The Story my ADHD Late-Diagnosis Story and How it Inspired me to Want to Help Women Like Me…
For a long time, I told myself I was just messy in ways other people weren’t…I spilled things constantly, lost my keys more times than I could count, felt perpetually behind, even when I was working hard and doing “well” by most external measures. Why could I handle moments of crisis like a total boss, but yet opening my mail and keeping track of time felt like the mental equivalent of gearing up to run a marathon?
It was easy to write these moments off as stress, motherhood, being busy, being human- because not only does the world seem to love to perpertually tell women being stressed and overwhelmed is just par for the course, it also values women who continue to grind without complaining.
But one day, circa fall of 2021, after one too many spilled smoothies, another frantic search for something I’d just had in my hand, and a quiet, honest conversation with my husband — I finally said out loud:
“I don’t think this is normal…I saw another therapist write about ADHD, and how it shows up in women, and I wonder if I have it…” To which, my loving husband who knows very little about these kind of things, said some version of, “well, whatever it is…you should talk to somebody about it because it’s getting worse. You help everyone else for a living, it’s time to help yourself.”
I was 37 years old.
What’s wild is that I’m a therapist. I diagnose and support women with ADHD for a living, and still, my own ADHD flew under the radar for years — masked by achievement, coping, and a lifetime of feeling like I should be capable enough to just “figure it out.”
When I finally got diagnosed, the diagnosis itself wasn’t the most powerful part-going on a journey of trying to understand the ways in which having an ADHD impacted me in my past, and how it continued to impact me on a daily basis…both in positive and negative ways.
Understanding why things that looked easy for other people felt exhausting for me.
Understanding that my struggles weren’t a character flaw, but a result of how my brain wired.
Understanding that I am always going to have big ideas, that’s just how my brain works, and the challenge comes with executing on them (or choosing not to) without letting myself get to a point of burnout and overwhelm.
And almost immediately, I started hearing the same stories from other women.
Women in their 30s and 40s saying:
“This explains my whole life.”
“Why did no one catch this sooner?”
“Okay… now what?”
Ever since my own diagnosis, I’ve become obsessed/hyperfocused (which, in this case is a good thing) with gaining deep knowledge, beyond what we learned in grad school, about ADHD and the way in which is particularly manifests in modern women.
Over the past year, I’ve thought deeply about how to support women who are just beginning to make sense of their ADHD brains — especially those who don’t necessarily need (or want) weekly therapy, but do need clarity.
Because not everyone needs ongoing therapy right away.
Sometimes what you need first is to understand:
Why am I like this?
What’s ADHD — and what’s years of self-blame?
What would actually make my life feel more manageable?
If you’re curious, you can learn more or book a consultation here:
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