Sometimes I look around at my family and think, “well, of course we turned out like this.” Bright. Restless. A bit too sharp for our own good at times. It’s easy to laugh about, but if you dig under the surface, you start to see the patterns… not just personality quirks, but the wiring itself.
Neurodivergence isn’t just about one person. It runs like a river through generations. A grandmother with “quirks”, an uncle who was always “too intense”, a child who soaks up information like a sponge but can’t sit still. The labels change with the decades, but the through-line remains the same.
What I’ve noticed is that, alongside the distractibility or the obsession or the odd social angle, there’s also empathy. Not always the easy kind; not the smiling, nodding, greeting-card sort, but the deep, bone-level sensitivity. The ability to walk into a room and feel the tension before anyone says a word. The ability to listen to someone’s story and carry it around for weeks. That, too, runs in the family DNA.
And when you start connecting the dots, you realize it’s not just a coincidence. Research has shown links between neurodivergence and above-average intelligence, between “oddness” and creativity, between atypical wiring and unusual perception. Families carry these threads forward whether they recognize them or not.
The funny part is that the world often sees the divergence first: the quirks, the restlessness, the too-much-ness. Inside the family, though, what we recognize in each other is the empathy. The brightness. The drive. The little nods when we see ourselves mirrored in someone else’s wiring.
Maybe it’s not about whether this is a gift or a burden. Maybe it’s about recognizing that we are part of a long chain, passing along not just challenges, but also insight, compassion, and creativity. Neurodivergence, in this sense, is both inherited and shared: DNA mixed with empathy, running steady through time.
2025 – jj thompson
LIFE on the HALF SHELL 