83. Creativity and Neurodivergent Parenting: How One Edmonton Mom Found Herself Again
Shar Thomas was mid-scroll when the algorithm served up the reel she didn't know she needed.
It was about ADHD.
She watched it thinking: that's my daughter.
The tummy aches before school.
The meltdowns that felt outsized for what triggered them.
Things that had seemed separate suddenly made sense together.
What happened next is the part worth sitting with. Understanding her daughter's brain led Shar to look at her own. The email typos. The distractibility she'd quietly filed under "flaws" her whole life. Turns out, they weren't flaws. They were part of a larger picture that had always included her.
Shar is the owner and designer behind Where My Love Grows
an interior design studio out of Edmonton, Alberta - wife, mom of three, country-living creative who is always making something. In episode 83 of Chill Like a Mother, she sat down with me, Kayla Huszar, registered social worker and expressive arts therapist, to talk about what creativity actually means for moms navigating neurodivergence. In their families, and in themselves.
When Understanding Your Kid Means Understanding Yourself
This is something I see constantly in my work with moms across Alberta and Canada. The moment a mother understands her child's neurodivergence is often the moment she finally extends herself some grace too. It's not always comfortable. It's almost always freeing.
Shar describes it plainly: knowing her daughter's diagnosis gave her language for her own experience. The things she'd been quietly ashamed of turned out to be traits, not failures. That distinction - flaw versus trait - sounds small. The felt sense of it is enormous.
You've probably said "I'm just bad at..." about yourself a hundred times. What if you weren't bad at it - what if your brain just works differently?
Creativity Isn't What You Make - It's Who You Are
Shar uses her home as her primary creative outlet. Not a studio. Not carved-out time. Her actual life - a wall that needs painting, a room that needs rethinking, a project that fits inside a nap window.
She describes what it feels like when she's not creating: a low-grade emptiness. Something missing. Many of us know that feeling. We've just been taught to dismiss it as indulgence, or to defer it until conditions are better. Until things settle. Until after.
Expressive arts therapy - the framework I use in my practice - operates on the premise that creativity is a fundamental need, not a nice-to-have. Research backs this up: creative engagement supports nervous system regulation, reduces anxiety, and gives us a coherent sense of self during the seasons of motherhood when everything else feels fractured. For moms managing neurodivergent parenting, that last part is load-bearing.
Creativity isn't the reward you get after you've handled everything else. It's part of what keeps you functional enough to handle everything else.
Making Time Without Overhauling Your Life
The most common barrier I hear from moms isn't that they don't value creativity. It's that they can't find the time. That's real - time is genuinely scarce, the mental load is crushing, childcare costs are not nothing.
Shar doesn't fight this. She works inside it. Her strategies are unglamorous and they work:
Use what's already there. Home projects, rearranging, small DIY.
Ask for what you need. Using a childcare window for making something instead of errands isn't selfish.
Lower the bar for what counts. Fifteen minutes. One wall. Three sentences. Enough.
Many creative moms are waiting for conditions that won't arrive. The kids will always be around. The list won't clear itself. Waiting for perfect conditions is the most effective way to never create anything.
Reflection:
What would you make right now if you let yourself? Not what you should make - what would you actually reach for?
The Bottom Line
Creativity and neurodivergent parenting are more connected than most conversations acknowledge. When you're constantly adapting - your schedule, your communication, your expectations - you need resources that replenish you, not just more strategies to implement.
What Shar's story makes clear is that creativity isn't a break from the reality of neurodivergent parenting. It's a resource that feeds back into it. When she designs a space or takes on a project, she's not escaping her life. She's processing it. Making sense of it in a language that doesn't require words.
That's exactly what expressive arts therapy does. Shar's been doing it intuitively her whole life.
You don't need a studio, a big block of time, or a particular skill level. You need permission to take yourself seriously as a creative person - not after the kids are raised, not when things settle, but now, in the middle of the chaos.
The most interesting version of you didn't disappear when you became a mom. She's just waiting for you to pick something up and make something.
P.S. What's one creative thing you used to love before motherhood took over - and do you still make time for it?
Drop it in the comments.
Need a hand figuring out next steps?
Or just want a little more info?
You’ll find ways to connect below.
A guide for moms who've lost their chill (and want it back)
Get your hands on this free guide for moms full of emotional regulation tools and skills you can use at any time.
✓ Understand why you can’t chill
✓ Know what to do when you’re dysregulated
✓ How to find the time for real self care
