Blog
Welcome to my words and writing page. These are my essays: long-form writing that wanders between philosophy, literature, art and the natural world, read through neurodivergent and neuroqueer lenses. Expect monotropism, Yeats and Deleuze, moss and mycelium, and ideas that take their time to emerge. This is not a place of conclusions or answers; it is a place to wander, to feel, to think sideways. Start anywhere. The content index lists everything, if you’d rather browse by theme.
If reading is easier another way, press the Reading preferences button beside the menu: you can make the text larger, change the font, or follow the Ear-reading link to have any page read aloud. Or press play to hear this welcome in my voice.
The voice is a computer copy of Helen Edgar’s voice.
Other ways to listen: turn on text-to-speech in your browser.
Prefer to see everything at once? Browse all my writing A to Z in the content index.
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The Fallow Field: Rest as a Freedom Practice
What if rest were part of the work, the way an eyelid is part of an eye? Drawing on Tagore, the Japanese concept of Ma, Tricia Hersey and…
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What Is Neuroqueer? Neuroqueer Theory Explained
What neuroqueer means: Nick Walker’s definition, where the word comes from, how it differs from neurodivergent, and what neuroqueering looks like in everyday life.
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From the Edge of the Gyre: Yeats, Symphrenia and the Centre that Cannot Hold
An Autistic ADHD, symphrenic reading of Yeats’s “The Second Coming”: why the centre cannot hold, and how community without a centre can hold us instead.
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Betwixt Wall & Window: Neuroqueering from the Liminal & Hiraki Sawa’s art
Tired, fragmented and looping, I found my experience of Autistic burnout in a ghostly figure from Hiraki Sawa’s silent video Souvenir IV. This piece follows her through hauntology,…
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queering.earth
queering.earth Queering readings of literature, poetry, art, people and history. A collaboration between Helen Edgar and Ryan Boren, Stimpunks Foundation
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Love You Down to Your Star Stuff: Grief, Hope and Solidarity
Grief, Hope & Solidarity. A reflection for the Autistic & neurodivergent community: Love You Down To Your Star Stuff. Explore Star Stuff zines.
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Migration & Trusting Our Inner Monotropic Compass
Birds cross oceans by using their inner compass. What if we could do the same? A reflection on migration, monotropism, and self-trust.
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It’s Complicated: Polytropos, Odysseus, and Homer’s Odyssey
What if the thing that made Odysseus remarkable wasn’t his many turns, but the one thing that never turned? A personal, AuDHD read on Homer’s Odyssey and the…
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Wyrd, Weird, and the Invention of Normal
Weird” comes from wyrd — Old English for fate and becoming. A look at the word’s history, Weird Pride and the myth of normality.
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Flowing In The Afterglow
Autistic burnout, monotropism, meerkat mode, AuDHD, neurodivergent reflection, liminal states, executive dysfunction, flow state
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Why Difference Comes First
From cosmic background radiation to Deleuze’s smooth space to Autistic regulation — why difference, not sameness, is where everything begins.
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Monotropa Uniflora and Monotropism
Monotropa Uniflora & Monotropism: A Tribute to Dinah Murray
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Empathy, Becoming, and Belonging: On what it really means to be met across difference
Helen Edgar – Autistic Realms / More Realms June 2026 “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” —…
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My Monotropic Galaxy: A Constellation of My Autistic Self
Helen Edgar explores monotropism, awe, and Autistic identity through a personal constellation map — weaving quantum physics, Deleuze, and star stuff.
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We Are Made of Relations: Quantum Physics and What It Means to Be Autistic
Exploring relational quantum mechanics, the Double Empathy Problem, ethodiversity and what it means to be Autistic in a world made of relations, not objects.
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Mycelium & Rhizome: Ecological Metaphors for Autistic, Neurodivergent & Disabled Lives
Mycelium and rhizome as metaphors for Autistic community, care, and neurodivergent becoming — moving beyond deficit toward interdependence and identity.
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“I cannot live without my soul”: An Autistic Exploration of Wuthering Heights
What does Wuthering Heights look like through a neurodivergent lens? An Autistic personal reflection on monotropism, intensity, and love.
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We Are Star Stuff: Being Autistic, Ethodiversity and Cosmic Connection
My physical body is your physical body, and just as the sun and stars are present in you, they are also present in me. […] we are all…
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Living in Layers: World Quantum Day, Autistic Physics, and the CASY Community
What does quantum physics have to do with Autistic experience? More than you might think. On World Quantum Day, Helen Edgar explores superposition, holotropism, neuroholographic cognition and what…
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Bathing in Colour: Mark Rothko, Monotropism and Neuroqueering the Body without Organs
Neuroqueer philosophy, Rothko, monotropism and Deleuze: a reflection on synaesthetic perception, plateaus of attention and embodied ways of knowing.
