Hi, VSI team!
I’m Bruna, an indie author from Brazil, and finding your profile on TikTok inspired me deeply. Seeing others share their experiences with Visual Snow gave me the courage to finally do something that had lived quietly inside me for years: write a fiction book about living with VSS.
I’ve loved storytelling since childhood, but over time, repeated invalidations made me step away from writing. Art, however, was always where I felt understood and how I coped with everything. When I realized how isolated so many people with VSS feel (and how that isolation began to ease once I found others who shared similar experiences) I knew I had to write about it.
Living with VSS shaped the way I write: sensory details, visual noise, and hyper-awareness are not just descriptions, but part of the narrative voice itself. This creative process eventually became my debut novel, »She Saw the Wind». The story follows a young woman who, like me, lives with Visual Snow, along with ADHD and level 1 autism traits. The narrative is set in past decades, so none of these conditions are ever named — intentionally — to show how people lived (and still live) with real symptoms that had no language, often being labeled as “crazy” or “too sensitive.”
As a small tribute, I named two characters Peter and Christopher, after Dr. Peter Goadsby and Dr. Christoph Schankin, as a thank-you for their work and dedication to the VSS community.
My own ADHD and autism assessments ended up being inconclusive, largely due to long-term masking and anxiety. Despite Visual Snow being dismissed by doctors, I hold on to it as evidence that my brain really is different, not «just anxious» as people keep telling me. In that way, I guess VSS is a gift, like my body making me see what all these doctors couldn’t.
Creative outlets helped me externalize everything that couldn’t be validated clinically, and I believe they can offer others with VSS a voice too.
If this resonates with your team, I’d be happy to share more! The book is nearing publication.
Thank you for creating a space where experiences like mine are seen and shared. Your work truly gives hope to so many of us.
