SOMA Neurodiversity Community Network
Welcome
to the Network
"We all deserve to be seen, to be heard, to be believed, to be accepted, to be valued. Not in spite of our neurodivergence, but because of it."
— Morénike Giwa Onaiwu, autistic activist, scholar, and advocate
SOMA Neurodiversity Community Network (SNCN) is a community-driven initiative dedicated to supporting neurodivergent individuals through connection, visibility, and advocacy in South Orange and Maplewood, New Jersey.
Our mission is to foster meaningful connections within the neurodivergent community, provide a platform for self-advocacy, and ensure inclusive and authentic representation of neurodiversity in the broader community.
SNCN is grounded in the understanding that neurodivergence is shaped by intersecting identities—including race, gender, sexuality, class, and disability. We are committed to amplifying the full spectrum of neurodivergent voices.
Our Approach
SNCN holds that there can be no meaningful solutions to systemic barriers without the full inclusion and leadership of those most directly impacted.
We recognize that neurodivergent individuals must have a central role in shaping the conversations, decisions, and actions that affect their lives. Truly values-driven, neurodiversity-affirming work must be guided by the lived experiences, insights, and leadership of the neurodivergent community. That is why SNCN operates as a collective.
As a collective, we:
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Engage in ongoing dialogue and reflection to ensure our work remains responsive, inclusive, and grounded in the lived experiences and insights of the community.
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Invite community members to share their experiences, needs, and goals to help shape our programming priorities and practices.
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Create open and supportive pathways for neurodivergent individuals to take on leadership roles, co-create initiatives, and guide our direction.
SNCN invites you to join the network and help create a more accessible, inclusive and affirming SOMA.
Neurodiversity Concepts to Know
Understanding sensory experience, cognitive processes and patterns of behavior and communication is necessary to appreciate what neurotypical, neurodivergent and neurodiversity are. Understanding neurodiversity helps explain neurodivergence as an invisible disability and the need to combat ableism with neurodiversity affirming attitudes and aspirations.
Sensory Experience
The experience of receiving information taken in from eight senses; touch, smell, taste, sound, sight and the less commonly discussed vestibular signals (sense of balance), proprioceptive signals (sense of one’s body in space), and interoceptive signals (internal cues).
Neurotypical
Relating to or showing patterns of thinking, learning, communication, and sensory processing that generally align with prevailing sociocultural norms and expectations. Neurotypical individuals tend to have sensory experiences, cognitive processes, and patterns of behavioral and communication that are considered standard or the default.
Ableism
Systems, actions, and attitudes that hold non-disabled individuals as ideal and disabled individuals as less than. Ableism marginalizes, devalues, and excludes those with disabilities and intersects with other forms of systemic oppression, disproportionately affecting disabled individuals from marginalized communities.
Cognitive Processes
The mental processes involved in thinking, learning, understanding, remembering, reasoning and problem solving.
Neurodivergent
Relating to or showing sensory experiences, cognitive processes, and patterns of behavior and communication that are distinctly apart from what is socioculturally expected. Individuals who are autistic individuals, have ADHD, dyslexia, and dyspraxia, and other forms of cognitive difference may identify as neurodivergent. Neurodivergence is a type of invisible disability because its impacts are not always immediately apparent to others.
Invisible Disability
A disability that is not immediately apparent to others but impacts the disabled person's lived experience. Because invisible disabilities are not always recognized, accommodations are rarely provided.
Patterns of Behavior & Communication
Recurring or habitual actions and mannerisms including those involved in method and manner of conveying information.
Neurodiversity
Coined by Australian sociologist Judy Singer, this concept rejects that there is a 'right' way to have sensory experiences, cognitive processes or patterns of behavior and communication acknowledging instead the reality of an abundance of diversity.
Neurodiversity Affirming
Recognizing and supporting both neurotypical AND neurodivergent experiences as valid forms of human diversity. Stepping away from engaging neurodivergent experiences as something to be 'fixed' or 'overcome', while creating space where people with differing neurological profiles can thrive.