Attention, everyone! I've started a newsletter.
I hate bios. They make you reduce your identity down to a handful of words. A few select letters that when scrambled together in the right order give a shortcut for others to size you up.
Aren’t we so much more than these letters?
Attention, Everyone! I’ve started a newsletter. I’ll begin with an entry about who I am. My identity, an elusive and ever-changing construct that has been labeled and mislabeled over the years.
Until I found my letters. And I give you full permission to use them to size me up.
ADHD and Identity
I’ve been a writer since I could hold a pencil (yes, pencil was my writing utensil of choice as a child). It’s always been a term I could identify with. I was nine years old when I started my first journal. I was also nine when my parents separated and when I got my first in-school suspension for missed homework assignments. ADHD wasn’t even on my radar.
ADHD was not a term I identified with. ADHD was the boy across the street who couldn’t sit down to eat his lunch. The one who would go on to drink straight hydrochloric acid in high school chemistry class just to get some laughs.
No, I was sensitive. I was thoughtful. I was a writer.
However, my troubles were just beginning with that fifth grade in-school suspension. Emotional struggles. A change of schools. Several stints in therapy. A (unnamed) disordered-existence followed. Still, no one even suggested ADHD. Especially because, on the outside and by all the “important” measures, I was thriving.
Senior year of high school, I was crowned homecoming queen and graduated a member of the National Honor Society after being accepted to several of the most prestigious college journalism programs in the U.S.
Academically, high school had been boring. College was easy. I built my identity around achieving.
When I entered the workforce, though, things changed. Suddenly, achieving didn’t come as easily. I was confronted with the impacts of perfectionism, overcommitment, procrastination, overwhelm and overworking. I stopped writing. I stopped being a writer.
I formed a new identity around my work. I was the hard worker. I was the superstar.
As long as I don’t drop any balls or let anyone down, I’ll be worthy.
Later, I repeated this pattern, wrapping my identity up my children. In motherhood. In being their mom. I had been given the most beautiful opportunity that exists to love and be loved, and yet, I couldn’t fully enjoy it. I couldn’t fully feel it. I was drowning in anxiety. Panic attacks while breastfeeding. Intrusive thoughts about all the big mistakes I could make. Negative self-talk about all the little mistakes I was already making. These plagued and clouded my already plagued and clouded mind.
It turns out the experience of motherhood cracked me wide open, exposing my innards, and I lost parts of myself I thought I’d never get back.
Maybe I wasn’t who I thought I was.
Fast forward to my 35th birthday, and I was handed a diagnosis by the first psychologist who could get me an appointment. I met with her four times and took an assessment, which she scanned briefly with her eyes and blurted out, “I’ve been doing this a long time, and without even scoring I can tell you definitely, probably have ADHD.”
……
Definitely, probably.
If it were that easy to see, why had it taken my entire life, three decades of mental health struggles, to find this out? Was this me? Would this lead me to me?
More than a year has passed since I got the results of that diagnostic assessment, and much has happened. A casualty of corporate layoffs. A soul-searching journey. A soul-bearing leap to share my story for the benefit of others. I started writing again.
This is Attention, Everyone!, a newsletter to share more about my story. I plan to dive deep into the ways ADHD showed up for me throughout my life, and how I’m using those experiences to show up for others like me (especially women, girls and those assigned female at birth).
Will you learn some things along the way? Definitely, probably.
Four letters have shaped the course of my entire existence. They’ve now become a critical part of my identity. But I’m still the same person I was when I penciled my first journal entry at nine years old (left-handed smears and all). I’m still thoughtful. Still sensitive AF (more letters!). Still a hard worker. A writer. A mom.
I’m still me.
And now I know, I can be anything I want to be.