In this episode, I am joined by Boundary Spanner Melissa Vining. In a multi-faceted conversation, Melissa and I talk about many topics of shared interest aka our significantly overlapping Venn diagrams. The conversation weaves its way through music, teaching, storytelling using a golden thread to support your message, career coaching, neurodivergence and motherhood, and our mutual past as people who grew up in Minnesota and moved away.

We explore some of the unique contradictory qualities of AuDHDers who have both an autism and ADHD diagnosis and the challenges of neurodivergent job seekers. Melissa delighted me by offering a challenge to one of my rapidish fire question about using metaphors.

Promised Show Notes Materials (take a drink):

• CliftonStrengths Assessment
• Sara’s episode on Melissa’s podcast, Job Search for High-Performing Misfits
• Sara's Find Your Golden Thread offer
• The Neurodivergent Woman Podcast
• CSCCE Series on Gardening as a Metaphor for Community Management
• Range: Why Generalists Thrive in a Specialized World by David Epstein (misspoken during the podcast)
• Neurodiversity in the Workplace: website and podcast/YouTube
• The Anxious Achiever podcast with Morra Aarons-Mele
• Dialect Quiz (warning, this inaccurately guessed where I’m from, but it does mention the bubbler)
• Find Your Local American Job Center

Follow Melissa on Social Media:

LinkedIn | YouTube

A few things Melissa and I discuss:

• 2:45 Being outside-the-box
• 4:02 Music and teaching (and “flutist” vs “flautist”)
• 7: 18 CliftonStrengths
• 10:27 Finding your golden thread
• 11:40 Renaissance People thrive in innovative spaces
• 13:28 Goal focused vs process focused environments and the issue with school systems
• 15:31 Overlap between Renaissance People and “neurospicy” folks
• 16:20 Changes in ADHD and autism diagnoses
• 20:53 Neurodivergence and the job search
• 22:16 Misfits finding their place
• 26:11 Explaining your complexity with stories and a golden thread
• 32:20 Using caution around AI and telling your story during your job search
• 34:57 Improv Game
• 37:06 Rapidish Fire Questions

Quotes from the...