Nobody really cares if you don't go to the party
On neurodivergent masking vs constructive discomfort, and our favorite Courtney Barnett song
To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves—there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. — Joan Didion
This week, you’re getting a conversation between Meredith and I about invitations.
As two neurodivergent parents, with a handful of neurodivergent kids between us, we’ve got a lot going on this summer, and are finding that we need to bring an additional layer of mindfulness to the f@#$s we’re choosing to give, and the RSVPs we’re choosing to send.
[A note on terminology: By “neurodivergent,” we mean “people whose brains work differently from those that are considered ‘typical.’” To us, it’s a big-tent, non-pathologizing term, meant to include a wide array of what we might also call “developmental variations” in education. These can include but are not limited to autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and learning disabilities.]
As we’ve shared before on Notes and IG, summer can be insidiously tough for neurodivergent folks.
Here are a few bullets from my infinite list of reasons why:
Fun things like the pool and the beach can come with some not-so-fun sensory challenges (bug bites!), which can lead to low-key daylong discomfort and sleep disturbances in adults, and meltdowns in children.
The constant changes in individual routine and family schedules can present big executive functioning challenges; we can find ourselves constantly late, losing things more often, and sometimes criticizing ourselves (or our loved ones) for simply being human.
There are significant challenges facing other caregivers in other places this summer, from ICE raids to starvation in G@za. I am feeling the weight of these injustices deeply, and I know this is adding to the mental load for other extra-empathic folks, while also making it harder for us to show ourselves self-compassion for our own struggles.
As a result, I'm seeing more caregiver burnout this summer than I can recall since the summer of 2020, when we literally had to do and figure out everything ourselves, with no help from community. Particularly in families where at least one member is neurodivergent.
When people are burned out, they feel both less happy and less effective, which becomes a vicious cycle and self-fulfilling prophecy. Even the fun things on offer seem to feel less fun, the mistakes seem higher-stakes than they really are, and the really bad stuff out there seems even badder. This level of burnout also makes it harder to actually respond to the injustices of the world, but makes the guilt of not doing so more and more acute.
One saving grace: it’s not 2020, so we don't have to do everything ourselves this summer. We can do this in community. And that’s what we aim to offer this month: a space to face these unique challenges together, instead of all by ourselves.
Our next In Tending group will focuses on the topic of affirming neurodiversity. Because we need more places where we can share our struggles without fear of judgement, reflect on which tools we might already have at our disposal to tend to our increasingly frayed nervous systems (and political systems) and give ourselves permission to simply exist in a neurodiversity affirming space.
It is also our hope that by talking and meditating together, we can collectively move into a mental space of “tend and befriend” instead of “fight/flight/be really mean to myself or others for no reason.”
If this sounds good to you, we hope you can join us at our next donation-based caregiver circle, on August 5 at 10:30am EST, where we’ll dig into all of this together. (To get on the list to receive the Zoom invite for this, click here.)
We also hope you’ll join us in the asynchronous conversation we’ve started below, and in our subscriber chat, about how we each process invitations in unique ways, and what we can do to sustain connections to our communities this summer, even if we know for sure that we won’t be RSVP-ing yes to the next party.
Meredith: When we celebrated my oldest daughter’s Quinceañera, it was a deeply meaningful day for our family. We poured love into the preparations, and sent both beautiful paper invitations (designed by my daughter herself) and personal emails to each person we truly hoped would attend.
It was a real invitation—heartfelt, considered, specific.
That experience lives in sharp contrast with the flurry of calendar invites that roll in as the end of summer approaches. If I’m not careful, I’ll say yes to everything simply because the time is technically “available.”
But availability doesn’t equal alignment.
My intention isn’t just to show up to everything that fits.
My intention this August is to consider what truly fosters connection—to myself, to my family, to my community.
