Launch Materials
NeuroSpicy Refugees

NeuroSpicy Refugees is a free neurodivergent community built by people who’ve been through exactly this.

If you’ve been removed from a neurodivergent community without explanation — told that concerns were raised but not what they were, given a warning that cited no specific rule, handed a goodbye that came with instructions not to respond — you are not alone. This community exists because that pattern is documented, repeatable, and fixable.

What makes this different:

• Free. Always. No subscription, no tiers, no coaching upsells.
• Rules exist before decisions. Written, public, and accessible before anyone joins.
• Three-steward governance. No single person holds final authority on your membership.
• Appeals process. If you’re removed, you have recourse. In writing.
• Peer-led. No expert authority. No credential hierarchy. Stewards are people who showed up.
• Financial transparency. If money ever moves through this community, the accounting is public.

Built by Josh Wolf (autistic journalist, removed from the NeuroSpicy Community three times between 2024 and 2026) and Joy (co-steward, founding member, left the NeuroSpicy Community on her own terms after hearing the story).

The Tom Petty lyric is the whole manifesto. Come as you are. Stay as long as you want. Leave if you need to. You get to decide.

Welcome to NeuroSpicy Refugees. Here’s what you need to know.

I want to start with the thing that makes this community different from the one some of us came from: you already know the rules. They’re posted. They existed before you arrived. If you’re ever in a situation where a Steward tells you that you violated a rule, you can go look at the rule. If the rule wasn’t written down before you joined, it cannot be applied to you. That’s not a promise — it’s the constitution.

A few things about how this works:

Co-Steward Structure. This community is governed by Joy and me, with a third Steward seat that we’ll fill through community nomination when we have enough members to make that meaningful. Two of us are required to agree before any removal action is taken. Neither of us can do it alone. That’s the check. That’s the point of having two people instead of one.

Financial Transparency. This community is free. It will remain free. A tip jar will exist, and every dollar that comes in or goes out will be publicly documented. No hidden revenue. No coaching product attached to the community. The community is not a lead-generation engine for anything. It’s a community.

What we’re not. We are not a replacement for therapy, crisis support, or medical care. We are not expert-led. I’m a journalist and an autistic person who got removed from a community three times for reasons that were never specified. Joy is someone who heard about that, did her own research, and decided to co-build something better. Neither of us has a credential that gives us authority over your experience. We have lived experience and a commitment to governance that protects you from us as much as from anyone else.

What we are. We are a peer community. We show up for each other. We have written rules. We have a conflict resolution process that involves more than one person. We are building something that should have existed before any of us needed it.

Post an intro if you want to. Lurk if you need to. Ask me or Joy anything. We’re here.

Welcome.

How I got here

I found Josh’s documentation through a post that had been shared in a thread I stumbled across. I read the Substack essays. Then I read the NeuroSpicy Papers. Then I read the timeline. Then I sat with it for a few days.

What I kept coming back to wasn’t the drama of it — though the drama was there. What I kept coming back to was the documentation itself. The care of it. The fact that someone had taken the time to write everything down in a way that could be followed, challenged, verified. The timeline had receipts. The analysis had methodology. The songs were — the songs were something else entirely.

I was still in the NeuroSpicy Community when I found it. I did what I imagine most people do when they find information that complicates a space they’ve been relying on: I sat with the discomfort for a while. I read the documentation more carefully. I made my own assessment.

My assessment was that the pattern Josh described was real, was documented, and was structural rather than personal. I reached out to him directly. We talked. I left the NeuroSpicy Community on my own terms — I posted a song from I Am Joshua as my exit statement, which felt right to me — and I started talking with Josh about whether something better was possible.

This is what better looks like to me: a community where the rules exist before the decisions. Where two people have to agree before one person can be removed. Where the financial structure is transparent. Where “peer-led” is not a marketing phrase but an actual description of who holds authority and why.

I am co-stewarding this community because I believe it should exist. Not because I have expertise in neurodivergence, not because I have a credential, not because I am the most organized or most consistent or most anything. Because I showed up, made my own assessment, and decided this was worth building.

You are welcome here. All of you. In whatever form you arrive.

Peer Circles: small groups, no experts

One of the things that works about peer support and doesn’t work about expert-led support: in peer support, the person who knows the most about your experience is you. The circle is the container. The container doesn’t direct. It holds.

