About Lindsay

Don’t let my privileged, millennial sheen fool you. I am a way bigger badass than you probably think I am.

Admittedly, on paper, my backstory looks pretty basic. I grew up in a white, middle-class, suburban American family, and we always had stuff—AC, TV, washer/dryer, new gadgets. Christmas was full of CDs I loved (and clothes I didn’t). I went to nice schools, I wasn’t bullied, and I had friends. 

But inside? Total shitshow.

I am a way bigger badass than you probably think I am.

My parents got divorced when I was nine. I guess no one explained to them that when you quit being a spouse, you don’t quit being a parent—because the whole “having kids” thing sure did lose its sparkle once it was no longer a part of that picture-perfect nuclear family package they were initially sold on. My sister and I were no longer wanted, and we felt it.

My mom unraveled into a bundle of exposed nerves, and my dad became a world-class artisan of the bare minimum. Mom took out every negative emotion she ever had on us, and Dad couldn’t be bothered to take responsibility for the pain and suffering he left in his wake. My sister and I navigated the wreckage, trying to survive a house where the only surefire way to avoid punishment was to be virtually imperceptible.

Don’t get me wrong, I wish I didn’t have to talk shit about my parents. I understand they did the best they knew how to do with the tools they had available. The thing is, “the best they could do” did permanent harm that they’ve never apologized for, and it’s literally impossible for me to contextualize my work without throwing them under the bus. 

Now I’m doing the best I can do with the tools I have available, and they’re going to have to live with my choices just like I had to live with theirs.

Thanks to their utter buffoonery as parents, I learned to normalize neglect and abandonment. I was groomed for decades of abuse from a parade of douchebags. I equated suffering with life itself—I am alive today out of spite. 

Never underestimate what it does to a child to grow up unloved. 

Never underestimate what it does to a child to grow up unloved. 

If my parents did love me, they never learned to share that love with me. From my perspective, I was just a conduit for ego stroking and child support. 

I wasn’t any safer at school. I took bathroom breaks to hide in a stall and cry. I grappled with unexplained dizzy spells, fatigue, and a gnawing sense that I wasn’t built for this world—even though everyone else seemed to get along in it just fine. In school, I genuinely tried to keep up with my academic duties—I just couldn’t stay on top of it all. Not consistently. Not predictably. And no one could tell me why. All I got was blame.

My mom had plenty of opinions, none of which were useful. Apparently I didn’t care enough, I was lazy, I made her sick. I remember walking down the stairs, telling her I thought I was having a panic attack—my very first panic attack. She said, “maybe you wouldn’t be if you did your homework.” I sat on the stairs and took deep, quiet breaths. In pain and invisible—another day in paradise.

Other adults just told me to be more grateful. After all, I had stuff! And people with stuff weren’t supposed to feel bad, right? We spend our whole lives working to get more stuff—Isn’t having stuff supposed to be the greatest thing in the world!?

I internalized all of it. Clearly, the only explanation for my suffering was that I was nothing but a stubborn, spoiled burden on two legs that somehow managed to fail at life despite every conceivable advantage. Fuck me, right?

So I set out to fix myself. I would work harder. Achieve greater. Love smarter. I just had to find the right path, the right job, the right man—and then I’d finally experience what life was supposed to feel like. Right?

Well, I'm gay, so the man plan was a bust. But it took me a while to figure that out, because I was almost entirely disconnected from myself. I was trained to be a pawn in other people’s games. The child that was a conduit for ego stroking and child support grew into an empty adult vessel. I clung to the idea that only if I were useful enough, talented enough, lovable enough—that’s when my feelings would finally count.

I clung to the idea that only if I were useful enough, talented enough, lovable enough—
that’s when my feelings would finally count.

I chased carrots all the way to Los Angeles to pursue my lifelong dream—to be a film director. I spent six years pitching, grinding, hustling. But no matter how hard I tried, I kept face-planting. No matter how compliant and agreeable I was with every big-shot blowhard I encountered, nobody was offering me a boost up the Hollywood ladder, so I just twiddled my thumbs at the bottom, year after year. 

I had to face it—my career was going nowhere. The fantasy that someone was going to skyrocket me to stardom if I paid my dues long enough was a siren’s song. I was a pawn in a game, yet again, and I wasn’t too proud to admit it.

