My ADHD Was Hidden Beneath Layers of Success, Until It Wasn't

I don’t twiddle my pencil. I’m not hyper. I don’t engage in reckless behaviors. I am a full-grown woman. And, yes, I have ADHD.

It took me three years to find out I had ADHD. Actually thirty-three, if you start from the very beginning. And then six more (and counting) to know what to do with it.

I’ll get right to it and start with the climax that marks the start of finding out I had ADHD:

I went nuts.

Now I never got carted to the psychiatric ward, but my mind was fully convinced that reality was just around the corner. I was so convinced, I’d developed a very specific visual: white gauze strapping my arms to their sides on a gurney in a sterile white room. 

What I mean by nuts is that my mind, generally a pretty likeable place where you might find birds chirping and lots of plants in brightly painted pots, became unrecognizable. It became a place I wanted to avoid - my birds silent, my plants putrid. 

I became perpetually nervous, the rapid beating of my heart all day what hearts are only supposed to do at the starting line of a race. I was struggling to get through my work days, uncertain of how much longer I’d be able to fake not being on the brink of losing it. My sleep was crap. Since my body was constantly worked up, my appetite waned; eating became forced. My thoughts raced. Everything was hard. Even figuring out how to spend my time became this big goliath of a task. I was wilting and scared as hell about it. Scared as hell, specifically, that the gurney and gauze were going to show up at my doorstep any day to wheel me away from my life.

Now that you have a handle on the low that led to my ADHD diagnoses, I’m going to start at the beginning.

A child of the 80’s and a first-born do-gooder, I was fortunate enough to thrive in the classic, straightforward classroom of my childhood. Because I liked learning and I liked gold stars and I liked all opportunities to socialize, there was never a moment for me when school felt dreadful. Luckily, my report cards revealed my school ease; I was an Honor Roll sort of gal.

Enters college: More of the same, plus a new path to earn success: 11^thhour victories. I became an epic procrastinator and, since the intended study sessions in the library I almost always abandoned at first opportunity to socialize in whispers with fellow distractors, I relied almost entirely on charged bolts of inspiration under my dorm room desk lamp within hours of deadlines. And I almost always struck gold.

There were no problems, World. 

I was still on track, competent and confident.

Enters first job: Still rocking through life, except now - with my job charging me with lots of event planning and orchestration of details - I started feeling like I had half a brain. It was taking me way longer to do stuff than it seemed my coworkers would take to do the same stuff. I took a lot home. I worked more hours. I couldn’t help but feel wildly inefficient, even though I was paddling underwater twice as fast.

Enters speeding tickets: Around the same time, on road trips to and from my hometown when I would return there to visit family on weekends, I got ticketed however many times it takes to be within an inch of having your license revoked. To slap my wrist prior to it getting to that, I earned a seat in a tutorial driving class. Except, I opted the alternative self-guided option: they sent me an instructional DVD with a paper test. I got the test back to them; I had to pay for a replacement DVD (because I most certainly lost my copy).

I’ll spare the smaller details, but here are some other highlights: 

*Despite having graduated college with a degree in mathematics, my checkbook-balancing deficiencies had me pleading on the regular with bank representatives to waive the overdraft fees.

*My go at serving tables at a restaurant was short-lived: I couldn’t answer questions about the menu under pressure and diners kept asking me for things while I was getting other diners things – the nerve.

*I once paid to have my car, which wouldn’t start, towed to the mechanic only to find out that I had simply run out of gas. 

*The era of cell phones had begun and in pretty much every single situation when I had need to use mine, it was almost always reliably dead: remembering to charge things was way above my operating level.

*I apologize to Mother Earth for the countless extra loads of laundry I did, necessary because of how soured my clothes would get left sitting in the washing machine for too many days.

*I was finding more and more spells when simple communication would fail me, like there was a barrier between all my juicy intelligence and words to share it. My fiancé and I developed language for this: When I got stuck, I’d just say, “I can’t find my words,” with a sigh.

