never watch what's Instagram and one of my old coaches her name's Kylie she she made a post about going through university and becoming a counselor a therapist and going into a full time and then burning herself out right and I could totally relate to it and what she said was she's like what she decided to do she was she did half therapy and you know who she works with was all the creative types neurodivergent creative types right and so half was that and then half was doing her own creative pursuits and when she did that she was happy as hell and so when I came in learned this agenda so now you ask it's to do something and it will literally do it and all you have to go back and play around to make it kind of your own right but but anyways long story short bring bring that creative side and that's why we started the podcast too like everybody's like ah don't do it you should you should be focused on just making a bucket of money and everything else right and build your business back up but I was like no like that I said it I said I guess I set my boundary to the person who said that to me and I'm like no I need that creative outlet because without it then I'm just like everybody else and when I am like everybody else I feel like a person sitting in a prison that is that's like the ultimate form of masking is just doing something like everybody else. So yeah how is that similar mindset? How has that impacted you?

SPEAKER_01 31:46

Well first off I think AI is pretty darn cool I think it also depends on how you use it of course um and I think it's gonna be

Rock Bottom, Recovery, And Growth

SPEAKER_01 32:00

fantastic for kind of eliminating those like repetitive type tasks where I feel like a lot of neurodivergent individuals will lose their motivation is getting caught up in the the the weeds I guess so and then being able to put more focus into the parts that they do enjoy. Not to say that like depending on the process they're using your eye for of course not to say that like the whole thing is just going to be sunshine sunshine and rainbows but it'll definitely help with keeping keeping the motivation and keeping yourself doing for the most part the stuff that you really enjoy doing. And among among other things helping people like feel comfortable asking questions and learning things like you said there's no one judging you when you ask those questions. And if you learn how to type up a good like detailed prompt for the AI then one of the things you can do is like you know tell it to ask you questions for clarification so that there is that you ensure that there's that understanding between you and the computer. Yeah I I think you if used correctly of course AI is going to be fantastic for everyone but I think there's going to be a special a special assistance that comes for people who are neurodivergent and and honestly people who need accessibility support across the board. One of the things that I I really love I don't know if I'm gonna repeat the quote quite perfectly but it's like when you fight for accessibility you're not just benefiting the people who need that accessibility support the people with disabilities the people with support needs. You're benefiting everyone like for example a quiet room I think that there's a lot of conferences nowadays are including a a quiet room at in some part of the building and that's obviously going to benefit individuals who pray and need a quiet spot to pray. It's going to benefit people who are maybe like neurodivergent specifically people with autism and they might be having like a shutdown or a meltdown and need a a space to go.

SPEAKER_04 34:46

But also like I think everyone regardless of I wouldn't go so far as to say you know everyone's on the spectrum or anything like that, but I think everybody regardless of your neurotype or how your brain is wired everybody gets a little bit overwhelmed and the silence and moment alone to kind of re like connect reorganize

Returning To School And Redefining Goals

SPEAKER_04 35:12

your thoughts is something that absolutely every human brain benefits from fully yeah just having the ability to to take some silence because we're in hustle culture right that's that's what's been pushed for so many years right you just got to do more you gotta you gotta wake up early you got to grind you got to put everything in it you got to have a side hustle you have to like everything's about go go go go go and you can only go for so much. I always use this analogy and this is going to be a very Halifax-based analogy but I but this is like if I think about being younger not that I was here when I was younger I only moved here when I was in my mid-30s but I think about these like 19 20 year olds who are in college and then decide to go out on a Saturday night and they hip up hit up the loose cannon right on on day one with Chad get their big hugs and fist pumps and stuff and then you know get up the next morning and then they hit the dome right and and then they get up the next day and and you know they sleep they sleep the whole day off and then they can go and function during the week right well our lives aren't like that. We don't have the time to go party and recoup and party and recoup. We are on a constant and what it feels like is you're on a constant hamster wheel there's never a a moment of silence or a moment of peace that you get and the only way to do that is to create it for yourself and actually schedule that time aside and that that's another piece that a lot of us a lot of people think we're lazy or procrastinators or whatever thing like that. We hear that all our whole lives right it's not that it's just that we process a little slower in general because we think too much like we've got a cajillion thoughts ripping around in our brains right so it it makes makes what we're doing harder to kind of zone in on one thing. And so you know if it takes us two to three times longer so we're you know say like a neurotypical

