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Neurodiversity Garden
The Neurodiversity Garden is an online initiative created to deepen public understanding of neurodiversity, a co-creating and safe space where authentic voices and perspectives can be seen and heard!
Neurodiversity Garden
An Online Initiative to Share Voices and Perspectives in Our Community
We would love to hear from you!
The Neurodiversity Garden is an online platform dedicated to sharing lived experiences and personal perspectives related to neurodiversity. It is a collaborative space where individuals can tell their stories in ways that feel authentic and comfortable, with visibility balanced by privacy and safety.
By centering authentic personal testimony, the Neurodiversity Garden seeks to deepen understanding, challenging misconceptions, and forge meaningful bridges between the neurodivergent and neurotypical worlds - fostering connections and collective insights across Hong Kong.
This platform invites neurodivergent individuals, family members, friends, professionals, allies, and many passionate ones to join this journey. To support the diverse communication preferences and profiles, the platform accepts multiple expressive formats to honour diverse communication strengths and comfort as well.
Please CLICK HERE for details such as ideas, formats and process. All submissions will be kept confidential.
We can't wait to hear the diversity of sharing!
Image generated from Grok, March 2026
Title: Let's Make the Unseen Seen!
I will turn 58 this August, and back in December 2025 I received a diagnosis that finally gave me language for how my brain works: I am “twice exceptional” – ADHD with above-average cognitive ability (IQ 127).
For more than 27 years I have been learning about neurodiversity to support my son and now my granddaughter, who are also neurodivergent. Along the way I recognised many of the same patterns in myself: a nonstop brain, thousands of ideas, difficulty switching off, and a tendency to be seen as a “workaholic” or “too intense”.
Many people asked, “Why do you need a diagnosis? You’re doing fine.” For me, assessment was not about collecting a label. It was about understanding my wiring so I can work with my brain, not against it – and build a life and career that are sustainable.
To the girls and women who are high-achieving, constantly masking, and quietly exhausted: you are not alone. A diagnosis or formal assessment does not limit you. It can highlight your strengths, explain your challenges, and open doors to support and environments where you can truly thrive.
I hope sharing my journey encourages more open conversations about ADHD, twice exceptionality, and the hidden experiences of neurodivergent women, especially in our workplaces.
Bonnie Yip
Executive Director, Learning Bridge
題目: 香港舊式街舖
設計者: 鄧啟揚
腦力多元人士
Title: The Cost of “You’re Fine”: Life After a Childhood Stroke by Giny
Title: Bridging Gap Between Autistic and Neurotypical Individuals by S.
Throughout my life, as an autistic person, I had many and mostly negative social interaction experiences with neurotypical people, partly due to mismatch between autistic individuals and neurotypical people in experiences and many features (double empathy problem, Milton et al., 2023). However, past few years, when I started connecting with many autistic people, I realized that I can actually socialize and interact both effectively and enjoyably with most autistic people. This is aligned with the research literature (Watts et al., 2025 systematic review). I had enjoyable social experiences that I rarely had before. I am be my natural self, with limited masking when I interact with most autistic people. I can infodump excitedly about common interests together with autistic people. I can stim together with autistic people. We interact well with each other in unique and different ways.
I wanna emphasize positive social interaction experiences are not solely limited to interactions between autistic individuals, but also with a smaller proportion of neurotypical people who understand autistic individuals well. There are non-autistic individuals that I interact more well and naturally with limited masking. I think interactions when both individuals mask less, is actually beneficial for building better rapport and sustainable relationships in which both individuals truly understand each other. Social interactions involve at least two persons – improving mutual understanding can benefit both neurotypical people and autistic people in the long run.
While masking is obviously needed sometimes and can be adaptive in some situations, finding and/or creating contexts where autistic people can be natural selves with less masking, is truly important in improving mental health. I hope there will be more safe contexts for autistic people to mask less or unmask, at home, in social gatherings, at some workplaces, schools, etc. Let’s build a truly inclusive society together!