Big Beautiful brain…

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.