Founding The Neurodiversity Society

SPEAKER_04 37:12

individual at 4 30 they shut down off the brain they go home we're like taking things home with us right and we're like oh we could do this better and that better and I know you went through that and a lot of your workplace stuff just constantly giving right and and then you know and I was would say to her I was like you are doing too much you're you have a full-time job then you're like interior decorator then you're like uh a demo person and then you're you know at somebody's back and call and I was like when did you take time for yourself right and and it wasn't really registering you like there's so much to do I got all the standard operating procedures I need to do and everything else right but I was like when when are you taking that time and and I think I think anyways I'm not I can't speak for you but I think that you know some of the time we spent coaching together that you you did start to prioritize like you right and saying no that's a thing we super struggle with right because we're people pleasers because when we're young we're always told all these negative messages like there's a saying that says people are neurodivergent by the time they're 18 will have been told don't do this, don't touch that why are you doing things this way, that way the next thing so we develop a lot of trauma based on that but we we start to do whatever it takes to make people believe in us or trust us or think that we can do things well which means we mask right put on a mask which is pretending to be like everybody else and then we just go overboard right and then we always burn out so that the burnout can show up as depression anxiety physical sickness whatever you know taking big gaps of time off work or whatever it happens to be so where's that impacted you along the line like and have you been able to find tools I mean you talked about the rock climbing which is amazing one I know you're you do circus stuff and you do all kinds of cool stuff and I mean that's a big piece of self-care but where have you found time to prioritize self-care into your routine and where do you find yourself still like you know knocking out this perfectionism stuff and getting kind of wound up in the in the day day because you are a full-time student now so it's a it's a bit of a change right yep I will say that uh I working where I was came at the like not to say not to sound dramatic, but that came to me in probably the perfect point in my life because you're right I was like I was absolutely doing

SPEAKER_01 40:00

Too much. I was 100% trying to people please. I had this individual who had been in my life previously, but I had reconnected with them. And they were providing me with an opportunity to do all of these really, really cool, amazing things. And all I wanted to do was not let them down and just do the best that I absolutely could because they had given me so many amazing opportunities and experiences and and whatnot. And the unfortunate part about that too is that they actually would like on multiple occasions sit me down and be like, are you sure? Are you sure you're how are you doing? Be honest. And I don't think, at least at that point, I was just coming out of the uh when when we met, it was actually a couple months after I had pulled myself out of the deepest I have ever fallen into my depressive kind of pit, I guess. And it was right after my autism diagnosis. Not because of the diagnosis, there were some other huge life changes that happened right at the exact same time. Like just bam, bam, bam, one after another. But it was definitely one of those, like I tapped rock bottom and then went back up, which thank thank goodness. But yeah, this the that job situation, it was it was really rewarding.

Rapid Growth, Team, And Events

SPEAKER_01 41:36

It was so much fun. I learned so much, I got to do so many things. It was also really tiring. And it due to my own, I guess, due to a multitude of of uh factors, but one being my my own stubbornness, I learned that like if I keep going at 100%, 150% all the time, I'm going to burn out. Luckily, I didn't uh I I managed I had that specific amazing person, but also the rest of my family and my friends to support me in kind of like noticing the warning signs so that I didn't completely fall off the wagon and and entirely burn out. But I almost through like I don't want to say tough love. Well, I guess like, yeah, tough love, but like tough tough self-love, I guess. I I learned to develop boundaries because it was either I develop the boundaries or I burn out and potentially slip back into the pit. And that is something that I did not want to do because after that, you know, tapping rock bottom and shooting back up, that is the first time in my entire life where I've gone a significant, any, any significant amount of time without not wanting to live anymore. And I'm sure there's lots of people that can relate and and maybe some people haven't quite reached that point in their life and they're still working their way towards that feeling. And I know, I know I I heard so many people say this while I was crawling my way towards that point in my life, but it is so worth it. It is so, so worth it to be able to stop, pause, take a breath, turn around and look at all the distance that you crawled your way through and and finally acknowledge that like you're in a much better place now, and it's only gonna get better. And it requires some work and it sucks. But being able to say that I am currently the I don't I don't really know I'm not a medical medical professional, so I don't know if you can officially say like you've recovered from depression, but I feel like I am at the closest that you can get to being recovered from depression. And so when I went through, I was I was experiencing that kind of like I don't know, mania, I guess, from finally feeling like I was enjoying life for the first time. I was enjoying life. I was happy, looking forward to doing things. I didn't have this like mental block for a long, long time. I couldn't really plan months out, months ahead because then I guess I don't know, subconsciously, I was just like, well, I'm not gonna be here in a couple months. So there's no real point. For the first time in my life, I was able to make long-term plans and goals and start working towards them. And so that job opportunity, it was with one of the most at that point,

