How Trees, Tears & a Tiny Bit of Madness Helped Me Write a Neurodiversity Guide
Nature-Based Insights for Educators & Humans Alike
A question I’m asked more often than anything else as an author is:
“Where do you get your inspiration from?”
In truth, ask any artist and you’ll get a variation of the same answer: life itself—the lived experience filtered through our senses, wounds, quirks, and half-healed bits.
For me, inspiration usually arrives from the part of my brain that’s slightly off-balance, tugging at me with a powerful emotion that insists on being expressed. My “shadow side”—ever dramatic—loves to manifest as writing. Since childhood, when I couldn’t share my innermost thoughts with another human, I wrote them down instead. Little private poems about the mysteries I couldn’t solve. I have more than a hundred now, spanning forty-five years. (Yes, another publication is brewing… the poems have been whispering about it.)
This summer, I tended to my grief the way a mother tends to a newborn—exhausted, tender, devoted. I disappeared into the hills of Castelo Branco, Portugal, with only my trio of furry companions for company: two protective, comedic dogs and a cat with the emotional intelligence of a therapist. I arrived in early July: dishevelled, nervous system frazzled, belly full of unprocessed sorrow, unsure of who I had become.
A mother.
A grandmother.
A teacher.
An author.
A sister.
A friend.
I missed her—the woman I once recognised in the mirror.
A wife who once held vows and mornings filled with noise and love. A woman whose heart had stretched so widely for others that she had forgotten its edges.
And then came a breakup—not one that destroyed me, but one that revealed me. It taught me endurance, self-respect, and what real healing looks like when no one is watching.
So instead of numbing myself with busyness and conversation, I chose something else: I went back to nature.
I learned permaculture.
Human composting (yes, there’s a story).
How to use solar panels.
How to collect water from a sacred spring.
How to eat from the land.
How to live without TV, noise, or distraction.
Just me and the hills.
The grandmother and grandfather trees.
The velvet skies with no light pollution.
Silence layered thick enough that I could hear myself again.
With space came questions—big, honest, sometimes uncomfortable ones:
- Was I truly being kind to myself?
- Had I forgiven myself?
- Where did I give away my autonomy?
- Was “no” safe yet?
- What was this showing me?
- What did I need to own, or apologise for?
- Were my actions aligned with my highest self?
After any relationship ends, I think most of us face similar interrogations of the heart before we start dancing with life again.
And speaking of dancing…
Dance like nobody’s watching.
Let your bones remember the ancient beat,
Before names,
Before rules.
Let your hips write the stories you were too hesitant to ink.
Stamp your prayers into the earth.
Shed shame like an old skin that never fit.
Twirl truth.
Pulse power.
Laugh. Sob. Breathe.
Move as if your spirit was never tamed.
Because maybe no one is watching—
Or maybe they are, wishing they could move just as freely.
Sometimes, I feel like a square peg in a round hole too—overwhelmed, stressed, human. Don’t you?
The grief in my gut kept prodding me awake. Was it regret? Loss? An old memory asking to be honoured? I still don’t fully know.
But I do know this:
Thank you, Rev. Em, at Creative Rootz Retreat Centre in Portugal, for giving me a place to unravel and re-root. For introducing me to the sound of stars singing (they do), the engineering genius of ants, the mycelial wisdom that mirrors the brain and the body. For letting me sync with circadian rhythms instead of calendars. For mornings painted in gold and pink, and evenings wrapped in velvet darkness.
And for the warning on Night One:
“Don’t be alarmed if you hear a wild boar.”
I didn’t sleep. At all.
But I did mark my scent like she advised, and after that, I slept like a log—fitting, since I was in a log cabin.
In that stillness, with nowhere to escape but inward, I wrote my Neuro Guide—a practical, human-level resource for educators. After twenty years in classrooms, I know how difficult it is to support neurodiverse learners while juggling curriculum demands and limited hours. This guide is not a dreamland manual. It is real, honest, messy, doable. It’s about seeing patterns, asking better questions, and teaching with presence.
Because learners don’t fit into neat boxes.
They are mycelial—interconnected, individual, brilliant.
Thank you also to my girlfriends who flew in for a long weekend of peace, love, giggles, and absolutely legendary Sharon Stone moments. And yes, there was an auspicious blessing from Mother Mary and dancing at dawn—fresh, wild, and perfect.
Now, I’m preparing for my next adventure: a solo research journey across Asia, exploring mental health and ageing with women, elders, and mountain communities in India and Nepal. This will weave into my next book (title still hiding behind a curtain).
As always, my writing pours from lived experience and a heart that insists on telling the truth.
Follow my “crazy lady adventures” on Sarah Duff Facebook Author Page.
More stories are coming.
Peace and Love.