As we discussed last week, sometimes that means knowing what doesn’t foster connection. For example, I’m kind of known as the person who declines birthday party invitations for my kids. It’s not that I don’t want to celebrate their friends or be part of their joy—but the format rarely feels like the best way to connect. The chaos of 25 kids in a trampoline park doesn’t build the feeling of community I want to nurture, and it usually doesn’t serve my children either. Hot take, I know.
I have learned that before I say yes to something like this, I need to ask myself: Is this truly going to serve my long-term goals for connection? Or am I just afraid to temporarily disappoint someone?
I also need to remind myself that not every invitation is a summons. That someone else writing something on their calendar does not override what I’ve already chosen for mine. Even and especially when that choice is simply to rest.
The chaos of 25 kids in a trampoline park doesn’t build the feeling of community I want to nurture, and it usually doesn’t serve my children either. — Meredith Rodriguez
Ryan: I love your language here: “An invitation is not a summons.”
I also love the idea of asking myself, before I RSVP: “Does this actually build connection?” and “Will it actually serve the needs of my family, for us to be there?”
You and I are both neurodivergent, which also adds an additional layer of complexity that is worth naming here, especially because we’re about to have an August circle meetup all about it.
Here’s one tension I notice for us: We know that building community is inconvenient. And that it’s okay to sacrifice some individual comforts for the sake of building something bigger together. We talked about that here and here.
I think of constructive inconveniences as looking like:
Attending an important decision-making meeting in your work, school or faith community even if it means having to adjust a commute or meal schedule
Tolerating the irritating-but-not-ultimately-harmful behaviors of people that are different from you
Finding a compromise between your caregiving style and that of someone else involved in your loved one’s care, so that you can have the help you need
At the same time, being forced to mask for the sake of community is painful, and often takes so much effort for us neurodivergent folks that it feels hard to honor that intention to connect.
By masking, I mean making a big effort to appear “neurotypical,” however our culture or context defines that. This can look like:
Forcing oneself or ones’ kids to make eye contact, or receive touch, even when that’s deeply uncomfortable, to avoid “hurting so-and-so’s feelings”
Staying at a event with loud noises or bright lights even past the point of overstimulation, because you’re “supposed to”
Dressing in fabrics, garments or shoes that feel deeply uncomfortable or misaligned with one’s gender presentation, because “it’s polite”
Suppressing the urge to stim (i.e. flapping one’s hands) in public, because it will draw unwanted attention or criticism
Coming up with a cover story for why you were late, lost the invite, made a wrong turn, forgot the gift, etc. because openly sharing about your executive functioning challenges would not be well received
There’s a sweet spot there, between choosing to spend some of our time experiencing the kind of constructive discomfort that builds community, and some of our time experiencing the kind of un-pressured, neurodiversity-affirming, come-as-you-are ease that reconnects us to ourselves. We also have to help each one of our kids to find that sweet spot for themselves.
Another tension I notice is that sometimes those sweet spots don’t overlap with ours! Which can bring both difficulties and opportunities.
For example: we’re actually the ones hosting a housewarming/birthday party for my kid this week, and it’s been so sweet to see the ways in which my friends, many of whom have neurodivergent children or are neurodivergent themselves, are thinking about how to approach the event from a place of radical acceptance vs. pushing themselves past capacity. For example:
Some are bringing only the extroverted members of their families, because the introverts would be miserable but the extroverts will have fun.
Some are coming early or late to avoid the peak sensory overload that comes with a party full of kids.
Some are texting ahead to see if we’ll have the adaptive equipment or spaces on hand that they need, or if it makes sense to bring their own.
Some are declining with deep regret, and yet still trusting us with their thought process about why the event’s not right for them this time.
People who are comfortable saying no to the gatherings that won’t serve them, or modifying their approach to gatherings so that they don’t require so much masking, are ironically the people with whom I am the most excited to build community. Because ideally we’d all be bringing this lens to our gatherings, this sense of “How can we make this event inclusive and accessible for as many people as possible, while also making it safe to say no?” Versus “How many people can we cram in the door? What levers of anxiety, obligation and shame can we use to get them there and keep them there?”
