Sara Hartley: Purposely Me: Navigating Neurodiversity With the Power of Stories

Welcome to Why Not Me? Embracing Autism and Mental Health Worldwide?
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Tune in, be inspired, and join us in transforming the
world one story at a time. Hi, I'm Tony Mantura.
Welcome to Why Not Me? Embracing Autism and Mental Health Worldwide.
Joining us today is Sarah Hartley. She is the visionary
behind SLH Creative Group and a fierce advocate for the
neurodivergent community. She's an author, a storyteller, a guide, and
a champion for those whose minds dance to a different rhythm.
She channels her lived experience into books that are both
a rallying cry and a roadmap. She will give us
insight to her purposely me series, which is a collection
of engaging, heart centered, social emotional books for kids navigating anxiety, ADHD, dyslexia,
and other neurodiverse experiences. Whether she's coaching individuals, consulting with organizations,
or penning her next book, she hopes to inspire everyone
when it comes to living authentically and thriving on our
own terms. She has a great story to tell, So
before we dive into our episode, we'll be back with
an uninterrupted show right after a word from our sponsors.
Thanks for joining us today.
Well, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to
be here.
Yes, my pleasure as well. If you would give us
a little information on what you're doing.
I'm Sarah Hartley. I'm a mom of two neurodivergent boys.
I'm a healthcare executive, and I've written fourteen now a
couple weeks ago it would have been thirteen, but fourteen
children's books centered around neurodiversity and difficult topics for children.
And I'm also an ADHD and neurodiversity certified coach.
That's really good. Let's start with the coaching side first.
What led you to get involved with coaching?
Honestly, it was my son's journey and everything that we
have gone through to really understand his ADHD diagnosis. He's
now almost nine, and a lot of this started around
even eighteen months old, of where there were specific things
that we saw of where he might have needed some
early intervention, and so that really took me on a
journey of understanding my own ADHD a bit more and
really just wanting to be able to provide information to
parents and children out there within my children's books so
that it becomes a more of that credible source and
have those true parenting strategies that will ultimately help for
us to calm ourselves, to help mirror that and calm
our children as well. And so within each of the
books that I've written in the back there are discussion questions,
there are different calming strategies used throughout, and so I
wanted to ensure that what I was articulating to those
that will read these that it was as accurate as possible,
because I am touching on very sensitive subjects.
You say you touch on some sensitive subjects, can you
expand on that?
One is around bullying, death, devor worse.
There's another given the appropriateness level of the age group,
it being more elementary school kids. There is one on
drills as well, and so I know that one really
hits close to home in Colorado. And you know, a
few weeks ago we had the shooting at Evergreen High School,
and so even just the anxiety that comes with children
doing fire drills and tornado drills and now active shooter drills,
there's a tremendous amount of anxiety from that. And so
other topics are anxiety, dyslexia, ADHD, autism, So it really
runs the full gamut of various things that can be
deuro diverse, but really are all centered around mental health.
Yeah, those are all great topics. What kind of feedback
are you getting when you put something new like this out?
You never know what to expect. You can get positive,
you can get negative. You just never know what to expect.
So how's the feedback? I'm assuming it's good.
So far, we've only shown these books to therapy ots
and different members of school organizations, so whether it's been
a principal or a social emotional coordinator, or teachers themselves
or teachers that are within the gifted program. To get
that feedback, that was really step one, even before I
was paired with an illustrator, so we've already run through
that process. The first book will actually launch in November,
and then we'll have one a month coming out after that,
so stay tuned.
They're coming very soon. But one of the.
Most critical pieces of feedback I received from actually a
therapist is she said, I see myself in this book,
but I see my daughter in the other book. And
so I think it's really important that while this is
directed for children, there's still this element of where an
adult can say, oh wow, I see myself there, and
then an adult can feel a little bit less alone
in their own brains as.
Well as I understand it. Then you have written this
mainly for children, even though adults may see themselves in it.
This has written is so children can focus on things
that may affect them.
Absolutely, So they are children's books. They're written in lyrical format.
