SAM Frida

Unfiltered – ish

The Filter Is Coming

The Filter Is Coming

I was watching CNN earlier when Obama called Zohran Mamdani extraordinary. The word stopped me. Because what struck me about Mamdani wasn’t polish or pedigree. It was the absence of performance. He speaks in plain English. He says what he thinks before it gets...

The Spaces Between the Boxes

The Spaces Between the Boxes

We have a habit of treating people like resumes. No criminal record. No red flags. Good references. Check, check, check. We scan the boxes, find them ticked in the right places, and call that due diligence. We call that knowing someone. But what if the boxes are the...

The Wire in Between

There is a diagram making the rounds in neurodiversity education circles. It shows two figures facing each other across a tangle of wires. On one side, an autistic communicator sends a signal: direct, economical, honest. On the other side, the message can arrives...

The Script You Never Gave Me

The Script You Never Gave Me

There is a version of inclusion that lives entirely in language. It shows up in company values decks and dinner party conversations, in the careful way people say “neurodivergent” now instead of whatever they used to say. It sounds right. It has learned the words....

The Mask Tax

The Mask Tax

Small talk isn’t just awkward for neurodivergents; it’s a tax on authenticity. Every forced “how was your weekend?” is a microtransaction of your realness, paid to access neurotypical spaces. The cringe is about the gap between who you are and who you’re “supposed” to...

The Pattern Before the Proof

The Pattern Before the Proof

Some of us see it before anyone else does.The connection three steps ahead. The flaw in the system everyone else accepts. The shape of a thing still forming in the fog. We don’t arrive at it through consensus. We arrive at it because our minds refuse the well-worn...

The Same Story, Two Ways

The Same Story, Two Ways

On grief, pride, and the freedom that lives between them. I can bring myself to my knees. Not because life is beating me right now, but because I can look back at my own story and feel it. Really feel it. All the things I went through that I didn’t fully process in...

When the System Assumes You’re Whole

When the System Assumes You’re Whole

Every system built by human beings carries a hidden assumption inside it: that the people operating it are, at some basic level, whole. Not perfect. Not without bias or ambition. Whole. Grounded. Capable of self-reflection. Able to distinguish between personal gain...