Ackerly Green Publishing

Walking sticks are magical implements in the Briarverse and I have collected a lot of them over the years, including the handmade props from The Monarch Papers, which are imbued with photosensitive epoxy that glows when exposed to sunlight.

The first walking stick that appeared in The Monarch Papers was previously owned by Sullivan Green and was passed down to Deirdre along with his journals and chronocompass.

In the narrative, walking sticks are conduits for magiq. The more a magimyst travels, the more stories they make, the more they experience in places rich with magiq, the more the stick gathers.

It’s useful for quickly conjuring, and most skilled magimystics find their “true stick” at some point in their lives. However, they are not intended for the mundane world, and will splinter and eventually break the more they are used.

Occasionally, I like to walk with my walking sticks. It's similar to finding a large stick in the woods as a kid and feeling like you could cast spells like a wizard. It's a very powerful feeling!

Did you experience that too, or is that a neurodivergent "me" thing?

I’ve delayed writing this for months for a lot of reasons (bwaha, that’s the perfect first line for a post about ADHD)

I thought that post-diagnosis, I was starting on the road to understanding, treating, and maybe even managing ADHD, it turns out, one year later, I’m instead still figuring out which parts of “me” are ADHD, which parts are the trauma that comes with growing up neurodivergent, and which parts are the mental and emotional scaffolding I’ve built over the years to help me function in this neurotypically designed world, under neurotypical demands.

For me, and I can only speak for myself, having ADHD is kind of like this:

The world is an ocean 🌊

And the different kinds of creatures living in the ocean are having all sorts of different experiences, but *they are all born in the ocean*, and living there is second nature to them.

Fish, plankton, sharks, whales. The ones who can only survive at the bottom. The ones who have to surface every now and then to breathe.

And where do I fit within this biosphere as a neurodivergent person?

I don’t. I’m not a sea creature.

I’m a SCUBA diver.

I don’t breathe like everyone else or see like everyone else. I certainly don’t swim like everyone else. I am *always* aware that I’m not really built for the world the way it currently exists.

It just wasn’t made to accommodate me.

To do anything beyond just existing in the ocean means I have to train, and figure out the right equipment and proper chemical mixtures to breathe, and wear fins and swimsuit to protect me from the cold, and above all, I need a well-fitting mask that I can’t take off.

While ADHD is often considered a manageable and even positive “quirk,” it can also be a devastating and painful disability.

A year later, I have days of contentment, productivity, joy, and weeks of loneliness, confusion, fear, and pain. Some of it is pre-existing, some of it specifically because I now know what I know.

I’m getting to know who I am under the masks I’ve worn my whole life while knowing that some people in my life won’t recognize the person underneath, and maybe I won’t either.

And believing it has to be worth the work 💜