The more I learn about ADHD, the more I understand myself and the less alone I feel. I’ve started following accounts on Instagram like @cherry.adhd and @adhdliffe in addition to reading everything I can get my hands on (I just purchased the audiobook Dirty Laundry: Why Adults with ADHD Are so Ashamed and What We Can Do to Help by Richard Pinke and Roxanne Emery). There really is power in knowledge and community. It brings a sense of empowerment - dulls the sense of “otherness”.
As a teacher, I had a lot of kids with ADHD over the years and am sad to say that I was quite clueless as to everything it entailed. I cared, listened, accommodated to the best of my ability, but never had one single in service or seminar dedicated to neurodivergence. I had no clue about executive dysfunction or the myriad ways that ADHD impacts the simplest tasks. If I had, I certainly would have seen myself in the symptoms. There is definitely a stigma attached to ADHD, especially in adults which stems from a lack of understanding. The world is built for neurotypical people, and by and large, built on the assumption that there is something fundamentally “wrong” with people who struggle to function in it. Human beings have the tendency to judge things we don’t understand. Whether that tendency is nature or nurture, we have to actively make the choice to be open minded, to be kind, and to be accommodating. This journey I’m on isn’t linear and the path isn’t paved with roses, but every day I discover a little more about myself and this beautiful, complicated brain. It’s ok to not know everything, there is joy to be found in the discovery. I committed to wearing the same dress for 100 days and I actually did it. So now, I’ve decided why not try something else? How about writing a post every day for 100 days? Something about that prospect is terrifying, like locking myself into the inevitability of failure, but to fail would mean that I tried. There is no possibility for growth or change without the trying part. Putting ourselves out there can be really freaking scary, but it can also challenge and change us in ways we never imagined.
The older I get, the more experiences I have, the more I realize that the universe is full of limitless surprises. When my husband and I got engaged back in 2012, I was living 121 miles away in a totally different town, and I distinctly remember lying in bed wondering how on earth we were ever going to make this thing work. How would I get from where I was to where he was and put our lives together under one roof? It honestly seemed impossible at the time but then, I got a teaching job in a town commuting distance from where he lived, packed up a U-Haul, and moved in with him. Now, over ten years later, I’m sitting in the living room of the house he and I bought together watching my puppy chase my cats while my older dog frets in disapproval. I left teaching in 2017 which was never part of my plan. I’ve managed a gift shop, been a substitute teacher, an administrative assistant several times over, and am, at this very moment, transitioning back to part time because my arthritis and other health issues simply won’t allow me to sit at a desk 40 hours a week anymore. I have absolutely no idea what comes next with my job or my health, but instead of being terrified, I’m trying to take deep breaths. I’m trying to remember all the things the universe has sent to me over the years that I didn’t even know were coming - that I didn’t even know I needed. Not everything will be good or easy, but I take comfort in the words of Ernest Hemingway, “We can be destroyed, but not defeated”. No matter what is waiting for me around the corner, good or bad, I can grow and evolve. I can rebuild. I can receive the universe’s gifts with an open heart. So, here’s to 100 days - I look forward to meeting the me that is waiting on the other side. |
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June 2023
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