I’ve been quiet. But I haven’t gone anywhere.
We’ve been planning the tool behind the scenes.
Her name is SAM (short for Self-Advocacy Mentor) — a tool for neurodivergent women & girls navigating symptoms that shift and change inside a healthcare system that sees us in parts, never as a whole.
SAM organises your symptoms across time. Reflects your patterns back at you. So, when you walk into your next appointment, you won’t have to translate yourself again. You’re not shrinking to fit fifteen minutes. You arrive with evidence and your whole story, finally held in one place.
You may also notice that my name is Sam, too.
When my product manager, Praveen Kolluguri MBA, first proposed SAM for the tool, I LOL-ed. Until I realised he wasn’t joking.
For someone with a visibility wound, this is the most radical thing I’ve ever done.
I had new photos taken recently. When I first saw them, I thought, “I don’t look strong enough”, unlike the fiery red-haired transition of me taken last year, which I’m still using as a profile photo.
In the new photo taken last week, I looked… soft.
Then I sat with it.
The growth I went through in the past years isn’t to become harder.
It’s about becoming discerning, not armoured or walled up. Just open enough to enable space for light to still shine into me and out of me. I’ve built a level of self-trust and a willingness to listen to my body’s signals that I know I can be soft. I’ve learned so much on this journey that I’ve come to believe the world is inherently kind and loving.
The visibility wound that led me to build SAM
I think back to the person I was before this version. And I think about what she’d needed when the world just couldn’t see her.
This is why I want SAM to provide a reflection of what you go through internally when you struggle to describe it succinctly, especially when it matters most. I want it to help you feel seen and safe.
I want to say something about the visibility wound I alluded to earlier. It comes from saying “something is wrong” and being told “you seem fine”.
Most of the hurt in my relationships stemmed from being unseen, invalidated, and misunderstood. In my healing, I’ve realised that in order to be understood, I have to first be willing to be seen as a whole, not as parts.
The unmasking and being real. What you see is what you get. Is so hard.
But when we can no longer afford to make ourselves smaller just so the world can process us more easily, we need to be seen in our entirety.
I’m building SAM because of it. So we arrive so clearly and whole, they finally can’t look away.
We’re entering the recruitment phase for the user trial soon. I’ll be inviting a small group of women to help shape SAM before she’s fully built.
If you’ve ever left an appointment more lost than when you arrived, I want to hear from you.
For now, just hit reply, comment, or DM, and tell me:
What’s the one moment you most needed something or someone to help you be understood?
I read every single one.
For practitioners and those supporting AuDHD women, we are beginning the June cohort of our AuDHD women’s advanced practitioner programme soon. Sign up to secure your place.
#AuDHD #SelfAdvocacyMentor #CollectiveVision
