I spent years helping other people understand what they needed at work before I fully understood what I needed myself.

Before Kindred Field, I was a coach. I trained through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and spent years working as a health and career coach, helping people understand themselves, identify what was getting in their way, recognize their strengths, and figure out what would actually make their lives and work function better.

That approach carried into an entirely different world when I moved into Employee Relations. For nearly a decade, I worked inside the realities of organizations: investigations, accommodations, performance and attendance issues, conflict, difficult conversations, manager coaching, terminations, and the messy human situations that don't fit neatly into any model.

At the same time, I found myself doing more and more work with neurodivergent employees. I developed ways to identify exactly where someone was struggling, then work out what might actually help: an accommodation, a skill, a practical tool, clearer communication, different support, or a change in conditions.

Somewhere in all of that, I realized I had spent years helping other people answer questions I hadn't yet learned to ask about myself.

From the outside, I was capable, trusted, good at what I did. I was managing a demanding job, frequent travel, and a full life.

Behind the scenes, I was exhausted in a way I couldn't explain.

Eventually, burnout and a late autism diagnosis changed the way I understood both my own experience and the work I had been doing with other people for years. That intersection, coach, Employee Relations leader, advocate for neurodivergent employees, and late-diagnosed autistic professional, is the real origin of Kindred Field.

The Habitat Principle

I don't think every struggle is caused by the environment. I don't think people never need to change anything themselves, and I don't think every limitation quietly becomes a strength if you just find the right conditions.

Sometimes what's needed is an accommodation. Sometimes it's a new skill, a better tool, clearer expectations, more support, stronger boundaries, or a different way of doing something. And sometimes, the conditions really do need to change.

The point of the Habitat Principle isn't to stop asking hard questions. It's to change which question comes first. Instead of starting with "What's wrong with me?", start with "What's happening here, and what would make this work better?"

That's the question I spent years helping employees answer. Eventually, I had to learn to ask it for myself.

What Kindred Field is now

Kindred Field is two things, built from the same approach.

For autistic and AuDHD professionals, it's essays, practical tools, and a community for people who are successful on paper and exhausted behind the scenes, figuring out what conditions actually let them do their best work.

For small businesses and employers, it's practical HR consulting: employee relations, workplace investigations, manager support, difficult employee situations, and the systems a growing business needs but doesn't have a full-time HR department to build.

Different audiences, same underlying question: what's actually happening here, and what would make it work better?

Now I split my time between writing for this community and helping small businesses build workplaces where people don't have to mask just to get through the day.

The gate is always open.