The illustrations really bring to life the raw emotions of
the characters. It's a classroom of students, and so you're
hearing from a different child who's going to be shown
throughout the entire series, where they are integrated into each
other's lives. Given that there are specific neurodiversities that these
topics are touching on. I'm ensuring that the font is
open dyslexic font so that those who have dyslexia have
an easier time reading this. And while of course it's
centered around children, there is an element that I believe
there might be an older group that may find this
just as appealing. When I think about the ADHD brain,
it's not always the inability to focus, but sometimes determining
what to focus on because there are so many things,
and so sometimes when it comes to self help books
or things that might not have as much of attention
grab to really fully get ingrained in the book, that
might be where an adult says, oh wow, this was
very digestible and yet very helpful, and the questions at
the end were very thought provoking and really allowed me
to take a step back and look at myself in
what really was causing maybe some of my triggers or
noticing some of those differences and really having that moment
of oh wow, that might be me.
That character sounds a lot like me.
So, you know, it's four children, but I think it
really can appeal to all ages.
Yeah, I can see why. You know, I have heard
so many stories of where a parent would take their
son or daughter to a doctor, eying to find answers
to their questions. When they started getting the answers to
their questions, then they started realizing, hey, I have the
same issues they are having. This could be me. So
with that said, are you getting the feedback that you
thought you might get from all this?
Some just elements of language that maybe modify this or
make sure there's a glossary of terms so that you're
able to truly resonate with all elementary students. My son,
my oldest son, and even my younger one as well.
They're both highly gifted and so they're in the Gifted
and Talented program. Their vocabulary is much larger than say,
the average nine year old.
My oldest is actually eight, but he's.
In fourth grade. He started kindergarten at four years old.
He'll be nine actually in a few weeks. What he
understood and knew within the book, in the vocabulary I
initially was using, was maybe not as friendly or user
friendly for all children that are elementary school age. So
there was, you know, a bit of those revisions to
go back and say, Okay, I really need to think
about how this might land, and then would it be
beneficial to layer in some of those words. And so
my oldest son really was instrumental and one inspiring most
of these books. And also he's walked through all of
them with me as well and said, oh, Mom, I
think you should maybe change it to this, or I
don't think we're going to understand what that means. We're
going to need a definition for that one. But I
also want for parents to be able to walk through
it or a teacher and have that conversation that will
continue throughout the books.
So it gives a teaching moment as.
Well of oh maybe I'm not sure what ADHD means
or what is an intervention, you know, things like that
where you can really take a moment and pause and
have some of.
Those additional conversations with your children.
Well, sounds like all the comments you got were very constructive.
How long did this take you to put together?
It's taken quite some time.
It's been a labor of love, as it's not my
day job and so is definitely a passion project of mine.
It was probably in twenty twenty one that.
I had the first idea, and I was really at
a low point and breaking point. I had just been
diagnosed with lime disease. My oldest had just been diagnosed
with ADHD and sensory processing disorder and highly gifted. And
so with all that information, I was having that moment
in the shower of what is my purpose? Why am
I here? And that really sparked my creativity for the
first book, and then they grew a bit from there
and I'd put it down or maybe come back to it.
And it wasn't until last summer July of twenty four
that I was able to meet with a book coach,
and that really took it from seven books to really
developing this full theme and now what are going to
be fourteen books and making sure that all of those
elements really tie together, and also again having those readers
on the front end to help with that sensitivity aspect.
One thing I learned as well alluded to earlier around
autism and understanding that there can be a bit of
controversy of are you person first or are you diagnosis first?
And many people want to lead with person first. You know,
I am Sarah. I'm not leading by my diagnosis. So
that was something that we walked through and played around
with to decide, you know what direction we would go,
and we ultimately went with person first, so that you
know that ultimately autism is not finding who you are,
but it is a part of who you are, And
so that could be one later that might spark some
controversy or just spark some conversations which I think are
all healthy and don't know that everybody is in on
one side or the other. So I think that gives
a nice platform to just continue some of those conversations.
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Did this lead you to
create a group? I see on your website it says
SLH group. Is that you or do you have other
people that are involved in what you're doing?
I am primarily the group.
There are definitely other consultants that are coming in and
giving those opinions. They are also giving quotes around what
they found informative within the books, what they found really powerful,
and so that will also be part of even the
front and back cover where you'll see some of those
quotes from certified professionals. But yes, you know, my hope
is to one day be able to expand this further
where there are more of these conversations happening, but a
lot of them in the school system and allowing four
children to ultimately feel less alone in what that diagnosis
that they have might be. So maybe they're paired with
another child who has some similarities.