*My wedding weekend was an absolute miracle. I still have no idea how it got pulled off. To everyone who helped pull it off and might be reading this: Thanks. The planning sure as hell can’t be credited to me. 

*My husband and I had a baby and once I left the little dude in his car seat in the parking lot while I grabbed something at the drugstore; I literally completely forgot I had a baby in the van.

*Speeding tickets. Did I mention speeding tickets?

So, while all of these realities were going on in the background, the foreground of my life had been very affirming: I was a woman who was educated, employed, married, and even keeping a small child alive. With flying colors, I might add.

When did I go nuts, then?

I mean, I suppose it was gradual. But if I had to pinpoint – in retrospect -- I would say it was the second kid and then definitely by the third kid (and then most definitely by the fourth). Doing the wife thing and the house management thing and the working thing and the one kid thing was what my neurological makeup could handle, still hard work but able to be managed while maintaining my usual musical, lush interior world. 

Layering additional kiddos, apparently, was when my “engine – despite its strength – couldn’t pull the weight of life any longer with all those flat tires.” (Those are not my words. They are the words of the ADHD testing specialist responsible for diagnosing me. The engine is my brain. The flat tires are the challenges my ADHD puts before me. The weight is all my responsibilities, including needy babes.) 

And for me, it wasn’t just that my vehicle’s speed slowed. And it wasn’t just that it was protesting with grunts, sputters, and grumbles. 

It fully blew out. 

My interior world went with it… to that overwhelmed, panicky, scary place. There was a growing disparity between what was required of me and what I was capable of, and fear was more than eager to fill the space. Not surprisingly, my feelings of competency, confidence, and self-reliance hit the road, too. I doubted myself more and more, trusted myself less and less, resorted to hiding more and more, and became smaller and smaller and smaller.

Except, and this is important to make clear, I didn’t have knowledge that that last paragraph was what was actually happening.

What I thought was happening: I was going nuts.

Now I’d like to point out that there are many different launch pads that can propel one to a place of impairing anxiety and bottomed-out wellness like mine at that time. And believe you me, in the beginning a couple of therapists and I explored every one. We poked around in my childhood for trauma, dabbled with the possibility of grief from some losses in my life, tried to make Acute Adjustment Disorder fit due to several cross country moves in a short period of time, and thought we’d struck gold with much of what I was experiencing fitting post-partum symptoms. 

It took a cunning ear from Therapist Number Three to hear the quiet whispers of ADHD through all my squabbling. It was she who suggested the ADHD testing, and – even though I was stubbornly resistant to this discovery of hers (No way! I did great in school! I was never out of control! ADHD is the picture of someone else, NOT me!) – that therapist stuck with it. She nudged me further and further away from denial and imprinted upon me that my neurological deficits might be exactly what was painting the dark picture of my days.

Fast-forward to now: Since that day in the ADHD testing office when the doc used car imagery to explain in layman’s terms that I had ADHD Inattentive (the kind without the H – that is to say without the Hyperactivity – which is much more nuanced and difficult to uncover), I’ve committed to learning about it like a Phd student. I have books and articles all around my house (and I’d show you, if only I could find them). My brain and I have become incredibly well-acquainted. I’ve devised, executed, and abandoned at different times innumerable systems to organize better, time manage better, file better, decrease distractions better, meal plan better… you name it. I’ve tried medications. I’ve stopped medications. I’ve tried them again. I’ve sharpened the fine art of self-care, waxing and waning the frequency of my massages, naps, meditations, outsourced house cleanings, journaling, babysitters, and exercise based on how my engine is handling my tires. I’ve seen therapists and ADHD life coaches and attended local CHADD chapter meetings. And I’ve definitely prayed.

And I’m happy to say that I’m not worried about the loony bin anymore. 

It’s also certainly not perfect. As my adult-ADHD-specialized psychiatrist recently said, “We’re not looking for a silver bullet here, but how bout we aim for a bronze one?” Bronze for me is that I finally can place my anxiety and depression and wilty, songless interior life – whenever they show up again – as biproducts of my cognitive challenges. I can see that I’m working too hard and my mind is bucking. And – pretty importantly – that I’m not nuts.