Which also makes me think of one of my favorite bangers by Courtney Barnett, “Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go To The Party,” which feels relevant here:
Ryan: If we back up and rewind, having a neurodivergent mind can also impact the way we receive invitations in the first place, which you named at the start, Meredith.
Some of us really do interpret invitations as summons. I.e., some of us carry a“subjugation schema” that kept us safe as younger children, but now causes us to interpret even the gentlest, most invitational language as a demand we must obey. Those of us who live with obsessive-compulsive thought patterns may also go back and forth for weeks about what the “right” response to a party invite might be, the “right” gift, or how to behave in the “right” way once there.
On the other hand, some of us have a persistent demand for autonomy that makes us feel anxious and resistant to saying yes to anything, even when it comes to meeting the survival needs of our own bodies.
And some of us have executive functioning struggles that make it difficult simply to keep track of the invitations and calendar in the first place.
In my experience, just knowing and accepting your own mind and body can be so liberating in each one of these cases, vs letting your habitual mind-states own you. Because when you know yourself well, then the process you follow to get to “yes” or “no” can feel like a process of loving re-parenting, rather than a terrifying social exercise that might result in your exile from the community.
As neuro-affirming coach Jessica Goguillon puts it, it’s okay to ask ourselves:
Do I have the time?
Do I have the energy?
Do I have the capacity/capability?
Is this a priority for me right now?
Often, if I can come to terms with my answers for the above, I find I do a better job of conveying my answers to other people. Answers that don’t come dripping with apology or irritation, or that totally disregard the other person’s feelings in the matter.
I also personally love being trusted enough to be included in someone’s else’s thought process about whether or not they’re going to come to the party, even if they don’t ultimately go.
Which means that I now get to have the kind of neurodiversity-affirming life as an adult that I wish I could have had as a child. A life in which responding to an invitation with a thoughtful “no,” one that helps both parties get to know each other’s minds and bodies better, can actually build more connection than a knee-jerk “yes.”
In the chat this week, we’d love to dig into this more deeply with you. For our next cycle of intentions, we invite (invite! not demand!) you to consider:
What literal or figurative invitations are arriving in your life? These could be literal party invitations, but they could be small bids for connection: the invitation to play with Legos from your child, the invitation to ask for help from a loved one if you’re going through a hard time, the invitation from a tree to sit beneath it for a while instead of scurrying on?
What do you notice about the way your body and mind are reacting to the invitations you’re receiving in this situation? Which invoke an expansive, windows-open feeling? Which invoke a sense of contraction? What other sensations and thoughts arise when you bring this invitation to mind? (This short mind-body practice can help you to answer this question.)
What would happen if you honored that reaction and RSVP’d accordingly?
What would happen if you shared your insights about yourself, and your thought process about what the invitation entails, with the one inviting you, in a way that invites further connection (even if you are choosing to say “no”)?
In the meantime, a few reminders:
We’ll circle up on Zoom on August 5 at 10:30am EST to talk about the challenges of affirming neurodivergence (ours and/or our kids'). If you haven’t signed up to get the link yet, you can do so here.
Can’t make it? No worries. We’ve got several more gatherings coming up. Each one includes time for grounding meditation, a facilitated circle discussion, and other opportunities to continue the conversation with other likeminded caregivers. Here’s where you can find us for the rest of 2025:
Caring for other adults: Tues Sept 2, 10:30am EST
Navigating cross-generational conversations about care: Tues Sept 30, 10:30am EST
Making space for grief: Tues Oct 28, 10:30am EST
Burnout prevention: Dec 2, 10:30am EST (note: this is the week after Thanksgiving)
We hope to see you at one or many of these gatherings soon!
Clearing space at In Tending in August
We’ll be dropping back to a slightly looser and less-frequent summer publishing schedule for the next month, in order to more deeply reflect on what will make our community inclusive and accessible for all.
When we return, we’d love to know:
Thank you for reading, and we look forward to hearing from you soon!
xoxo
Ryan + Meredith