Welcome to Strange Clarity, a newsletter about wild and wonderful (neurodivergent) minds
Strange Clarity is a place where we read minds
Strange Clarity is where I write through questions about how our minds work—mine, and everyone else’s. The mind is a strange thing. Strangely fascinating. This is part personal reflection, part research notebook, and part slow-building foundation for a book I’m writing.
You’ll find posts on:
The latest neurodivergence research and how it helps us understand ourselves better
The hidden strengths within the autism profile
How conditions like autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and narcolepsy overlap—and what that means for how we draw diagnostic lines
Echoes of autism in the historical record, long before the term existed
And anything else on the subjects of cognition and culture that catches my fancy
Some posts will be story-driven. Some will be analytical. All will be grounded in research and built on curiosity. My goal is to understand not just autism, but human cognition more broadly—how we think, feel, connect, and cope.
When I got my autism diagnosis in early March 2025, little more than 3 weeks ago, I was elated. Exhilarated.
I knew in my gut that I fit the profile. I wasn’t sure, though, that someone outside my mind would agree. A lawyer with a successful career and three young kids, I’ve spent a lifetime passing as normal, typical.
But the effort required to pass as normal has been substantial. Post-diagnosis, I’m still tallying the costs—psychic, emotional, physical—of moving through life without knowing I carried the weight of autism on my back.
When she presented my results, the psychologist told me, “I call it autism, not autism spectrum disorder. It’s not a disorder. I don’t view it as something wrong with you.”
I don’t either. If anything, that’s what I believed before the diagnosis—that something was deeply, fundamentally wrong with me. I watched others form friendships easily, effortlessly. I saw how they rolled with life’s punches, unbothered by changes in plans, able to go with the flow. I had meltdowns—temper tantrums that erupted from too much emotion held in—despite all the mindfulness techniques I’d tried to train myself with. I reveled in full days spent alone at home, speaking to no one, while quietly wondering what kind of “social animal” needs regular doses of asociality.
With no explanation for these tendencies, I invented one: I must be broken.
The autism diagnosis offered what I’d long sought—an explanation. And it came with a bonus: not only is there a reason I’m this way, but I now know there are many, many others with strengths, preferences, and challenges like mine. As research increasingly reveals, we’re wired this way. Our brains are built this way. And if this is written into our DNA—has been for millennia—then our differences aren’t wrong. They’re right, for us.
There’s a Reddit post titled, with deadpan accuracy: “I just found out about my Autism and now my special interest is Autism.” Yep. Me too. I’ve kept a journal since day one of this post-diagnosis life because my mind hasn’t stopped traveling—revisiting the past through this new understanding, analyzing the implications, reading everything I can get my hands on. Books, journal articles, essays—hundreds of pages so far.
Autism gave me a context, a framework. Not just for the challenges, but also for the things I’m good at. The way my mind locks onto patterns and inconsistencies. My need to get things right, even when it’s socially inconvenient. My tendency to deep-dive into subjects until I know them inside and out.
That’s what this newsletter is about.
If you’ve ever felt out of step with the world, or endlessly attuned to it, or just want to understand your own or someone else’s mind more clearly, I hope you’ll feel at home here.
Welcome.
—Laura