Post #83: I Will Not Be Shamed!

My Inner Work This Week: Coming Out of The Closet.. Again! A New One!

Photo by Miguel Bruna on Unsplash

By Way of Introduction

I’ve been a Substack writer since March of 2026. I have been a psychotherapist for over 35 years, am the author of three successful books on women and men with ADHD, and am considered a pioneer in the field of Women with ADHD and neurodiversity.

Ever since I began writing here on Substack, and almost more than ever, I’ve been genuinely enjoying my work and writing. For the first time in my life, I’ve been able to express my thoughts in a raw, authentic, immediate way allowing me to connect with my community in a deeper way.

As a neurodivergent woman, I’ve struggled my whole life with the way I create and generate content – and I create a lot of it! My pattern has always been the same: I produce a first draft full of original ideas and beautiful language, but with almost no form and often without fully legible spelling or writing. I then spend hours spell‑correcting and trying to organize the ideas. Often, I need to ask my husband to help me reorganize the paragraphs, going back and forth multiple times.

The ideas and language were often creative, lyrical, even inspirational—I just can’t write, spell, and organize all at the same time.

When I wrote on my own, I accumulated thousands of pieces I couldn’t publish unless I had a partner or paid a lot of money to editors. The so‑called assistive technologies at the time all cost a lot money, took time, and were hard to understand, find, or implement—especially for someone with executive function difficulties. From hiring editorial assistants and proofreaders to trying voice‑to‑text software or collaborators, most of the time I would just give up on all that and spend hour after hour trying to produce a coherent piece that could show the world what I had to say.

You see, I have a disability. I have ADHD as well as some kind of visual–spatial difficulty. And I’ve carried this with me forever.

All my life, starting in school, my beautiful papers and ideas came back to me covered in big red marks:

“This is a mess.”

“This could have been done by a second grader.”

Later, in my early professional life, working at counseling agencies, I would slink past the admins who had to type up my reports because they were so frustrated with me.

I began to hide my thoughts and my work. I hid the way I worked. I hid my cherished words and my big ideas and felt ashamed. No one ever separated things out for me or said:

“Your ideas and your language are wonderful. Let’s get you some help with the organization.”

Then something happened.

And then—writing here on Substack—voilà, something miraculous happened. I could sit down and write out my ideas in one go. Generating original content has never been my problem. My issue is that, ironically, I generate too much content with very little organization. I pour my heart out, but then I can’t really read it or see what’s there.

I needed something to take my extensive ideas and my skills at expressing them, and give them back to me in a form I could actually see, read, and work with – in a second.

And there is was - AI.

I could then edit again, in my own words, with this amazing assistive technology. This opened up a huge space of energy for me, an openness, an ease. At this stage of my life, at the autumn of my career, after a lifetime of struggling with getting my ideas out - imagine what that felt like to finally be free of the hours and hours of writing and re-writing just to get over a seemingly small but unbridgeable gap from first thoughts to even a second draft. I was free.

And then something else happened….

So, imagine my sadness, turning quickly to outrage when my refuge—the place where I could get the help I needed easily, without all the distress and hours of extra work—was suddenly invaded by the introduction of AI detectors and what felt like “purity” tests..what seemed like demands of a “mea culpa” or proving myself as worthy or equal. All the old wounds came flooding back.

My first instinct was to hide, to pretend, or just quit. It was painful listening to other (neurotypical) Substack writers say they wouldn’t read people who use AI because they “don’t want to waste time on writers who “didn’t take the time to write” when in reality it takes many of us far longer to write than others. They subtly demanded confessions and explanations, as if after the detectors were turned on, someone would sit in judgment and decide whether we were worthy. Sometimes I feel like I’ve been called before Joseph McCarthy and the Committee on Un‑American Activities: “Have you now or ever been a member of the AI community?”

What about live editors?

The irony? That same day I saw the notice about the AI detectors, I received my huge, finished, perfectly copy-edited manuscript from my publisher who had just finished editing the revision of my latest book (that I wrote with a co-author.) Yes, there was no AI used, however, it was perfectly edited by a multitude of editors, which, of course, is the norm in the publishing industry and must have taken countless hours. Tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of books are published this way every day. No one writes a book alone for a publisher. Where is the outrage? Does that make them “not real writers”? It’s absurd.

The Same Old Fight

I can’t believe I’m fighting this fight again. It’s the same fight I engaged in during the early 1990s - trying to get people to grant accommodations at work and school, to help them overcome shame and separate their talents from their difficulties. Because often they are tangled up together. In order to gain access to our strengths, we need help with the very skills required to make those strengths visible. After reading those comments from (I’m assuming) neurotypical writers claiming people who use AI are not real writers, I thought: I could just pretend. I could add back all those extra hours. I could stop using the assistive technology that’s finally made writing sustainable and joyful for me.

Nah.

I’m not going back.

I almost went down that road. Then I stopped myself.

These are old wounds.

NO.

I am doing great work, helping people, and writing. I am a real writer—a writer with a disability. I am a creative thinker—a thinker with a disability.

I realized I am not in the same place I was before my diagnosis, over 35 years ago. I have nothing to be ashamed of.

I will not be shamed. I will fight the stigma.

The message from Substack this week, even though neurotypical writers and others will deny this, seemed to be:

“You need to “out” yourself.

You need to come clean so others can decide if you’re “good enough.”

They want us to use their measurements—the very standards we have fought for years not to be crushed under. We have fought in order to NOT measure our worth against neurotypical norms.

The arrogance of these so‑called “real writers” is disturbing. Here we go again.

I’ve coined a new term for this: “Neuro-Privilege”

All of these messages took me back to all those years of being shamed in my identity as a woman because of my EF (executive function) challenges.

I was “not a real woman..not good enough” woman, wife, mother, because I couldn’t perform the job duties the way “real,” neurotypical women could—way before we even had that language. It felt the same.

I am deep and expressive, and I am not going to devote my life at this point to proving my worth or justifying my tools. I will not cower in fear.

This is the end of Disability Pride Month, and because of that, I am standing up for my brothers and sisters with ADHD and “AuADHD” who I’ve been reading here on Substack—writers whose work has amazed me, and whose support, insight, and courage have helped me and so many others to a great extent.

When I published my first book about women with ADHD in 1995—when I was naïve and outside the system - without really understanding it, people said I was brave.

I just said and wrote what I saw, and it has served me well all these years. Well, now, I’m doing it again. Naive or brave? I don’t know. If people don’t want to read what I write, that’s fine.

I’m “coming out of the closet” like I did years ago when I stopped trying to “pass for normal” as a woman with ADHD.

“I use AI.” There.. I’ve said it.

I use it, not to cheat, not to create my ideas or write my words, but as a tool that allows to me organize my thoughts and offer them to my readers.

Acceptance, accommodation, or tolerance isn’t enough for me anymore. I don’t anyone’s seal of approval.

What I’m asking—is for people to actually begin to consider and understand how writers with disabilities work and what we need to have a level the playing field.

I will not be shamed. Not this time. I’m done with that.

(Now I’m going to put this post into AI so I can read it.)

By the way, AI came up with this next line. I like it.

“I’m sharing this not to “confess” or prove I’m worthy, but as an act of disability, pride, and solidarity with other creators with disabilities.”

Full Disclosure: this version of this post was edited by a human : My husband!

Gratefully yours,

Sari Solden

P.S. Please let me know your disability, writing, and AI experiences. I want to hear from others who live this too, so if you want to share this with other creators on Substack with ADHD or a disability, please do!