Most of all - and what I want to communicate with fervor here - I cannot believe it took me this long to find this out about myself. How could I have had the same brain my whole life and yet have no major life complications result from it until major complications started resulting from it? First 75% of my life: SWELL. Next 8%: WENT TO CRAP. Most recent 17%: HARNESSING THAT SHIT.

It certainly makes me want to be what Therapist Number Three was for me for other young women (ADHD inattentive is most common in females and, since it does not show up in behavioral or scholastic ways in school – at least in the beginning - is often overlooked). It makes me want to crack open every youngster’s head and help expose any invisible learning disabilities lingering in there. It makes me want to educate all teachers, parents, coaches, relatives about what signs might point to ADHD in the kids they hang with, even when nothing dramatic is yet going on.

Basically, I’d like for flat tires to be known entities by our young generation of vehicles… long before - like me - a blow out does the revealing. 

I’m a Church Girl. I’m Straight. Why On Earth Then Do I Care So Much About Gay Inclusion?

When you are a runner for your midwestern college’s indoor track team – which holds its season in the Winter -- and your coach loves to watch you suffer, you find yourself bundling up on Friday nights for mandatory warm-up runs outside in the cold-assed dark prior to your inside gymnasium track races. It was on one of these freezing runs that my buddy, who was on my relay team for a race we were both warming up to run, shared between huffing breaths that she was gay.

We were a tight little group of gangly runners, the women’s college team of which we were both part, so I was not surprised by this admission. Bri was pint-sized, tough-as-steel, rarely found without her sandy-blonde hair in a pony-tail, competitive to the death, and not a particularly lively participator in our team’s giggly crush conversations.

For her, though, I was glad we were surrounded by darkness and facing forward, because saying it out loud as we clipped along, I could tell, was not easy.

Bri was the first friend I knew well to tell me she was gay.

Before I get ahead of myself, though, I need to back a bunch up. To my particular version of The Sex Talk. My brother and I argue about what our Sex Talk consisted of, when really our stories should be identical since we were together when it happened. My memory tells the story of a set of nightly sessions compacted into a week or so when Justin, my brother, and I were small. Justin remembers it taking place more willy nilly over the course of a longer stretch of time. What we both agree upon is that it was a fairly formal thing. Illuminated by a bed lamp, the “S” encyclopedia was one of several resources laid out for these nighttime learning sessions, and it was our Dad who functioned as the facilitator (Mom was supportive but happy to sidestep). He took the job seriously; no stone was left unturned on the subject. We were taught it all: the mechanics of sex, the utility of sex, the pleasure of sex, and the connection between emotions and sex. To help you understand the strong commitment he had to framing it positively to us kids, my dad refused to call it “sex:” instead “making love.” I feel certain there was a brief time dedicated to educating us about how sex can go sideways: sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancies and the like. But mostly I remember being happily dumbfounded that God had made it so that humans got to do such a miraculous and mysterious and blessed thing with one another.

Somewhere in-between Dad’s sex ed and that jog with Bri, two other things happened. First, I became a complete and total church groupie. I was Sunday School girl, youth group girl, Vacation Bible School girl, summer mission trip girl, church choir girl – and I even attempted to follow along sheet music while ringing bells during worship. I loved church. I still do. Church did me right, mainly because my childhood pastors were the Bomb: our senior pastor was a wise and wickedly intelligent man and my youth pastor, with whom I would converse about everything from ape evolution to Bible conundrums to other world religions to funny Seinfeld episodes, was always willing to entertain and hold space for uncertainty. He was and is an honest, progressive-minded friend.

The second thing that happened was, for a family rearing its children in Louisville, KY in the 80s and 90s, my childhood was starting to see the topic of homosexuality showing up more and more at its doorstep. I will never forget watching “Philadelphia” as a barely-teenager. I did not know what to do with that film. I knew nothing about AIDS prior to watching it (besides the name). I certainly had not seen gay couples show affection in public (you remember Hanks and Washington’s dance scene, right?). I was way too dumb and self-involved and in middle-America (and straight) to be remotely capable of understanding the realities of discrimination homosexuals faced.