Maybe they both like legos but they.
Also have autism, or maybe you know, they both have
parents that have cancer. You know, there's a lot of
those hard topics that we do not touch on, and
when I was in school, I didn't have that kind
of support. I didn't know that I had ADHD until
I was twenty five years old, which is, apparently, as
I've learned more, an interesting time frame in life to
learn that most people, it's either when they're very young
or usually when they're you know, hitting their forties and
they've become moms, especially for women. And so for me,
I could have gone back to that child and said,
you know, hey, it's okay of why you're feeling this
different in your own brain, and this might be.
Why you just touched upon expansion. What are your goals,
let's say, over the next three to five years, to
build a bigger platform in order to help more people.
I ultimately would really love to have a full running
platform within the school system that allows for some maybe
it's virtual connection, but that we leverage the books for
a essentially curriculum and have used each one of those
almost You could even think of it like a book
club in essence, where you have these hard topics that
you're having conversations about. They read together the book as
a group, there's a counselor who is helping to guide them,
and then ultimately they have some sort of commonality that
allows for them to feel a little bit less alone.
In my opinion, we have a mental health crisis. That's
what's happening within our schools, and I think there's a
lot that we have to do to ensure that our
children are not having any of those mental health capabilities
that are going to lead to gun violence later. You know,
I always have that moment of what was going on
that child's mind, Did they have support, did they have
some sort of neurodivergency or mental health thing that was
going on that we missed, And what could we have
done if that child had a friend and that friend said, hey,
I feel that way too, And then there's this moment
of connection and that somehow allows for us to no
longer have to worry. This morning, you know, I hugged
my child goodbye and it's not every day, but this
morning I had that moment of I'm going to make
sure this is a big hug and a good goodbye
because I don't know if something could happen in your
school today.
Yeah, it's a scary time, There's no doubt about that.
When you're dealing with serious mental illness, that's a whole,
complete different situation than ADHD, bipolar, or autism, even though
sometimes they all can overlap each other. So because of that,
it can fall under that mental health umbrella with the
mental illness. Okay, this is kind of a two part question.
When you say the school system, are you thinking local
schools or are you thinking maybe nationwide? The second part
of this question is are you concerned because you're touching
on subjects that could possibly be a little overwhelming for
some of them. The school system now sometimes have these
people that look at a book and if they don't
particularly like it, all of a sudden banned and it
might be just because it has ADHD or whatever word
that person may not like. Does that concern you at all?
Absolutely?
You know, I had moments throughout the entire last year
of pause thinking as I've heard of other books being
banned in other states and areas, and had this moment
of what I'm actually doing and all the time I'm
spending is that pointless? And so you know, that's where
my own self doubt creeps in and I have to
have that that.
I think my.
Book Coach really was wonderful and that reminder of you're
here for a reason, this is your purpose, and you
have to continue to get that message out. But I
would start locally being in Colorado.
It depends on the school.
But I am very fortunate that while we are in
Jefferson County Public schools, my children are going to what
I find to be one of the best schools in
the county. They have a Gifted a Talented program where
it's a school within a school, and so you know
whether it's their library, music, art, pe the classes are
all intermingled with general education and so there are many
kids there, of course, who have a lot of neurodiversity
with large gifted classes, and so they are very heavy social,
emotional based and they even follow this is a program
called Leader in Me. It's based on the seven habits
of highly effective people four children, and so they work
through those habits every month. There's a different one throughout
the year, and so it's something that there are specific
schools that this will resonate with, and that's a great
place to start.
I also think.
After, you know, having a tragedy as we did with
Evergreen High School and in being the home of Columbine
as well, Colorado might look at this a bit differently
and say, Okay, I see where this is going to
be powerful and what can eventually lead for those who
are neurodiverse or have ADHD or autism or since reprocessing disorder,
all of that can lead to anxiety and depression in
their teen years, especially when the hormones begin. And so
if we can start earlier, as I felt like my
child benefited so much from early intervention, starting that at
two and a half years old, and I had really
wished he had gotten into it sooner, I think the
earlier that we start with building that foundation that they're
accepted for all of their differences, that's going to grow
into something along the way. And so I imagine in certain
areas I will get pushed back. I think there's others
that will embrace it and eventually it will catch on.
Of course, my ultimate goal is for this to be national.
