Hannah Allen, an English widow in 1683, sat by candlelight and wrote of hearing voices and sinking into spells of profound melancholy, journaling her way through a mind that refused to conform to the quiet expectations of her time. Her words, preserved for centuries, are not just a personal testament—they are a quiet revolution. They remind us that neurodivergent ways of being did not emerge with TikTok or modern diagnostics, but have threaded through human history, often hidden, sometimes punished, yet always present. For today’s neurodivergent readers, discovering figures like Allen feels like finding ancestors—people whose inner lives resonate across time, even if their labels did not exist. Dr. Elizabeth Barry, who leads research into early modern literature and neurodivergence, doesn’t seek to diagnose the dead. Instead, she traces the contours of difference: people whose behaviors, thoughts, or sensory experiences diverged from the norms of their day. In 17th-century Catholic worship, the rhythmic clicking of rosary beads offered a sanctioned form of what we might now call stimming—repetitive movement used to regulate sensory input. Centuries later, Hugh Blair, a Scottish laird, was deemed unfit for marriage in part because he knitted during family prayers, unable to sit still in a ritual that demanded quiet conformity. His 'eccentricity' became legal evidence of incompetence—not because he was unwell, but because he didn’t perform rationality in the expected way. These stories reveal how much of what we call 'normal' is shaped by culture, not biology. Ben Jonson’s 1609 play Epicœne features Morose, a man so sensitive to noise he seals his home and communicates in silence—a portrayal that many autistic readers today describe as uncannily familiar. That resonance is powerful. It doesn’t mean Morose was autistic, but it does mean that experiences we now name as neurodivergent have long been part of the human story. By reading these texts not for diagnosis but for recognition, we expand our understanding of mental life across time. We also challenge the idea that neurodivergence is a trend, showing instead that it is a thread in the fabric of humanity—woven, overlooked, and now being reclaimed. As language evolves and acceptance grows, the past offers not answers, but companionship.