The Interruption (aka Thinking Thursday)
Where Neurodivergent Gumbo Goes From Here
Let me be honest for a second:
Neurodivergent Gumbo has been a little chaotic lately — a little “wait, how did we get from Practical Magic to Disney villain agendas in three weeks?”
And honestly?
That’s the beauty of it.
Gumbo isn’t supposed to be neat.
It’s layered, unpredictable, and full of flavors that shouldn’t work together but somehow do.
Just like the brain. Just like culture. Just like survival.
But I want to let you know where we’re headed next.
Because something has been simmering underneath all of these essays:
the realization that story is one of the strongest forces shaping culture, especially for people who don’t fit neatly into the world’s expectations.
Neurodivergent Gumbo is evolving.
Not changing — evolving.
Going forward, we’re stepping into a deeper, sharper, more intentional version of this series:
a space where we dissect the stories we grew up with and ask why they were written the way they were.
Because stories are not neutral.
Disney is not neutral.
Fairy tales are not neutral.
What we call “children’s entertainment” has always been a tool of cultural conformity — teaching us who deserves freedom, who should hide, who is safe to love, and who should stay silent.
It tells us what normal looks like, and more importantly, what happens when you deviate from it.
And if you’re neurodivergent, queer, Black, artistic, traumatized, or simply someone who has lived outside the script — those lessons hit different.
This is why we’re shifting the Gumbo into a clearer focus:
Why do certain stories comfort us?
Why do others wound us?
What patterns keep repeating?
Why does Disney apologize for difference with a song and then uphold the same system that punishes it?
Why does every “hero’s journey” look like a rebranded version of conformity?
And why are we still letting these narratives shape us?
Today’s Thinking Thursday is the invitation.
Sunday’s Gumbo will be the first bowl of the new era — a deep dive into Frozen, colonial fear, indoctrination, masking, attachment trauma, and why Elsa isn’t queer-coded so much as she is neurodivergent-coded.
The short version?
We’re not just watching movies.
We’re pulling the mask off the entire storytelling machine.
Come hungry.