About me

My name is Dan, though I also go by Daniel and use he/they pronouns interchangeably. I am an openly trans/queer, AuDHD and disabled peer support coach, therapist, and gender doula in training. I specialize in issues relating to gender, queer identity, autism, and adhd. While I have a passion for serving the queer and gender expansive community, I welcome clients from all backgrounds and experiences.

Growing up in the south, I did not feel safe to express my authentic self or natural mode of being. I did not have any real access to AuDHD, queer, trans, or gender expansive representation, let alone mentors or community models for guidance. There were no supportive spaces for me to gently explore my thoughts, feelings, and overall relationship to gender and queerness throughout my younger life. It took years of cultivating relationships with queer/trans peers and gender expansive community in order to feel safe enough to explore my needs relating to gender, and even more years before I could explore my own neurodivergence. 

Despite being repeatedly tested for autism as a child, I was never formally identified as autistic because my traits did not fit the expectations of the neuronormative gaze. Because I was perceived as a girl, my lack of speaking and eye contact were dismissed as 'shyness.' Frequent meltdowns, migraines induced by repeated sensory overload, and subsequent shutdowns were brushed off not as genuine distress responses, but as 'defiance' or an excuse to avoid school. Without adequate care and guidance, I learned to internalize these experiences and disconnect from my body and sense of self in order to survive. 

It wasn't until a deep burnout in my late twenties, when I had lost the capacity for neurotypical performance, that I began to reclaim my autistic traits as my natural neurocognitive functioning style. I immersed myself in the radical knowledge of autistic lived experiences, while excavating my own history to find the threads of an identity that neuronormative culture had severed.

These experiences showed me the importance of creating support spaces where people can explore the intersections of gender, queerness, and neurodivergence free from pathologizing frameworks. In a world where institutional care often fails to hold the complexity of our existence, I facilitate a sovereign space for self-determination. Within this container, individuals can transform their relationship to gender, explore embodiment without shame, and learn to advocate for their specific needs.

Exploring your neurodivergence and/or gender can serve as an act of resistance against normative erasure. As a peer support coach, I seek to offer a pathway toward mutual aid and collective liberation where our neurodivergent and queer realities are honored as valid ways of being.