Family Roots Behind The Logo

SPEAKER_01 45:20

one of the most understanding authority figures, supervisors, whatever managers that I've ever had. So I felt safe to try new things and mess up and try them again and figure out exactly what I wanted to do. And I also felt comfortable. It it was really, really hard because learning how to do boundaries properly is really, really hard. But I was able to do that. And now I I ended up uh resigning from that position and trying to go back to school because this is my third time. It's my third time out here. I gave school a try two other times before I had my diagnosis, either one ADHD or autism. And I struggled so much in a way that I didn't in high school. Like in high school, I had a lot of what I thought was anxiety attacks. In hindsight, looking back, there was definitely some anxiety, but those were autistic shutdowns. That is why they did not fit the like description that I kept hearing that anxiety attacks were. I didn't feel a racing heart and other symptoms that I can't remember right now. It was mostly like if somebody tries to talk to me right now, I think I might crash out. I don't know what that's gonna look like. I might be crying, I might scream. I don't know. I couldn't stay in the position. Yeah, anyways. And I forget where it was.

SPEAKER_04 47:04

Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna wrap it with you. Okay. You you you did come back to school and you're what's the program you're studying?

SPEAKER_01 47:12

I started doing psychology the first few times, but I've decided to move over to commerce. I'm a business student now.

SPEAKER_04 47:21

Little business student in making. Uh hopefully a little advocacy recruit desk. I know it. Yeah, I know it. I know it. Once I get my head straight. Once I've I've finished my own industrial brainstorm. But one of the things I'm most proud of that you started here is something called the Neurodiversity Society. I say I'm proud of it just because you started it. I and when I was back in the day, when I moved here, I started something called the ADHD Empowerment Hour at NSC Intro, which morphed into big I used to do like strategies for success expos. I had ADHD Awareness Month proclaimed by the problems, all kinds of stuff. But but you yeah, I let it go in 2018,

Advice To Younger Self

SPEAKER_04 48:06

and I've never seen anybody ever take it over, which is kind of shocking. But anyways, you started something here at St. Mary's University, and and can you just tell a little bit about your society, why you started it, and the exponential growth you've been having here from it, and what and why I know it's neurodivergent run, which my company is too. I'm so proud of you for doing the same thing. Why is that important? So just tell me a little about that.

SPEAKER_01 48:38

Well, I I went to I learned about societies and I went to go look because to be honest, I expected there to be a neurodivergent society already. And there wasn't. And just coincidence, I don't know. I I was lucky enough to have been to have been working with someone who started up their own society. And that was the Women in Business Society. Shout out to Maria. Oh she and so like I was learning about societies for the first time, and then I was like, whoa, you can like start your own. That's crazy. So then I started to look into that because I felt like, you know, there's the mental health society, there was the sky society, like the happiness society on on campus, and and there's the psychology society, but I felt like it was really important to have one specifically for neurodivergence. So I was like, okay, there is let's try to make our own, I guess. And I had every intention of starting it up and then getting someone else to take over. I was like, I would want I had no intentions of like, you know, completely hands off. I wanted to help, but I didn't want to end it up anyway. Somehow I ended up the president, which I think is really funny. I was really enjoying myself now. But I was super nervous when I first started. But uh yeah, it was really important to me to have a neurodivergent group of some kind and a place where people could come to either socialize or if they wanted to do some advocacy work within the institution themselves. I wanted to give, I wanted there to be a space where you could do either or or both. And I actually talking to the VP of societies, I wasn't I didn't know anyone at SMUs. I've I've I this is my second round, but I I went to school during COVID, so everything was virtual. I didn't meet anyone. I didn't even go on campus. This is actually my first year on campus. So I didn't, the ratification required 20 people. And I was like, I don't know, 20 people. But she said if I got four, like the main executive counsel that she would send off for approval. I reached out to the Fred Smithers department, Bill. Bill Travis,