Going to be selling this book nationwide? Is it going
to be for anyone that would like to have it?
Absolutely so it will. It will be you know, direct
to consumer. There will also be an avenue for schools.
But you know, someone may only want to buy the
book on ADHD and they may not want the full set,
and because of that, you know, I want to make
that very flexible where there might be some group packagings
that make sense together of you know, now we have
ones that are around certain confidence or resilience that that
really paarwell together, and others that you could just buy.
A single book.
And I will also have an ebook available as well.
A few teacher friends have said, you know, with our students,
we like to put it up on their Mimeo boards
so that they're able to show it at a large
format so all the kids in the entire classroom can see.
Makes it a lot easier.
I've gone in and been a parent reader and done
the Mystery book reader with my son's class before, and
it is difficult because you have to aready kids crowded
around you, and they all want to see the illustrations
and they're fighting with each other. You need to sit
down or I want to sit in the front, and
so being able to have it on a large screen
in the classroom I think is going to be really important.
I've also noticed that my son will bring home a
few pages of a book and a lot of them
do have to do with differences, and they are social
emotionally heavy, and there's questions in the back, and then
for homework they'll have to bring that back in. So
that's where I could see this going long term as well.
It could be a handout that's sent home with children
and then they have to actually do some of those
discussion questions in the back.
Yeah, great idea. Where will they be able to get it?
Right now, all of the information that I'm putting out
there for updates and calming strategies and my aligned parenting method,
all of that is found either on my website or Instagram.
It's Sarah Lewishartley dot com s A R A L
E w I s h A R T l e y,
and then at Sarah Lewis Hartley as my Instagram handle.
That's good for them to know. Now you see it
eventually getting to Amazon and other bookstores around the country.
Yes, potentially, I've learned a lot about Amazon and how
that works, so it's an interesting animal. But yes, absolutely,
we will make it as easily accessible as possible.
Of course, they can get it from your website, which
is actually a more direct path anyways.
Absolutely, and that's what we're working through right now, the
logistics around being able to take everything from print to
the direct to consumer and get that out there for everyone.
Yeah, that's great. Now, what would you like to tell
our listeners that you think is very important that they
know about what you're doing and your plans for the future.
There are two things that I really love for listeners
to grasp onto. The first is a philosophy that I've
developed around echo parenting, And you said it yourself earlier
when you mentioned a lot of parents will understand that
they might have ADHD or autism after their child has
been diagnosed. So echoparenting is really understanding and learning that
you're on this parallel journey with your child and you're
really learning alongside of them, and their behaviors are really
a reflection of what you may need to heal with
your inner child. And I think the hardest part about
having a child who's neurodivergent is being neurodivergent yourself and
trying to maintain that calm presence, because what I've learned
is when your child is melting down, you have to
also stay calm, and if you're not calm, it's going
to exacerbate what's happening with your child and they may
explode further. And so the aligned parenting method that I've
developed is really a way to walk through and understand
that awareness within your body, figure out and label what
those emotions are that you're having, then identify the triggers
what's causing that. There's always that root cause, whether that
is you're hungry, or maybe you've had a long day,
or it's hot outside or it's crowded, you're overwhelmed with
sensory overload, and then you use and leverage a grounding
technique that works for you. And lastly, whether you're doing
this alongside your child, just doing it for yourself to
calm down, there's a big element of nurturing where you
can allow yourself grace and say it's okay, you know
I'm feeling overwhelmed and give yourself compassion, or you do
the same with your child and you really try to
empathize with them becoming curious and empathy when those things happen,
you're not able to be angry at the same time.
Yeah. Great points. Now you mentioned you went into the
schools and did some reading. I'm assuming you read one
of your books.
I did.
What was their reaction? First, what did you pick to read?
And second how did they respond to it?
The first one I picked was Purposefully Calm. It's the
Purposefully Me series, so all titles will be purposefully brave,
purposefully resilient. I chose purposefully Calm. I wanted to do
purposefully Brave, but that one, the character looks a lot
like my son, and he was the one that pushed
back and said, you know, Mom, they're gonna know that's me.
I don't want to do that one. I said, okay, buddy,
I totally get that.
So Purposefully Calm is a lot about sensory processing disorder.
But I read this too. It was last year for
third grade. It was the third grade gifted class, so.
