About
A Peculiar Existence started because I couldn’t find what I needed anywhere else.
I’m a writer, a systems thinker, a homeschooling mother of six, and a person whose body and brain have never once cooperated with each other on the same day.
I have multiple sclerosis and bipolar disorder. I have ADHD and autism. I love building things—frameworks, essays, curricula, systems that actually hold up when life falls apart.
Some days my brain is razor-sharp and my body won’t move. Other days my body works fine and my brain has left the building. This is not a rough patch. This is just who I am.
APE grew out of years of trying to build a real life inside that reality instead of waiting for a version of myself that was never going to arrive.
Why This Exists
Most advice about running a household or homeschooling your kids assumes you have a body that shows up when you need it, a brain that initiates tasks on command, and energy that replenishes on a predictable schedule.
That has never been my experience. I suspect it’s not yours, either.
APE is for women living with some combination of chronic illness, neurodivergence, mental health conditions, and the specific exhaustion that comes from managing all of that inside a family that still needs to eat dinner. If you’ve spent years wondering why you can’t just function like a normal person—and you’re tired of being told the answer is a better morning routine—you’re in the right place.
What You’ll Find Here
Everything at APE runs on one principle: capacity first.
Not the capacity you wish you had. The capacity you actually have right now, today, in this body, with this brain.
Life at Home — A household with six kids, a disabled parent, and multiple neurodivergent brains in the mix cannot run on systems designed for a family of four with two functioning adults and a chore chart on the fridge. Your home should work with your capacity, not punish you for not having more of it. Here you’ll find the systems, frameworks, and hard-won strategies that keep a real household running through flares, med changes, and the weeks where survival is the whole plan.
Homeschooling — I have never once had a school year that went according to plan, and my kids are still learning. Education does not require aesthetic flat-lays, unlimited parental energy, or a mother who never has a med adjustment in the middle of October. APE’s approach to homeschooling is secular, decolonized, and built for the families that mainstream curriculum was never designed for—neurodivergent learners, kids with learning differences, families living on one income, and parents who need their school day to survive their worst week, not just their best one.
These two things feed into each other. The way you run your home shapes the way you teach your kids. The way you teach your kids reveals what your home actually needs. Capacity is the thread that holds both together.
The Bigger Picture
APE is about building a life that holds up under real conditions.
Not hustle culture or optimization. Not the aesthetic performance of having it together.
Systems that survive your worst weeks. A home that keeps running when you can’t. Homeschooling that doesn’t require you to be a different person than you are. And the willingness to stop pretending that the standards quietly breaking you were ever designed for someone like you in the first place.
A good life is not reserved for people with reliable energy and neurotypical brains. It just has to be built differently.
— Gina Ortiz, Welcome to APE
A Note on Tools
I use AI. I use it the way I use every other tool that makes my life workable. My brain generates ideas faster than my hands can type and my executive function can organize. AI helps me get things out of my head and into a shape other people can use. I use it the way I use a cane: because the gap between what I want to do and what my body and brain can reliably execute on any given day is real, and pretending it isn’t doesn’t help anyone.
The ideas, the voice, and the judgment are mine.