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Neuroqueering Deleuze: Rhizomes of Becoming
Neuroqueering Deleuze: Rhizomes of Becoming is a collaborative philosophy project exploring the ideas of Deleuze and Guattari through neurodivergent lived experience. Blending neuroqueer theory, posthuman thought, and reflections…
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Neuroqueering Relational Ecologies: Autistic Weathering and the Body without Organs
A posthuman exploration of Autistic embodiment, neuroqueering, monotropic attention and ethodiversity. Rethinking burnout, sensory climates and relational ecologies.
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Expanding the Mycelial Network of Care: Autistic Community, Safety, and Rhizomatic Futures
The article explores the Autistic community as a living ecology, utilising the concepts of rhizomes and mycelium to illustrate support systems that facilitate belonging and recovery from burnout.…
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Autistic Burnout and Liminal Sleep Threshold: Hypnopompic and Hypnagogic Experiences
Explore the possible link between Autistic burnout and liminal sleep states such as hypnopompic and hypnagogic experiences through a neuroqueer lens.
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Autistic Burnout Recovery as Ecological Re-assembly (Part 3)
Explore Autistic burnout recovery through ecological re-assembly. Learn how rest, environment, sensory safety, and identity support sustainable healing and renewal.
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When the Ecology Fractures: Monotropism and Autistic Burnout (Part 2)
Autistic burnout exploring monotropism, sensory stress, masking and relational environments. Learn why burnout happens and how support can help.
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Re-worlding Neurodiversity: Monotropism, Ecological Belonging and Neuroqueer Futures (Part 1)
Explore how monotropism shapes neurodivergent attention, learning and wellbeing. This accessible guide explains rhizomes, mycelial care networks and re-worlding through neuroqueer and ecological perspectives.
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The Neuronormative Paradigm: Naming The Systems That Harm
Helen Edgar (Autisic Realms) November 2025 With thanks to Nick Walker and Andrew Reichart for their recent conversations with me. This piece is independent of their work, and…
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Folding Worlds: Monotropism & Neuroqueering Attention
To live within the Autistic fold is to recognise that we are not separate from the world, but continuous with it, each of us a unique curvature in…
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Neuroqueer Revolutions: Difference, Becoming, and the Politics of Refusal
Living fully as ourselves isn’t just about inclusion — it’s reworlding. Neuroqueer politics challenges norms & builds worlds where difference thrives.
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From Autistic Realms to More Realms: Exploring Other Ways of Being
By Helen Edgar, Autistic Realms At the heart of everything I do is a belief that lived experience and Autistic lives matter. What if support for Autistic children…
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Radical Resilience
The word resilience is often used as a weapon, especially against parents/ carers whose children are different, who may be neurodivergent and who are more likely to need…
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The Power of Monotropic Flow: Reclaiming Ourselves Through Creative Practice
Inspired by Betsy Selvam’s talk on Art as a Therapeutic Tool, delivered at Stimpunks Seeds of Cope event 17th May 2025, and the amazing Neuroqueering Your Creative Practice Course I am on with KR Moorhead, Marta…
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Autistic Pride: Restorying & Unknowing Autism
From Pathology to Possibility: Reclaiming Our Stories Autistic people have been spoken about, written over, and pathologised for far too long. Our lives have been turned into case…
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Tides of burnout and being monotropic
“Once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be…
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Reclaiming Rest: Autistic Burnout, Monotropism, and Resistance
Rest can become a radical act in a world that often equates our worth with productivity, especially for Autistic or otherwise neurodivergent people navigating the tides of burnout,…
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Going Deeper: Rest, Burnout, and Monotropic Flow
When Autistic people are in burnout, we’re often told to “rest”, to slow down, take time off and pull back from pressure. These suggestions don’t work for me…
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Neurodivergent Base-Camp
Explaining what it is like to be autistic to non-autistic people can be difficult. To quote Dawn Prince-Hughes (Cultural Autism Studies at Yale), being autistic is like “being human without…
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Autistic Burnout, Bodymind and Soul
Kieran Rose (2018) describes autistic burnout as a ‘crash where you keep on crashing’. This resonates deeply. I have experienced cycles of burnout throughout my life due to systemic…
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Quantum Neuro-Holographic Thoughts from a Liminal Space
Quantumness tends to prosper in very cold systems that are carefully isolated rather than part of a tepid soup awash with other activity.” (Lewton, T. 2024) This may be…
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The Double Empathy Problem is DEEP
“The growing cracks in the thin veneer of our “civilised” economic and social operating model are impossible to ignore”, Jorn Bettin (2021). The double empathy problem (Milton, 2012) creates a gap of…
