I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to grow up knowing your brain works differently, and how that awareness quietly changes the shape of a life.

This past weekend, I was walking through the mall with my kids, and I noticed something I couldn’t unsee. As we moved through the crowd, my body was doing what it has always done. Scanning. Tracking. Reading micro shifts in posture and movement. Calculating who might bump into us, who looked rushed, who seemed distracted. I was hyperaware of every person passing by, my nervous system braced in a way that feels so familiar I rarely question it.

My kids were just walking.

They weren’t scanning the room or adjusting their bodies preemptively. They weren’t carrying the invisible job of keeping the peace in a crowded public space. And I felt that reflex rise up in me. The urge to make them more aware. To tell them to move aside, to be careful, to not get in the way.

Then I caught myself.

That hypervigilance didn’t come from wisdom. It came from adaptation. It came from growing up without language for my neurodivergence, without mirrors that reflected me accurately, without adults who could say, “Nothing is wrong with you, but the environment may ask more of you than it should.” Instead, I learned early that safety often came from being agreeable, flexible, and anticipatory. I learned to manage space before I learned to trust myself within it.

My kids don’t carry that same weight. They’re growing up in a world where neurodivergence is at least nameable. Where difference isn’t automatically framed as a problem to solve. And it shows up in their bodies. In how freely they take up space. In how little responsibility they feel for managing everyone else’s comfort.

Standing there, I realized something else that extends far beyond parenting. We don’t always need to be the ones moving out of the way. Shared space isn’t meant to be navigated by one group doing all the adjusting. It’s meant to be a dance. Sometimes you yield. Sometimes the other person does. Sometimes there’s friction, and no one is harmed by it.

This is where leadership quietly enters the picture.

Many of today’s leaders, especially those of us who are late diagnosed, learned leadership the same way we learned crowd navigation. Anticipate everything. Smooth friction. Absorb discomfort. Move yourself out of the way so the system keeps flowing. We became exceptional at people pleasing and conflict avoidance, mistaking it for emotional intelligence or professionalism.

But that style of leadership comes at a cost.

When leaders are always the ones moving out of the way, systems never learn to adjust. Neurodivergent employees become the ones doing the constant translating, masking, and accommodating, while organizations congratulate themselves for being “inclusive.” The burden quietly stays where it always was.

Watching my kids walk through that mall without shrinking made something painfully clear. If I keep teaching them to move out of the way reflexively, I’m not preparing them for leadership. I’m preparing them for burnout.

Leadership, like shared space, works best when responsibility is distributed. When awareness flows in multiple directions. When we stop expecting one person or one group to do all the adapting. Inclusive leadership isn’t about eliminating friction. It’s about designing environments where friction doesn’t automatically fall on the same shoulders.

I still catch myself defaulting to old rules. I still feel the pull to teach accommodation before teaching boundaries. Those instincts are deeply wired, and without someone holding up a mirror, without coaching or intentional reflection, they can masquerade as good leadership habits.

But I want better. For my kids. For the teams we lead. For the next generation of leaders who won’t need to unlearn hypervigilance just to feel safe at work.

​Because leadership isn’t about always moving out of the way. Sometimes it’s about holding your ground long enough for the system to learn how to move with you.