So Many Seniors Are Discovering They’re Neurodivergent.
In the last few years, I’ve noticed something surprising, but also deeply familiar. More and more people my age are starting to see themselves in words like neurodivergent, ADHD, or autistic. And like me, they’re beginning to realize that maybe their lifelong quirks, struggles, and “bad habits” weren’t personal failings after all. Maybe they were just… wiring.
When I first started learning about neurodivergence five years ago (an autistic grandchild opened the information floodgates), it felt like putting on a pair of glasses and seeing my entire life come into focus. All the things I’d been told about myself. too chatty, too sensitive, disorganized, lazy, intense…suddenly made sense in a different light. I wasn’t broken. I wasn’t wrong. I was just unrecognized.
We grew up in a time when this kind of self-knowledge wasn’t available. Neurodivergence, if it was even acknowledged, was seen through a narrow lens: usually male, usually childhood, typically severe. Girls slipped through the cracks. Quiet daydreamers went unnoticed. Masking became second nature, if not survival. And now, decades later, many of us are unmasking for the first time.
That process can be both liberating and painful. There’s grief in it, grief for the child who didn’t get the support she needed, for the adult who blamed herself, for the years spent trying to “do better” with no idea that her brain simply worked differently. But there’s also joy. There’s relief. And there’s this deep, soul-level recognition when you finally hear someone say something that sounds exactly like you and you realize you’re not alone.
What’s changed? The internet, for one. Social media, Substacks, YouTube channels, podcasts… we’re finally hearing from people who sound like us, who are telling the truth in plain language. Therapists are becoming more aware. Diagnostic criteria are slowly catching up. And older adults, especially women, are finding community and clarity in places we never expected to.
So if you’re reading this and wondering, “Could that be me too?” You’re not imagining it. You’re not jumping on a trend. You’re peeling back layers that were never meant to define you in the first place.
And the beautiful thing is: it’s never too late. Not to understand yourself. Not to be kinder to your past. And not to find new ways of living that actually fit the way your brain works.
~jjthompson
LIFE on the HALF SHELL 