We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sonny Jane Wise. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sonny Jane below.

Hi Sonny Jane, thanks for joining us today. Do you think your parents have had a meaningful impact on you and your journey?

One of my favourite memories which wasn’t so favourite at the time but it sure is now was when I ordered a lunch order during high school, I was only 14 at the time and I rarely got lunch orders so this was a real treat, you know? I ended up ordering a small pizza and I was counting down the hours till lunch time. When lunch time arrived, I really needed to use the toilet so I asked my group of friends to look after my pizza while I quickly dashed off. When I came back, I couldn’t find my pizza because my so-called friends had hidden it. Instead of enjoying my pizza, I spent the entire lunch period begging my so-called friends for my pizza while I was crying and they were laughing. As the final bell rang, I ended up experiencing a meltdown and I ended up fighting with one of the members of the group. As you can probably predict, I was sent to the principal’s office for physical violence and my mum was called to the office. I expected my mum to be angry with me but instead, she was angry with the principal and my so-called friends.

I feel like this had a significant impact on me because it taught me to stick to my values and principles as well as fight for my needs and fight for what is right… and in this case, my need was pizza. While I don’t take fighting so literally these days, I absolutely fight for what’s right and I stick to my values. I believe it’s what makes me such a determined and passionate advocate and public speaker.

Sonny Jane, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m a non-binary, disabled and neurodivergent advocate, author and public speaker and I’m also a content creator on Instagram. I wrote The Neurodivergent Friendly Workbook of DBT Skills and I’m about to publish my first book with Jessica Kingsley Publishers in 2023. It’s been a wild journey and in order to understand how I got to where I am, I’ll need to start at the beginning.

I was an orator at a speaking event recently and I want to share something I said because I think it’s really relevent:

“Everything I do when it comes to my work is about helping people accept themselves rather than hate themselves or feel ashamed for who they are whether it’s being trans, neurodivergent or disabled. I post on social media, I provide education to organisations and professionals, I speak at summits and conferences, I write – all with the intention of hoping people can accept themselves, love themselves and celebrate themselves.”

If you can’t tell, I grew up hating myself and feeling a lot of shame because I always thought there was something wrong with me; I was different, I was abnormal, I was weird. It’s probably why my first degree was psychology because I thought if I could understand myself and understand the people around me, I could do better, I could be better. After finishing my psychology degree, I ended up studying nursing because I wanted to support individuals who were struggling with their mental health because I knew what it was like to struggle. During my studies, I ended up getting a job as a peer support specialist in an inpatient mental health unit for youth and that’s when I said goodbye to nursing.

I fell in love with peer support because it was everything I needed growing up; someone who gets it, someone who isn’t going to judge me or pathologise me, someone who will listen to me without trying to fix me and someone who will walk alongside me. I wasn’t there to make judgements or make assumptions, I wasn’t there to fix or treat but instead, I was there to be someone to validate their experiences, provide hope for their future, show them that they weren’t broken and work alongside them to find ways to look after their well-being and accommodate their differences. After working in peer support, I studied counselling because I genuinely believed that individual peer support was an affirming alternative to therapy so I ended up opening my private peer support practice where I worked for a couple of years.

I had also been posting on social media and creating content around peer support, therapy, Autism and ADHD during all of this and after a while, I was starting to get invitations to speak at conferences and work alongside services and organisations as a lived experience representative. I fell into public speaking and advocacy, quite literally, but I realised I was good at it, I enjoyed it and it was accessible for me so I switched from supporting individuals to educating professionals and the wider public about neurodiversity and neurodivergence. I wasn’t just supporting individuals to work with their differences anymore, I’m now showing thousands of individuals how to work with their differences. I wasn’t just validating one individual to embrace their neurodivergence, I’m now teaching thousands of individuals to embrace their neurodivergence and I’m also teaching hundreds of therapists to support and validate their neurodivergent clients. I suppose I should also mention that writing, public speaking and content creating is flexible and accommodating which means I can meet the needs of my disabilities and neurodivergence and accommodate my differences; something other jobs haven’t given me.

I guess I’ve always been the type of individual to go big or go home and I decided I could go big and I could also stay home.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I had to learn that my capacity doesn’t look like other people’s capacity. I had to learn that my work isn’t going to look other people’s work. I had to redefine what success looked like for me and I had to redefine what functional looks like for me. Basically, I needed to learn how to accommodate my differences and honour both my needs and capacity while doing what I wanted to do and while achieving what I wanted to achieve.

I mentioned earlier that I opened a private practice as a peer counsellor and after a while, I realised it wasn’t sustainable for me despite how much I enjoyed and wanted to support individuals. As a disabled and neurodivergent individual, I need flexibility when it comes to scheduling because my capacity changes day to day and week to week. Unfortunately, it meant I struggled to keep up with a caseload of clients every week which wasn’t fair to individuals who deserve someone who can show up consistently for them. I’m not ashamed to admit that consistency isn’t a strength of mine but I didn’t need consistency in order to succeed and work. I just needed to find a way where I could work inconsistently and where I could succeed despite my inconsistency.

It’s why I thrive being an advocate, an author, a public speaker and content creator. I’m inconsistent because my capacity is inconsistent but I can customise my schedule to accommodate my capacity; I can say no to speaking engagements, I can take a day off from creating content and I can plan around conferences. I can show up inconsistently and I embrace that.

If you could go back, would you choose the same profession, specialty, etc.?

I never thought I would ever become a public speaker, content creator or author. I wanted to be a psychologist or a psychiatrist but even if I could go back, I still wouldn’t change what I do, I would still choose to be an advocate and speaker and I would still choose to post on social media and write books over owning a private practice and doing therapy. I love the impact, the creativity, the freedom, the flexibility and the ability to make my own rules and yes, even my own schedule. I never thought I would be a writer but I suppose I never used to trust my thoughts, trust my words and trust my own knowledge. I never thought I would be a content creator with over 67 000 followers but I had never accepted or liked myself the way I do now. I never thought I would be a public speaker but I just needed to learn how to use my voice.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.livedexperienceeducator.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/livedexperienceeducator/
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/livedexperienceeducator/
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/sonnyjane/

Image Credits
Urban Safari Photography