Neuroconvergence Event

Last Saturday, I attended my first ever Neuroconvergence in UCD in their student centre. This  event was a conference for neurodivergent people like me. I had only heard about it two days before hand, so I was unsure as to what would happen.

I signed up to three mini events being held throughout the afternoon and evening. The first one was called Lightening Talks where we neurodiversity folks would give a ten minute talk on any topic we wanted.

The first speaker, a young woman spoke about her book of poetry which she is preparing to publish. She told all about how she found a mentor to go through all the different ways that she could make her writing have a bigger impact on her readers. As a poet myself, I found this very interesting. In fact I am also in the process of writing a book of poetry myself. So I’ll be taking a lot of what she said on board for my book which I hope to publish soon.

Next up for the talk was myself. I decided to talk about my late diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome and mental health. I mentioned a few things which I have mentioned in a few of my posts, so I won’t burden you with the same information all over again.

The mental health issue I spoke about however, I have not mentioned. In 2017, I ended up in psychiatric care involuntarily after a suicide attempt. I’m sure you can imagine this is not easy for me to write about and infact I’m not sure I’m ready to divulge in writing online so I’m going to pause this part of this blog post for now.

The second event I went to was a screening of a film by singer, songwriter and film maker, Myles O’Reilly. Myles has sung alongside members from the Irish Folk band called Kila (pronounced “Keelah”). I never knew there was a cinema in UCD and I found this to be pretty cool..The film he made was fascinating and had no talking in it. Myles is neurodivergent himself and his film was based on sensory overload while walking around the city streets of Dublin. I spoke to him afterwards and he’s such a nice man. Perhaps someday I’ll be able to collaborate with him in some way.

The last event I went to was the talk with charities like AsIAm – the autism charity of Ireland, Dyspraxia Ireland, ADHD Ireland and Dyslexia Ireland. The founders all talked about what they have achieved over the last year and hope to achieve in the future. Then they answered questions. I got to talk to Adam Harris, Minister Simon Harris’ brother. Adam is the founder and CEO of AsIAm. I asked about what supports were on offer for someone who was diagnosed after graduating from college and also has three other health conditions including my mental health. Unfortunately, I suddenly got information overload and my brain started to shut down. They saw I was struggling and Adam gave me his email address so I could reach out to him when I was up to it.

All in all, it was a very enjoyable day. I even bumped into two of my friends while I was there, Nikolas and his partner, Toryn and my friend Ross so that made it an even more enjoyable day.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post.