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Monotropism, Holotropism & Floatation Experiences
I am autistic and monotropic, and I am interested in exploring Helen Mirra’s theory of holotropism (2023) and how this may impact flow states and regulation. Holotropism synthesises the theory…
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An Open Framework For Neuroqueer Learning Spaces
In Neuroqueer Heresies, Nick Walker (2021) describes embracing neuroqueering as a verb. When considering Neuroqueer Learning Spaces, we need to reinterpret, rethink, redefine, and reimagine what those spaces may look like and the…
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Neuroqueer Learning Spaces
“Intentionally liberating oneself from the culturally ingrained and enforced performance of neuronormativity can be thought of as neuroqueering” (Walker, 2021). This blog is published on Stimpunks website in its entirety, with links…
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Neuroqueering from the In-between
“The growing cracks in the thin veneer of our “civilised” economic and social operating model are impossible to ignore”, Jorn Bettin (2020). As a late-diagnosed autistic person, I feel a…
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Monotropism & Collective Flow
In Milan Kundera’s novel, ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’ (1981), he described the heaviness of life, the restrictive oppression and boundaries that can tie us all down, yet…
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Ethodivergent Hearth Building: A Relational Neuroqueering Community Practice
Explore ethodivergent hearth building as a neuroqueer, relational practice of care, kinship, and more-than-human community with Autistic Realms & Stimpunks.
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Awe, Wonder and Different Ways of Knowing: Cavendish Space and Helen De Cruz
Honouring the brilliant philosopher Helen De Cruz, whose work on wonder, thinking, and inclusion helped shape and inspire our Neuroqueer Learning Spaces and Cavendish Space. Her ideas continue to…
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Mingling with the universe: Autistic Perception
Mingling with the Universe” exploring Autistic meaning-making as sensory, felt, and more-than-human, where solitude becomes connection, and the world speaks in textures, rhythms, and resonance. It’s not about…
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Mossy Minds & Monotropism
An exploration of moss and monotropic ways of being. An invitation to slow down, sink in, and reconnect through sensory depth and shared presence in liminal spaces.
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Monotropism, Spiral Time, and the Rhizome of Memories
Memory may not be linear for neurodivergent people. It may feel like a spiral of felt sensations. Being monotropic shapes how I re-sense moments, navigating echoes and threads…
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Sintering: Neurodivergent Community Building
When snow first falls, its flakes are delicate and vulnerable, but over time, a quiet transformation begins. Sintering is the process through which individual snow grains gradually begin…
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Neuroqueering Monotropic Time: A short summary
Autistic/ADHD people are more likely to be monotropic and resonate with the theory of monotropism. Dinah Murray, Wenn Lawson, and Mike Lesser developed the theory of monotropism in…
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Neuroqueering Time: Bergson, Deleuze, and Monotropism (an exploration)
Time as a double temporality problem, exploring interest gravity for monotropic people and flow as a temporal home…..
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Monotropic Time & Neuroqueering Temporalities
Dwelling in Resonance: Monotropism, Monotropic Time, Spirals & Neuroqueer Temporalities “Lodged in all is a set metronome” – (W. H. Auden, 1969 – from the poem In Due Season)…
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Caverns, Pleats and Folds
Cartographers are people who create maps, and they transform physical geography into an accessible format so people can navigate in and through the spaces of the world. I…
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Exploring ‘Being With’
I experience and interpret ‘Being With’ as a process of be-coming together. Deleuze’s concept of the line of flight allows us to explore and follow meaning together. This…
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Neuro-Holographic Thoughts
I believe that the DEEP (Double Empathy Extreme Problem) is at the heart of all the systemic ableist issues we have in our education, social and healthcare systems.…
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Neuroqueering in the Liminal Spaces
Neuroqueering in Liminal Spaces “By silencing our bodyminds, they (neurotypical society) have halted the growth of a chaotic self. We are no longer able to move fluidly through our…
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Neuroqueer Collaborative Work Flow Spaces
A behind-the-scenes look into the collaborative workflow between Helen Edgar (Autistic Realms) and Ryan Boren (Stimpunks) as we write about Neuroqueer Learning Spaces (NQLS) and continue our neuroqueering…
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Neuroqueer Learning Spaces — Webinar — a summary and reflection 6th May 2024
Neuroqueer Learning Spaces Webinar — A summary and reflection Neuroqueer Learning Spaces is a community project led by Ryan Boren (Stimpunks) and Helen Edgar (Autistic Realms). More information is available…
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Middle Entrance
I am starting my new blog in the middle. I am in the middle of what is known as ‘midlife’ as I am forty-five; I am also mid-career,…