“Philadelphia” rocked me, too, because, underneath all of that church awesomeness where truly I was taught about and experienced the real deal of God’s unconditional love, I was also aware of a Christian tenant never directly taught but nonetheless there: gay was not okay. But I just kept singing Kumbaya around youth retreat campfires and learning about this Jesus guy as someone I wanted everything to do with… and all of this spared me from too much squirminess around conservative Christian views, simply because they infrequently came to light in my world.

Until Bri.

People, I mean it when I say: It was easy to know what to do here. My beloved friend – who, along with the rest of the Track Team, I had shared countless Fazoli dinners with, labored through dozens of grueling sprint work outs with, argued over crappy cafeteria meals about politics with, this person I respected and admired and valued – was gay. She told me before she told anyone else on the team, anyone else at the college, even though doing so carried a risk of rejection, since she knew I was a Christian. And I knew exactly what to do: absolutely and completely nothing. Nothing changed about her, about me, about our friendship.

When she explained the tough time she was having with some complex family dynamics, that she was trying and failing to get her parents to accept this piece of who she was, that they’d repeatedly demanded therapists and repentance and camps to set her straight, I grieved. I knew one thing for certain: I was not going to be another influence in her life that said she was living – existing – wrongly. It was clear as day: I said to God, “I don’t know about this, Man, but I sure as heck am not going to decide for You. In fact, I’m straight up not gonna worry about it. The whole thing is on you, after all. Cool?”

Fast-forward through another incredible blessing in my life – that I got to be the first person in our extended family my teenaged cousin confided in about her homosexuality, before her parents, before most of her friends – and you will clearly see how I have come by circumstance to be a strong champion for gay people in my life who have had the courage to come out into their realities. Bri and my cousin cried and screamed and limped and labored through their separate journeys of coming out. To be alongside them while they did it is a gift I will not waste.

So now, I’m educated. I’ve scoured over the Biblical passages that Christians for ages have interpreted to be the final word about homosexuality as a sin. I’ve read Christian books that help me to frame those passages in a generous and Jesus-consistent light. I have attended interfaith workshops where the topic of sexuality has been addressed by minister, rabbi, and monk panelists. And I have prayed. Boy, have I prayed.

But now, instead of reluctant, shruggy theology on the subject, I have come to see with clarity and decisiveness that sexuality and sexual immorality are separate things.

Gonna unpack that: sexuality and sexual immorality are separate things. To do so, let’s retrieve what I’ve said about the sex ed I received in my home as a youngster. Sexuality was introduced to me as profoundly normal. Good. Natural. Positive. I realize not everyone grew up with this message. But, because I did, it was so much easier for me to see sexuality as something separate from morality. Yes, we are sexual beings. Yes, that is good. No, sexuality does not need to be beaten out of us. No, we need not fight against it. My dad didn’t know at the time that by teaching me in this way he was leaving an open door I’d walk through these many years later – that I’d translate my adolescent understanding of how good and God-given sexuality is to all sexuality, the non-heterosexual kind, too.

Is there an overlap where sex and immorality happen together? Yes, of course. People regularly use their bodies and their partners in immoral and worth-reducing manners. Let us all the while remember: It’s not that sex is bad. It’s how we use sex that can be bad. And the bad types – the kind that yield power over the other, the kind that diminishes our or others’ worth, the kind that preys on the vulnerable, and a whole lot of other kinds – run amuck in the homosexual and heterosexual practice of it.

When I assert that sexuality and sexual immorality are separate things, I’m saying that sexual orientation is not the determinant of sin; people are the determinant of sin. I’m saying that purity – I’d hope – is about a heck of a lot more than who one is attracted to. I’m saying that Bri, my cousin, all you out there, and I – a straight gal – are equally responsible for maintaining our separate sex lives to be honorable before God; one is no more inherently honorable than the other.

