Sophie Littlefield

author, brain nerd, advocate

I grew up in the midwest in a neurodivergent family, though it would be decades before I had even an inkling of the ways we differed from other people. Some of these differences count as serious mental illnesses and others as unique ways of being in the world, and despite spending a lot of time learning about these differences there is still so much I (and, it should be said, scientists, researchers, and clinicians) do not yet understand about what makes me and my loved ones tick.

Not very long ago, people with serious mental illness were involuntarily committed, warehoused and forgotten like the women pictured at left, who were patients at Pilgrim State Hospital in Brentwood, N.Y. during the 1930s. Today, the mentally ill–and even those whose brains are merely different–must still battle stigma, discrimination, and indifference.

I want better–for my loved ones, myself, and everyone else with a brain, no matter how it works!

That is why, after writing fiction for many years, I am starting to write about neurodivergence–as a peer, a caregiver, a community member–and have made the happy discovery that I really like science.

photo: Alfred Eisenstaedt, 1938.