Becoming Networks for Neuro-Inclusion

These days I feel myself drawn to walks in the woods, more now than in recent times. I felt a similar draw in the first few months of the pandemic, when we were thrust into radical changes to our routines and the social structure at large. Encounters with the non-human world took me away from the stress and anxiety of the daily news and gradually invited me to listen to different perspectives that I could bring back to my relationships and renew a sense of purpose.  

We are grateful to find spaces where we can regularly walk through a forest and witness the gradually changes of the seasons. Winter thins out the forests where we can see farther into the landscape and after a fresh snow the branches of trees are coated with sparkling white. Trees live in a different time scale, compared to our hectic technology addicted culture; slowing changing through the different seasons, sharing resources with each other through underground networks of mycelium—an intricate system of fungal threads that extend through the soil. These mycelia form vast networks allowing trees to exchange nutrients between each other and send chemical signals allowing communication about potential threats such as pests or diseases. 

On one recent walk, I noticed a large oak tree that had fallen along the trail awhile ago. I had passed this tree several times but never really noticed it. Along it’s trunk, moss had grown in numerous places and fungi now surrounded the tree. A natural process was unfolding where the tree was gradually being broken down, recycled and taken back into the earth. Interestingly, fungal networks have survived and thrived even through the known five major mass extinction events on earth. Their interconnected networks lack a single figure head and through their networks of resource sharing have the impact of changing a landscape of individual trees in a forest into a superorganism.

These wonders from the natural world give us insights in how we can respond and decompose the challenges the current moments present to us. Autistic individuals continue to confront high rates of unemployment and significant systemic barriers with how employers assess neurodivergent talent, expecting candidates to pass through a social competency test to qualify for work. We can become like our friends’ uniting trees in a forest. We can become networks that embody the value of neuro-inclusion.

Valuing neuro-inclusion recognizes that managers who become more fluent in understanding different languages of the mind also become more adaptable and agile. Valuing neuro-inclusion recognizes the variety of talent that heterogenous teams need to solve complex problems. By becoming just like fungal networks, nature is showing us how we can adapt to extinction-like events and even thrive. Practically, it means being the manager who offers to take a neurodivergent intern; it means speaking with leadership in your organization about accessing neurodivergent talent; it means being a leader who advocates for the value of neuro-inclusion in your organization; it means networking with anyone in your community and becoming just like the mycelium that share resources without ego and turns each one of us into a collective superorganism. We need to listen to our friends in the forest. They are showing us how we can respond to this moment together, by becoming networks for neuro-inclusion.