Quick bio

Mark Alan Kennedy is a published yet also re-emerging author writing about late neurodivergence and early trauma, sobriety and spirituality, mattering, authenticity, and agency, while still figuring it all out.

Why Mark is writing…

Mark spent 30 years teaching adjudicated teens — young people the world had largely written off. He was, in many ways, teaching versions of himself he didn’t yet understand. Now retired, he has turned his considerable curiosity inward, writing a memoir that explores late-identified neurodivergence, early childhood trauma, sobriety, spirituality, and what it means to matter.

Formally diagnosed with autism and ADHD (AuDHD) after decades of wondering, Kennedy writes and speaks about the experience of living an entire life before knowing who you actually are — and the strange, freeing gift of finding out. His work explores the intersection of Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, interoception, masking, alexithymia, and the courage it takes to unmask in the second half of life.

He is also, by his own admission, someone who hates rejection so much that he became a writer.