But – and I mean this – what I’m saying could also be all wrong.

And that is where prayer comes back round. The prayer that’s evolved for me (from the “I don’t know about this, Man.” one) reveals a decisiveness yet is still laced in humility: “Dear God, If I am wrong about this, I’m all ears.” I’ve earnestly prayed it hundreds of times, and I think it captures the vulnerability in my heart. Just praying it over and over has changed me.

 Just like Bri and my cousin changed me.

Why on earth do I care so much about gay inclusion?

I’ve come a long way from that dark warm-up run when my pal trusted me with her secret. My metamorphosis on this subject isn’t over yet, either; I’m still growing (and you ought to be, too). But so far, it looks like this:

Living alongside my gay loved ones as they came out is a gift I will not waste; it is part of my story.

The Jesus I’ve come to know has taken up residence in my theology and helps frame Bible passages that at first glance come across as ungenerous towards a gay lifestyle.

Sexuality and sexual immorality are separate things - unless I’ve got it all wrong.

I may have it wrong. And, God, if this is true, I’m all ears.

Amen.

Five Reasons Being a Creative is FREAKING HARD When You Also Happened to be a Mom

#5

They always wanna share your creative stuff. 

This shouldn’t surprise us since the selfish little bastards by nature always think everything is about them. That Walgreens bag you’re holding with tampons in it: “Something’s in there for me! Right!?” The phone conversation you’re having with your business partner: “It’s really about setting up a playdate for me with her son! Right!?”

Similarly, they can sniff out your coveted supplies, even when you use sly camouflage – packaging it in inconspicuously-adult-looking satchels, tucking it under the bag of brussel sprouts in the freezer, layering your expensive artistic instruction books and training materials within the skin of a serious-looking parenting manual. 

They draw on your stuff. They gnaw on our stuff. They claim your stuff. They catch a glimpse of your paint brushes, your calligraphy pens, your pages of multicolored notes for your next piece of writing, your French horn, your camera’s expensive film, your clay, your needlepoint – and they assign it to themselves. If you are having fun, being playful with your time and your mind and your hands… then it is the stuff of kids: “It’s OURS!” they exclaim.

They are actually right: It ischild’s play. Except this time it’s for the grown up. And we get to be selfish little bastards, too.

#4

There are places to be. Like, at times. 

Most creatives I know are not particularly interested in the time. For those of us who believe that life is one big masterpiece and we are discovering along the way where our colors and contributions get serendipitously dispensed, being told when and where to dispense ourselves makes us begrudging and bitchy. To others the clock may be all reliable and unfailing; to us it’s more steely cuffs. Getting your six year old to a soccer game at 8:50 am on Saturday with socks and shoes on BOTH feet? Way too absolute.

But golly darn your kid likes soccer. And wants to be in an organized sport. And nothing organized in the history of the world happens unless a TIME is assigned to it. 

You’ll just have to splash your colors within the constructs of 30-minute halves on the field’s sidelines. 

And let the chunks of white space between all those Things That Happen At Specific Times be purposefully outside of clock-time, ungoverned and unbridled and unstilted. Your right brain needs this of you and the masterpiece of life needs this of you, too.

#3

Our hygiene and self-care can survive prolonged neglect; theirs can’t.

As a creative, you know how inspiration works: you gotta strike while the iron is hot. When you follow a lightning bolt of creative flow into a several-day vacuum - when you give it everything – you’re so alive with electricity that you hardly notice your actual body (the matted hair, the dirty underwear you keep recycling because who has time for laundry?, the fact that you’ve survived on handfuls of frosted mini wheats and scantily spaced cat naps). You’re unkempt. And that’s a price worth paying for what you live for.

While we can abandon our bodies’ needs, we simply cannot abandon that of little people’s. Sparse food, sparse rest, sparce routine, and sparce attention will make them devils, not to mention the subject of a Child’s Services Investigation. And even though we all know dealing with devil children is worse than jail, I’d prefer neither one. And no one else – including the exorcist you hired - will sympathize with, “But, I was in THE ZONE, people!” 