Fun Facts And Closing

SPEAKER_01 51:06

shout out Muscat.

SPEAKER_04 51:08

He's best.

SPEAKER_01 51:10

He is. He helped get something set up where the Fred Smithers department sent out an email like for to advertise the society. So what started out as me just looking for four executives to get it sent off with a special consideration from the VP to be approved. We actually ended up sending off a membership list. This is not including the people, like I sent out a form and I said, like, yes, do you want to be part of it? No. And then I I offered an option to say maybe if they weren't sure. This is not including the the handful of people who said maybe. We sent off the membership list, thing a bobber with almost 40 members. The minimum was 20. And this was in the summertime, which is part of the reason why the VP was like, we'll make an exception. Like you're probably not gonna get a whole lot of response. So, anyways, it was a really, really cool moment watching the neurodivergent community kind of, I guess, come together. And so we got ratified. I sent out an email looking for executives, and oh man, I got real lucky again. I have some of the coolest executives on the council, and they are so motivated. And I'm so proud of them. They're doing they're doing really, really cool stuff, especially with the weird semester that we've had with the part-time union going on strike, the uncertainty. We got like and I had one person who was part of a society during their startup, take a look at like where we were at and stuff. And they were they thought that we had been ratified a lot longer than we actually had, because we had so much stuff kind of done and and and like up and going and and that's right.

SPEAKER_04 53:11

The interest level there, best people you ever have, right? That's what I was thinking about.

SPEAKER_01 53:16

So incredible, yeah. And uh yeah, we have an event going on on Monday uh study hall, and then uh an info table the next day, and then we kind of took this semester to start like get our foundation, I guess. We honestly, I don't even think we were planning on having any events. So having a study hall planned and an info table, and then I also host a room every Wednesday just as I don't we haven't advertised it or anything yet. It's just kind of like a if people walk by and they're curious, they can come in and ask questions and whatnot every Wednesday, but there's it's been it's been so it's been so amazing and humbling and exciting. Yeah, I'm I'm really, really, really proud of this society and the the people that decided to come and and get involved. And uh and you asked for a little bit of what started what went into the startup. The I got to design the logo. I got to, this is where I got to apply all of my my fun graphic design stuff. And the logo, half of it is a brain, and then the other half is a lighthouse. And it's in the shape of a light bulb, which is you know, the brain and the light bulb. That's that's a common thing that you see when you look up like an icon for neurodiver neurodiversity. And I added the lighthouse because, and a lot of people think like, oh, yeah, no, that's very like Atlantic Canada, you know, Nova Scotia. And they're right, but I actually added it because of my grandmother, which is like a small kind of private shutout, I guess. Not so private now, because look, this is I was named after her. So I go by day, but my real name is Diana, and I was named after my grandmother, Diana Lemire Savadin, who is a or was, she's deceased now, but she was a very, very well loved within her the across the island. She was a painter, and she would mainly do lighthouses. That was like lighthouses and and and and houses around the island and whatnot. But I always found it hilarious that she did not like painting people. She didn't think that she was good at it. Because, you know, as most artists, you're always your worst critic. One of her most famous paintings, the rights were purchased, and now you'll see it in pretty much every single tourist gift shop, is of Anne of Greengables and Diana from the book walking down the a beach of PEI. And I just found it hilarious that the one thing that she, for whatever reason, thought that she wasn't good at to the point where she just completely, for the most part, tried to avoid painting people, is actually one of her most well-known and most popular paintings, which I felt, you know, there's there's some meaning to be found there, as well as I think that she was definitely neurodivergent herself. Obviously, we have no idea, no way to find that out for sure, but she was just she was too cool to not be. And and I think it's it's also fitting considering like my it kind of speaks to my mom's experience with me as an autistic kid having to kind of figure that out herself because she didn't have her mom around to ask questions to and whatnot. And anyways, it was we have this thing in my family called Lemire Women, and I think the the logo in a in a in a very mushy way is uh a way to to honor my mom and her mom and all of the the the strong strong women in my family.

