What we’re about
The Chicago Neurodiverse Social Club (formerly the Oak Park and River Forest Neurodiverse Social Club) seeks to introduce neurodiverse adults to each other and provide social support and connection. The club is intended to act as both a support group and a social club. This group is open to any adult (18+) in the Chicago area who is diagnosed with or is seeking a diagnosis for a neurodiverse condition. The group is also open to self-diagnosed individuals.
Neurodiverse conditions include Autism Spectrum Disorders, ADD/ADHD, Dyslexia, or any developmental, mental health, or cognitive condition. What’s important is that you consider yourself to fall under the "neurodiverse" label and are seeking connection with people who share in your life experiences.
Future events may include game nights, support group meetings, nights out on the town, and coffee chats. Let us know if you have an event you'd like to see us hold! Please contact the group organizers if you will need any accessibility accommodations to participate. Efforts will be made to choose event locations that are easily accessible. Most of our events in Oak Park are easy to reach via CTA's Green Line.
If you're interested in volunteering with us, please fill out this volunteer interest form: https://forms.gle/LSGD6SHkH4KE6LvHA
The Chicago Neurodiverse Social Club is proudly supported by Come As You Are (CAYR) Connections! CAYR Connections is a local non-profit based in Oak Park, IL that seeks to improve the lives of the neurodivergent community. They provide access to resources, increase community awareness around neurodivergent issues, and create community spaces for neurodivergent individuals and their families. Please check them out at this link! CAYR Connections is a great resource if you have children who are not old enough to attend this group.
Upcoming events (4+)
See all- CAYR Connections: Neurodiversity Book Club (Hybrid)Oak Park Public Library, Oak Park, IL
This event is held by CAYR Connections, a sponsor of the Chicago Neurodiverse Social Club. Check them out at www.cayrconnections.org
This is a HYBRID event -- the in-person meeting will take place at the Oak Park Public Library. We will also have a virtual option using Zoom.
Join the online discussion group on the Fable app (see https://fable.co/) before the event for excerpts, questions, and comments about the book!
You do not need to read the book to attend the event. If you don't finish the book, no worries!
About the book:
Our sense of enchantment is not only sparked by grand things. The awe-inspiring, the numinous, is all around us, all the time. It is transformed by our deliberate attention. The magic is of our own conjuring.After years of pandemic life – parenting while working, battling anxiety about things beyond her control, feeling overwhelmed by the news-cycle and increasingly isolated – Katherine May feels bone-tired, on edge and depleted. Could there be another way to live? One that would allow her to feel less fraught and more connected, more rested and at ease, even as seismic changes unfold on the planet?
In Enchantment, May invites the reader to come with her on a journey to reawaken our innate sense of wonder and awe. With humor, candor, and warmth, she shares stories of her own struggles with work, family, and the aftereffects of pandemic, particularly feelings of overwhelm as the world rushes to reopen. Craving a different way to live, May begins to explore the restorative properties of the natural world, moving through the elements of earth, water, fire, and air and identifying the quiet traces of magic that can be found only when we look for them. Through deliberate attention and ritual, she unearths the potency and nourishment that come from quiet reconnection with our immediate environment. Blending lyricism and storytelling, sensitivity and empathy, Enchantment invites each of us to open the door to human experience in all its sensual complexity, and to find the beauty waiting for us there.
About the Author:
Katherine May is an internationally renowned writer, podcaster and speaker whose work touches on nature, spirituality, slow living and neurodivergence.Her hybrid memoir Wintering was a global bestseller, adapted as BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week, and shortlisted for the Porchlight and Barnes & Noble Book of the Year.
Her most recent title, Enchantment became an instant New York Times bestseller, and The Electricity of Every Living Thing, her memoir of a midlife autism diagnosis, was adapted as an audio drama by Audible. Other titles include novels such as The Whitstable High Tide Swimming Club, and The Best, Most Awful Job, an anthology of essays about motherhood which she edited.
Katherine writes the popular Substack newsletter, The Clearing. Her journalism and essays have appeared in a range of publications including The New York Times, The Observer, The Wall Street Journal, Time, and Aeon. She hosts the chart-topping podcast How We Live Now, and has been a guest presenter for On Being’s The Future of Hope series.
Katherine lives by the sea in Whitstable, UK, with her husband, son and pets. She loves walking, sea-swimming and cooking enormous feasts.
