> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://gliszen.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Home Is Where the Heart Is (And My Brain Lit the Map) - URL: https://gliszen.ghost.io/home-is-where-the-heart-is-and-my/ - Published: 2026-05-18T02:58:11.000Z - Updated: 2026-07-24T21:19:20.000Z - Description: A neurodivergent love letter to the place that finally makes sense - Author: Rachelle P. Goldenberg, LCSW - Tags: Genx, Substack-Moved, 1980, san francisco, lisa frank, Neurodivergence, Autism, technicolor, bay area, Newsletter, #Migrated-1784927624346, #Import 2026-07-24 21:18 There’s a map I made. Ok, so Gemini made it with me, but it was my brainchild. It’s called *My Super Happy Old Cartoon Map of Northern California*, and if you’re looking at it right now, I need you to understand something: this is not ironic. This is not quirky-for-the-sake-of-quirky. This is not me being “a lot.” This is, quite literally, how I see where I live. This is the most honest cartography my brain has ever produced. It includes what matters and ignores those things that aren’t first in my mind. (notice the nerdy crane reference to Star Wars…IYKYK) Right there in the center, glowing like a little star, surrounded by hearts and sparkles and a banner that reads **♥ HOME ♥** — that’s Alamo-Walnut Creek. That’s mine. That’s the place my nervous system finally exhaled. --- ## The Lisa Frank Theory of Emotional Geography If you grew up in the 80s or 90s, you know Lisa Frank. Rainbow dolphins. Neon tigers. Folders and Trapper Keepers so saturated with joy they were practically a sensory event. For a lot of kids, Lisa Frank was “too much.” For me — and for a lot of us who would later learn we were neurodivergent — she was just *right*. She was the visual language of how things *felt* on a good day. That’s the energy I was chasing when I made this map. Think about the worlds we grew up loving: the Smurfs and their cozy mushroom village where everyone had a role and everyone belonged. Strawberry Shortcake and her Berry Bitty City, where every neighborhood smelled like something warm and sweet. The Get Along Gang, just a bunch of misfit animals doing their best. Then my son’s cartoons, I fell in love with… Yo Gabba Gabba, Dora the Explorers, and especially the Little Einsteins zooming off on adventures in a rocket, absolutely convinced that every single thing in the world was worth being excited about. Those weren’t just cartoons to me. They were *maps* — maps of what safe, joyful, belonging could look like. And somewhere in my neurodivergent brain, I filed them away as the template. --- ## When a Neurodivergent Person Finds Their Good Place Here’s what nobody really talks about: for those of us with ADHD, autism, anxiety, sensory processing differences, or any of the other flavors of neurodivergence — *place matters in a way that’s hard to explain to people who’ve never felt displaced.* It’s not just “oh, I like it here.” It’s more like... the static stops. The constant low-level hum of *this doesn’t quite fit, this doesn’t quite fit, this doesn’t quite fit* goes quiet. Your body knows. Your brain knows. The environment and the nervous system reach some kind of accord, and suddenly you can *think*, you can *breathe*, you can be the version of yourself you always suspected existed. Finding that place is — and I do not use this lightly — *transformative.* For me, that place is here. Right here on this ridiculous, wonderful, heart-covered map. To the west, San Francisco: the city that has always had its own frequency, its own beautiful, chaotic, brilliant hum — I love visiting. I loved living there too, but I don’t have to live inside the city, to be in the middle of that crowded space now to appreciate it. To the north, Napa Valley — rolling hills, wine barrels, tasty food, hot air balloons shaped like they belong in a children’s book, which honestly they do. To the southeast, Silicon Valley, which my map accurately labels as “Where Computers Fly!” because yes, the tech energy is real, the satellite dishes are real, the smiling desktop computers are real. And to the east — Mount Diablo (not a real mountain, but it’s what we’ve got), with its pink cheeks and gentle smile, watching over everything like the world’s most reassuring landmark. And then there’s home, my little oasis. The place I am right now. Glowing. Centered. Surrounded by friends walking dogs, neighbors waving, little cars navigating winding roads. It is *warm* here in a way that registers somewhere below cognition, somewhere in the body. --- ## The Sheldon Cooper Problem (And Why I’m More of a Penny, Actually) You know how in *The Big Bang Theory*, Sheldon has his spot? His specific, non-negotiable spot on the couch, with its exact optimal sightlines and thermal properties and proximity to the television? And how the entire friend group just... accepts this, because they understand that for Sheldon, this isn’t a preference — it’s a *requirement*? Or how in *Friends*, the whole show basically takes place in two apartments and a coffee shop — and the whole point is that *those specific places* are where life happens, where you’re known, where you can show up as your full ridiculous self and someone will always be on the couch? I think about this a lot. The neurodivergent version of “finding your people” is deeply entangled with “finding your place.” They’re not separate things. The right environment makes it possible to be the right version of yourself, which makes it possible to connect with the right people, which makes the place feel even more like home. My map has people on it, too. Look closely — there are couples walking together, kids running, dogs trotting happily down the roads. This isn’t a solo adventure. The joy of this place is relational. It’s the whole ecosystem. --- ## This Is How I See It, Though Here’s what I want to be honest about: I know this isn’t how everyone sees Northern California. Some people see traffic on the 680\. Some people see housing prices. Some people see the wildfire smoke in August or the dry hills in July or the long shadow of inequality that exists in the Bay Area like everywhere else. I see those things too. I’m not delusional. I’m not bypassing. But neurodivergent people often describe their emotional reality in ways that don’t map onto neurotypical expression — and one of the things I’ve learned is that my *joy* doesn’t look like other people’s joy. When I love something, I love it in Technicolor. When something feels good, it feels *cosmically good*. When I’m in my good place, I don’t experience it as “pleasant” or “nice.” I experience it as sparkles and hearts and glowing cartoon houses and a banner that says HOME with a little pink heart on each side. That’s not hyperbole. That’s just the actual internal resolution of the experience. So if you handed me a pencil and a blank piece of paper and said “draw me a map of where you live and why it matters to you” — this is what you’d get. Pink flowers bordering everything. A smiling Mount Diablo. A golden glow emanating from my house. Arrows pointing toward adventure (Tahoe! Reno!) because even home is a *launching pad*, not a hiding place. --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2f/0c/2f0c8843-4e19-4a64-82b3-1d14728eb05b/content/images/2026/07/9cacb28f-7094-4906-9a8b-4bee695ccd73_643x960-jpeg.jpg) ## On Being In Your Good Place I want to say something directly to the neurodivergent people reading this, because I know you’re here: If you haven’t found your good place yet — the city, the neighborhood, the apartment, the couch, the *spot* — I want you to know that it exists. I know that sounds like a Strawberry Shortcake moral-of-the-episode platitude, and I’m offering it anyway because some platitudes are true. The place where your nervous system exhales is real. The place where the static quiets is real. It might look different from what you imagined. It might be somewhere you never expected. It might be a mid-sized suburb in the Bay Area with a smiling mountain and good coffee and access to wine country, Silicon Valley, and the Pacific Ocean all within an hour’s drive. Or it might be somewhere completely different. The point is: it’s yours when you find it, and you’ll know it — not because a checklist tells you so, but because your whole body will say *oh. here. yes. this.* --- ## The Map Is the Message My Super Happy Old Cartoon Map of Northern California is not, technically, geographically precise. Mount Diablo is rendered as a cheerful green hill with rosy cheeks. The Golden Gate Bridge has a little sun face smiling above it. The Bay Bridge is missing, and Silicon Valley is populated by retro computers with smiling screens. But it is, I would argue, *emotionally precise.* It captures the truth of this place as I experience it — vibrant, connective, layered with possibility, anchored by home. And maybe that’s the real gift of neurodivergence, underneath all the hard stuff: the capacity to see the world not just as it is, but as it *feels.* To make maps that chart joy instead of just geography. To be fifty-something years old and still make things that look like Lisa Frank designed them for a Trapper Keeper, because that’s the visual language your heart speaks. I live here. I love it here. And if you want to know what that love looks like — *It looks a little like this, and it includes them. (Me, my now adult son, and my sport and adventure loving husband)* ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2f/0c/2f0c8843-4e19-4a64-82b3-1d14728eb05b/content/images/2026/07/6f7dae17-4de0-4dc6-ab05-a0a7dfce2125_1024x608-png.jpg) Ok, so we don’t really look like this….but ….this is how I feel about us. --- *Find me here every week writing about neurodivergence, joy, the Bay Area, and whatever else is glowing in my brain. If this resonated with you, share it with someone who draws their maps in color.*