I had nowhere else to go but home. Back to Texas. To my mom. 

It wasn’t all bad—by then, in my thirties, I was well-trained on how to sidestep her rage, so the day-to-day was mostly quiet. But I had no concept of what my good behavior was costing me—which was something so much more valuable than money.

That is, until my brain gave out. 

I had no concept of what my good behavior was costing me.

In 2020, I left my mom’s house for the last time, and something inside me snapped. I burned out so deeply and thoroughly, my concept of the world, and my identity within it, collapsed. It felt like my brain was a computer hard drive, my operating system had failed on me, and it was time to reformat and install a new one. That’s why I call this event my “brain crash.”  

I now know that I have autism and ADHD, and what I was experiencing was prolonged nervous system burnout due to years upon years of unmet needs. I couldn’t function. I couldn’t think clearly. I couldn’t keep up with the minutia of day to day life that once felt manageable. My car got taken away. I filed for bankruptcy.

But it was also the first time in my life I had access to my authenticity. I was compelled to face the truth: the life I was living had never been mine. I was brainwashed into playing a game I didn’t want to play. But more importantly—I didn’t have to play.

So I stopped playing.

I questioned everything I had ever known. I reassessed all my relationships and purged the toxins. I explored as many schools of thought in politics, psychology, and mental health that I could. I binged all the religious and spiritual knowledge I could get my hands on—all the way down to 5th dimensional alien shit. I opened my mind as wide as I could without it falling out.

And from there, I started healing.

Slowly, painfully, and with a whole lot of questions. Who am I without the ambitions other people programmed into me? Who have I been neglecting under all the masks? What do I need to become—not to be successful, but to simply be?

But I guess I exhausted myself, because when I wasn’t looking, I slipped—and let my mind fall out.

I was compelled to face the truth: the life I was living had never been mine. 

I thought my best friend had the answers. She didn’t, nor was she my friend. She treated me like an animal, so these days, I call her what she was—my keeper.

We met when we were 13. She’s admitted she hated me on sight—in our social studies class, I talked a lot, answered every question, and made a big show of my opinions. She’d never admit it, but I believe from then on, even if only subconsciously, her primary interest wasn’t in befriending me—it was in taming me. She succeeded for a long time, too. Until she didn’t.

She became a behaviorist—a practitioner of the dark arts of Applied Behavior Analysis—which can be most succinctly described as the autistic equivalent of gay conversion therapy. I studied ABA, too, but for a different reason—self management. I wanted to control myself, she wanted to control other people. Nonetheless, I needed work, so when she suggested I take on behavior cases for a humble hourly rate, I did. I remember her once saying, “Everyone is a behavior case.” Red flag.

Eventually, the mental health zeitgeist turned on ABA—and rightfully so—and my keeper pivoted to ADHD coaching and education. The timing of my brain crash was convenient for her—she told me her neurodivergent sister needed a roommate, so there was a home waiting for me in Portland if I could get myself west. 

Of course I took the opportunity—I had nowhere else to go, and this was my best friend of more than 20 years—not some promising Craigslist listing. I was still lost, trying to figure out what my relationship with my reality was—but the world (and my bills) were certainly not going to slow down on my account. (Though admittedly, COVID-related slowdowns were helpful.) Living with my best friend’s sister, who I also felt very close to, seemed like the perfect chance to start over in safety.

The writing was on the wall as soon as I arrived. No one was there to greet me—despite having spent days driving across multiple states and surviving multiple meltdowns with a disabled dog in tow. The apartment complex thought I was just looking at the place—I thought the first month was already paid for. I had to scramble on the spot, grab my phone, and talk a client into paying an advance invoice—just to have a place to sleep that night.

I felt in my gut that I wasn’t being rescued, nor welcomed to a new home—I was being strategically placed. I felt like an available NPC, added to the party to further the needs of a player on a quest. I foolishly accused my keeper of orchestrating my move for no other reason than to solve her sister’s roommate problem, and I’ll never forget what she said.

“Is it possible you’re wrong?”

Yes—My “best friend,” the coach and advocate who preached neurodivergent acceptance to thousands of followers, had me questioning my reality from the day I arrived.