They have a lot of those overwhelming sensory things that
come into play. And so that one was about managing
your anger, and they had there was a you know,
centralized conflict.
This try to understand of what the purpose was and.
Then that went into the conflict resolution and actually went
and showed different calumning strategies that they could do, and
so they were all very receptive to it. I was
hoping there were some that I know that hand run hot.
You know, there are always kids who we all know,
those kids that we were in class with that maybe
run hot a bit, and so you know, that's where
I wanted for them to really have that moment of Okay,
this resonates with me. And so I didn't have a
lot of time to stay and get the feedback, but
I did speak with my son afterwards, and he said
that he really enjoyed the book and he felt like
everyone else in the class did as well well. And
I've talked to a few of his friends since and
they said that it resonated with them.
Good.
You mentioned you're a healthcare executive. What does that entail?
I am in healthcare marketing and technology, so I work
with health systems and help patients find the right doctor
and right care. I do work with many psychiatrists, companies
and psychologists.
So my question to you, and this is why I asked,
what you do when you do your job and you're
dealing with psychologists, doctors, etc. You can get their perspectives
on things. You've written a series of books that gives
your perspective on neurodiversity and the way that others might
see it. So with all the professionals that you've talked with,
then you start talking with the kids getting their perspective
on things. So my question is what have you learned
out of this whole process?
Oh, there's so much. All of it is a very
difficult process. If you think, oh, I'm going to write
a book.
It is especially children's but being the illustrations that is
a different layer that's added in it can be tough.
And then being able to find those individuals who can
help lend that credibility and having them truly understand and
buy in. And one of the therapists who's read these
specializes in neurodiversity, so you know, holds a lot of
credit there of helping and understanding you know, will this
be something that resonates? And so I think it's just
important that you know whatever it is you're doing that
is not your expertise.
It's maybe for me.
It was driven by my own emotions, my own healing process.
It was very cathartic for me to write I am
in most of these books, especially the one about ADHD
what this child is feeling, and that was me. So
you know what I'm sharing. It's more about deep emotions
and how you truly are feeling being trapped in that
neurodiverse mind, but also showing that it's not a curse.
It is this beautiful thing where you have so many
strengths that sometimes it just gets overcrowded or people are
focusing more on what you need to work on versus
really highlighting what you do so well. And so that's
where you know a lot of it. It's not two
in the weeds are technical into the diagnosis, but there's
these moments of understanding of these might be some quirks
or characteristics of someone who has ADHD or autism. And
so it's hopefully something that will resonate a lot, but
learned a lot along the way of you know, I
hopefully thought, oh, I'm just this is my creative outlet,
not realizing the full business portion that's behind all of it.
Yes, Unfortunately the business side can take a lot of
joy out of the project. During this you mentioned emotions
while writing this, A lot of memories went into it,
memories of your son, of course, memories of your life.
So my question to you is how did your emotions
run during this whole process.
It was eye opening for me.
I do find while it brings and bubbles up emotions
to the surface, it's also very healing at the same time.
And another element of this that I didn't know would
be part of writing a book was developing an author
platform and putting all of that out onto social media.
And there's a moment of where I had to get
over what other people might think and always ground myself
back in this is my mission, this is my purpose,
and I'm here to help someone. And even through social media,
from the people that have responded or reached out and
said that that really helped them and they saw themselves
and whatever it was that I was discussing, that to me,
if it doesn't do anything else, you know, I've at
least helped, you know, some people, And so I think
that's my ultimate goal of what I have to go
back to and know that because I'm continuing to talk
about it, it's helping me in my own healing process.
So if I would have just written the books, I
maybe wouldn't have had this continuation of talking about it
basically every day as I'm posting things and I'm having
conversations and just being very authentic and open and honest
about my own experience. And that's the only thing that
I know is my experience, and I know the experience
I've had alongside my children. You know, I don't really
know other peoples and how they felt in those moments.
But I'm hoping that the depth of the connection that
I'm sharing will resonate with someone.
Yeah. Good, and I believe that it will resonate. This
has been great, great conversation, great information. I really appreciate
you taking the time to join us today.
Well, thank you so much for having me.
Oh It's been my pleasure. Thanks again. Thanks for taking
time out of your busy schedule to listen to our
show today. We hope you enjoyed it as much as
we enjoyed bringing it to you. If you know someone
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