Art Helped Me Realize I'm Queer: My Story as a Neurodivergent Mom in a Heterosexual Marriage

I've always felt strangely drawn to the queer community.

For a long time, I couldn't explain why. I was married to a man, we had two children, and I never questioned that part of my life. I simply assumed I was an ally who felt at home in queer spaces.

It wasn't until I was 34 that I started wondering if there was more to it.

Around the same time, I had been diagnosed with autism and ADHD. Like many late-diagnosed neurodivergent people, I found myself looking back at my life through a completely different lens. Research has shown that autistic and ADHD people are more likely to identify as LGBTQ+ than the general population. That doesn't mean one causes the other, but it did make me wonder whether there was something about myself I had never really looked at.

My art unexpectedly became part of that process.

Without planning it, I kept painting opposites. Candy and decay. Cute things and bones. Bright colors and death. Again and again, I found myself combining things that don't usually belong together. At some point, I started asking myself why those combinations felt so natural to me.

The answer surprised me.

I don't just like opposites in my paintings. I've always felt like I exist somewhere between them.

Not only between masculine and feminine, but in many parts of my life. Between being playful and serious. Between loving silly conversations and wanting to talk about life, death, and everything in between. Between structure and chaos. Between feeling like a child and feeling much older than my age.

Looking back, there were so many little moments that suddenly made sense.

I love glitter, colorful things, and wearing dresses every now and then. At the same time, I I want to be tough like Rambo. None of that ever felt contradictory to me. They are simply different parts of who I am.

When boys had crushes on me, my honest reaction was often, "Wait... why? I'm your bro." I wasn't trying to be funny. That's genuinely how it felt. Being seen as "the girl" often surprised me because that wasn't really how I experienced myself on the inside.

Pregnancy felt strange too. I loved being pregnant because I loved my children long before they were born. I chose to breastfeed because it mattered to me and I'm grateful I could. But both experiences also felt oddly disconnected from my sense of self. It wasn't that they were bad. They just didn't feel like experiences that defined me as a woman in the way people often talk about them.

I also realized that I've never really understood why people expect masculinity and femininity to be mutually exclusive.

Why can't someone love glitter and still want to be strong?

Why can't someone wear a dress one day and oversized clothes the next?

Why does kindness have to be feminine and toughness masculine?

Those categories have never made much sense to me.

The autism diagnosis probably helped me see that. Neurodivergent people often question social rules that others seem to accept automatically. I don't think I ever consciously rejected those expectations, I just never really understood why they were there in the first place.

Today, I still feel completely comfortable in my body. I don't want to become a man. But I also don't really experience myself as a woman in the way society often describes womanhood. Somewhere inside, I feel like neither and somehow both at the same time.

Finding the word queer didn't change who I am.

It simply gave me language for something I'd been feeling for a very long time.

For me, being queer isn't about rejecting masculinity or femininity. It's about realizing that I don't have to choose between them. I can be gentle and direct, emotional and analytical, love glitter and still want to be like Rambo. None of those things cancel each other out.

Looking back, I think that's why I always felt comfortable around queer people. I didn't know exactly where I belonged, but I recognized something familiar in the way many people there talked about identity. There was room for complexity, for contradictions, for existing somewhere in between.

Maybe that's also why my art looks the way it does.

Candy and decay.

Life and death.

Beauty and brokenness.

Not because I was trying to make a statement, but because that's how the world has always made sense to me.

At 34, I finally found a word that feels like home.

I write more about how autism, ADHD and feeling like I exist somewhere in the middle shaped this realization in Being an Autistic and ADHD Artist and Being a Neurodivergent Artist: Living Between Categories.