We’re going to run Peer Circles in NeuroSpicy Refugees. Here’s how they work:

• Small. Six to eight people maximum per circle. Small enough that everyone can be seen. Small enough that no one disappears into the noise.
• Consistent. The same group, meeting at the same time, for a defined period (we’re thinking six weeks to start). Consistency is the container. The container is the point.
• No expert facilitation. Circles rotate facilitation among members. The facilitator’s job is to hold time, not to interpret or advise. You can facilitate your own experience without facilitating anyone else’s.
• Topic-optional. Circles can have a loose focus (masking, executive function, RSD, late diagnosis, parenting while neurodivergent) or no focus at all. The group decides when they form.
• Protected space. What’s shared in a circle stays in the circle. This is the one rule that’s absolute. Violation of circle confidentiality is the one thing that triggers an immediate Steward review without the full four-stage process.

If you’re interested in joining a Peer Circle, post here or DM me or Joy. We’ll start forming groups when we have enough members to make them work. If you want to suggest a focus, suggest it. We’re building this as we go.

The Resource Library: what it is and how to contribute

The Resource Library is the community’s shared collection of things that have helped people. Not recommendations from experts. Not curated lists from leadership. Things that members have actually found useful, shared in their own words, with enough context to be actionable.

Categories we’re starting with:

• Diagnosis and assessment — navigating the process, finding affordable evaluations, late-diagnosis resources, self-identification resources for those who can’t access formal diagnosis
• Workplace and accommodation — templates, scripts, documentation strategies, ADA resources, experiences people are willing to share
• Relationships and communication — resources on masking, unmasking, direct communication, navigating allistic relationships, relationship structures that work for neurodivergent people
• Executive function and daily structure — tools, apps, systems, strategies that community members have found genuinely useful (not the generic productivity content that assumes neurotypical baseline)
• Crisis and regulation — grounding tools, sensory regulation strategies, meltdown vs. shutdown, scripted phrases for when language fails
• Community and belonging — how to find neurodivergent community offline, how to evaluate whether an online community is trustworthy, how to leave a community that isn’t working

How to contribute: post in the Resource Library channel with the resource, a sentence on why it helped you, and which category it fits. That’s it. No review process, no approval. Post it, it’s there. If something is posted that violates the community guidelines, Stewards will remove it and explain why. Otherwise: post freely.

The library belongs to the community. It grows as the community grows.

Core Structure

Three Stewards. The Design Circle consists of three Stewards. At launch, two Stewards (Josh Wolf and Joy) hold all three-Steward functions, with the understanding that a third Steward will be nominated and confirmed as soon as the community has sufficient membership to make that meaningful (target: 30 active members).

Roles within the Circle:

• Community Steward — Primary contact for member questions, welcome, onboarding, and day-to-day presence. Responsible for knowing who is in the community and how they’re doing. Currently: Joy.
• Structure Steward — Responsible for governance documentation, rule maintenance, conflict resolution process, and the accountability log. Currently: Josh Wolf.
• Resource Steward — Responsible for the Resource Library, Peer Circle coordination, and community programming. Currently: shared between Josh and Joy until the third Steward is confirmed.

Decision Authority

The Design Circle operates by the following decision thresholds:

• Single Steward — Routine moderation, post removal for clear guideline violations, organizational decisions with no membership impact. Must be documented within 24 hours.
• Two Stewards — Any action affecting a member’s standing (warnings, restrictions, removals). No single Steward can remove a member alone. Ever.
• Three Stewards + Community Comment — Changes to the community guidelines, amendments to the Constitution, structural changes to the community, financial decisions above $50. Comment period: 7 days minimum.

Accountability Mechanisms

• Public accountability log. Every formal action (warning, restriction, removal, appeal outcome) is summarized in the public log within 48 hours. Identifying information of affected members is protected; the nature of the action and the rule cited are public.
• Financial transparency report. Monthly post in the Governance channel documenting all financial activity. Expected to be $0.00 for the foreseeable future.
• Steward review cycle. Every six months, the community has an open comment period on Steward performance. Stewards may be removed from the Design Circle by community supermajority (two-thirds of active members who vote) if they have violated the Constitution or community guidelines.

Peer Circle Governance

Peer Circles operate independently of the Design Circle for their internal process. The Design Circle’s role in relation to Peer Circles is limited to:

• Handling reports of confidentiality violations (the one absolute rule).
• Supporting the formation and scheduling of new circles when requested.
• Holding the space if a circle has a conflict that the circle cannot resolve internally.

Peer Circle facilitators are not Stewards. They do not have enforcement authority. They hold time and process, not power.

Amendment and Evolution

This governance model is a first draft. It will evolve as the community grows. The community has the right to propose changes, and the Design Circle commits to taking every proposal seriously and documenting its response. If a proposal is rejected, the rejection is explained in writing. No governance decision is made in secret.

The goal is a community that does not need its Stewards to be extraordinary people acting from extraordinary integrity. The goal is a community where the rules themselves provide the protection — where ordinary people operating in good faith within a clear structure produce trustworthy outcomes. That is what this model is trying to be.