SPEAKER_04 57:47

So just to wrap up, can you tell us like to get a if you could tell your younger self three things that could motivate yourself? Or if you're talking to say you're going back to talk to kids in like grade you know five, six, right? Just about your before you go into junior high and everything gets hard in life and all that. What what what kind of nuggets would you share with people, you know, based on your own lived experience? What kind of nuggets would you share with people in terms of how they can better themselves as they're touring?

SPEAKER_01 58:23

I would say one of my favorite sayings that I have ever heard was a paraphrase, but essentially I'm I'm not disabled by my condition, I'm disabled by my environment. And I think you can pull that across people who have disabilities, people who because I know there's there's a large population in the autism community who don't like identifying themselves as a person with a disability. They're like, I'm just autistic, so they're but that can still apply, you know, and it also can apply to individuals who are neurotypical. Because that part of it being like a condition, that's up for interpretation. That can mean lots of things. But I think the point is is that, for example, when you're at home and you're in your room, the majority of the time you've made that space for yourself. You don't feel disabled. You don't feel your symptoms. I don't feel autistic when I'm in my room. I feel the autism when I leave, though. And I'm in a space where there isn't understanding and so on and so forth. So the yeah, the idea that you you're not disabled by your condition necessarily. You're disabled by your environment. Um and there's there's limits to that, obviously. Like everything. And I've just felt that. Need to say that because you know, can't taking things too literally and all that, whatever.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:05

So that would be the first thing. This other one's more autism specific, but there's this idea that autism is a superpower. And a word. And yeah, like you all hear people say, like, have one reaction or the other. Like they're like, oh, I hate, like, I hate that idea. And then there's other people who are like, oh yeah, but it really is. And I love to stand right in the middle and say autism sure is a superpower. It can be. And on that note, I would challenge you to find me a superhero movie where the superhero doesn't struggle with their superpowers at some point.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:51

Yeah, I love that.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:52

Yeah. Because it does not always feel like a superpower.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:56

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:58

And the third one is Did you know that cats have a scent gland right behind their teeth? That's why when they make a stink face, they're collecting more information about the scent. That's not really advice. It's just I couldn't think of anything else to say. So here we go. Tell us something about ducks. Oh, about ducks. Ducks?

SPEAKER_04 1:01:25

Well and on ducks.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:27

Ducks. Oh, yeah, this is this is my jam.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:29

All right.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:30

Do you know that ducks? They don't actually fly like, you know, when we move our arms up and down, so we're using like our muscles to move it. Ducks actually, they're their their muscles and their wings are attached to their lungs. So when they're flying and they're flapping their wings, it's more or less they're going. Oh they they fly with their lungs. Really? They just like hyperventilate on purpose to fly. And yeah. I mean, I could I could go on if yeah, that's my favorite one. I think it's just hilarious that well, it's been awesome having you on.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:05

I really, really appreciate you coming and very excited to see how the herd of risky society works out. Excited to see how you do at school, excited to see how you come back and you know steal your back at some point when you're done. Once I figure out my own mental scrambled eggness, it's happening to my brain. But it's it's getting there. I'm getting closer and closer every day to figure out a plan. But uh I really, really appreciate you coming on and thank you so much. So peace out.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:35

Thanks, Keith.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:36

Peace out from the polar bear. Thank you for listening to the Big Bears Podcast, a two eyes seeing approach to neurodiversity. We would appreciate it if you could listen, subscribe, engage, and share this podcast. Tune in every second Tuesday at 7 a.m. Atlantic time for a new episode.