File this away—“Is it possible you’re wrong?” is a screwed up question to ask someone who has turned to you to heal from a lifetime of gaslighting trauma—and she dropped it reflexively, just to defend her own goddamn ego. Not to mention, to this very day, she presents herself to the world as an expert in making neurodivergent people feel seen—which means it was a betrayal of her professional values.

And you know what? It was possible that I was wrong. But I wasn’t.

But I was desperate not to be alone, so I kept being an idiot, and I let myself get absorbed into her coaching brand as her loyal autistic sidekick. She wasn’t autistic, so I was useful. My content resonated with the autistic community, so positioning me at her side reinforced her credibility with autistic clients. She would tell me invigorating success stories about how my methods had impacted families she was working with. It felt victorious. It felt safe. It felt like belonging.

But it wasn’t the safe space that I was promised. The more she pushed me down, the harder I pushed back, and the more I attempted to fully, authentically embody myself—the more dismissive, confusing, and threatened she became. She didn’t want me to grow. She wanted me to behave.

She gaslit me all the way into a psychiatric hospital. Told me to unmask. Told me it was safe. It wasn’t. I was incarcerated. Sedated. Physically harmed. That is a long story for another day—but I assure you, it’s written—with receipts. 

My "keeper" didn’t want me to grow. She wanted me to behave.

The point is, that betrayal made a huge impact on my point of view. It taught me to raise my standards of how I expect to be treated—and that only an abuser holds docility as a prerequisite for compassion. I ended the friendship, found my own place to live, cut off contact with everyone associated with her, and moved on.

Don’t get me wrong—I am not innocent in all of this. I attached to my keeper, like a parasite, because I was afraid to stand on my own. It was high school all over again—I had no faith in my ability to interface with neurotypical society on my own, so I hid behind someone who could. That was my go-to strategy—my keeper was far from the only one. Year after year, I allowed myself to be passed from one exploiter to the next, because my upbringing convinced me I was too dysfunctional to survive any other way.

Sometimes people tell me I’m too hard on myself—that I was vulnerable and overpowered, that I did the best I could under unfair circumstances, and my options were hidden from me by forces beyond my control. All of that is true. 

But that’s true for everyone. I’m not the first to point this out—life’s not fair. We all come into this world thrust into circumstances we didn’t choose, but we’re responsible for carving out our own path regardless. If we don’t look at the horrors of our past with the guts to own our hand in it, we’ll learn nothing of value for the future, and continue to feel tossed around by the fates, letting our soul die inside us long before our body catches up.

I’m not saying it’s all my fault either. Sure, I may have grabbed the axe and bludgeoned myself with it, but that doesn’t mean the axe was harmless. Next time, I’ll know an axe when I see one, and won’t be fooled by misleading packaging. I’m proud to say I’ve outgrown the small spaces made available by small people, but I only accomplished that because I now choose to hold myself accountable in a way that I chose not to before.

I now choose to hold myself accountable in a way that I chose not to before.

I say raw and bold shit about neurodivergence, trauma healing, boundaries, anger, grief—not because anyone told me to, but because too many people told me not to—and I think that’s a good enough reason. Suppression is creepy. I don’t think it’s noble to hack off our limbs to squeeze into outdated boxes when we could claim our power as sentient human beings and make new boxes instead. 

Regardless of whatever spiritual beliefs we may have, I think it’s fair to say the forces that created us are stronger than the forces that conditioned us. I want to reclaim that innate strength, and urge others to do the same. 

We can’t advocate for ourselves until we know ourselves, and we can’t know ourselves until we split our souls from the conditioning. That process starts by asking ourselves devastating questions—and I write content for people with the guts to ask themselves those questions.

I didn’t want a man—I was told I needed one.

I didn’t want a college degree—I was told I needed one.

I didn’t even want to be a movie director—I just wanted to make things.

What I wanted all along was safety. And creativity. And truth. And respect.

And once I cleared out the cobwebs left by other people’s stale limitations—and those core needs revealed themselves—all of the sudden, the world was so much larger. And fresh, new pathways to meet those needs had space to reveal themselves, too. I assure you, it’s all worth it. 

The forces that created us are stronger than the forces that conditioned us.

Thank you for reading my story. 

Now—let’s fuck shit up. Let’s bust paradigms, question authority, demand justice, break cycles, confront our shadows, reclaim our personal power, and leave this world a better place than how we found it. 

There’s literally nothing better to do.