Your zone has to work around your children. Which means, you often have to strike for aggravatingly short periods of time when the iron is lukewarm and be ok with what that gets ya.

#2 

Life as a mom can basically be summed up like this: Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Stat, stop.

I keep picturing here the creative you, a vibrant and healthy green vine that is bursting with forward motion at all times. And a chop block a certain distance in front of it with a butcher knife suspended above. Vine grows. Chop. Vine emerges out of stump. Chop. Vine, relentless, inches forward again. Chop. Again. Chop. Again. Chop. Again. Chop. 

At a certain point, you just decide to stand in the house equidistant to where all your children are… completely still… awaiting their next query without it interrupting anything, because you’ve intentionally decided to commit to NOTHING when they’re around. Your vine stays still to avoid a chop. 

But when they are all snoring logs, may your juicy jungle abound.

#1

Speaking of sleep, that’s all you ever want to do. 

That’s #1.

All you ever want to do is sleep. 

But don’t let anyone tell you that tired artists cannot make art. 

So don’t wait for uninterrupted nine hour nights. Or a bounce in your step. Or a reservoir of energy. String together as many hours of sleep and rest as is possible in your world, grab a bold cup of joe, and get to it.

Five Things I Never Say to My Kids, And What I Say Instead: #1!

(This is the final installment! Go here for #2.)

#1 I’m so proud of you.

A while back, I met an older gentleman at the library book drop off. He had hiked it over by foot from the neighboring retirement village. Fair warning: I’m not sure if he was with it or not (nor whether the retirement facility was more of the Memory Care variety or not). Let me be the first to say that this guy didn’t look to have showered in approximately 2.5 years. Nonetheless, he taught me something that day I continue to use. 

We struck up a mini conversation about his grown son, who he explained was doing creative film projects that were gaining public attention. I said, “Wow, that’s really cool. I bet you are so proud.” To which, without a moment’s pause, he replied, “No no. Never proud. Pride is very dangerous. When I become proud it becomes about me. I don’t tell him I’m proud of him. Instead, I say I’m happy for him.” 

You’d laugh at the lengths I’ve gone to unpack this interaction. First of all, you just learned about my beef with the word “happy.” Secondly, I’ve thought a lot about the words “proud” and “happy” and how really, for me, their implications aren’t that separate. I’ve taken turns concluding that that guy was a word-mincing dumb-dumb with believing him to be exquisitely, if not unkemptly, brilliant. 

Somewhere along the way, I think I finally realized the distinction he was making and that it perhaps has more to do with the prepositionsin the phraseologies. See for yourself if you sense the difference:

OF/WITH

I’m proud of you

I’m happy with you

I’m pleased with you

I’m thrilled with you

FOR

I’m proud for you

I’m happy for you

I’m pleased for you

I’m thrilled for you 

I can say, because of that stranger, that I now use “for” exclusively. 

Listen: I know it feels squabbly. Yet, read on. Because squabble, I shall.

Because I do think our kids can sense when our posture towards them is similar to how we might relate with a circus monkey. Those itty bitty words “of” and “with” do that. They say, “You did it! And since I am your overseer, the one with the peanuts in my pocket, I reap the rewards! Your success = my fortune! Pat on head.” Then, put the monkey back out there to perform some more.  

Kids also sense when our posture towards them is similar to how we might relate with a puppy. The word “for” does that. It says, “You did it! It’s all you, kid! Don’t it feel good? I’m so lucky to share in celebration with you over this. You get all the credit, bud! Give yourself a pat on the back!” Then, parent and puppy tackle each other in a lick-fest.

Do you think I’m nuts (Pea-NUTS, maybe?)?

Maybe it’s silly, and I’m making a big deal out of nothing. But, if there happens to be a hint of truth in the distinction, I’m erring on the side of the puppy-adorer instead of monkey-trainer. 

“For” it is, for me. 

(Just because I gleaned a whole different valuable lesson that I don’t want to keep to myself: This guy, when I hollered my farewell through the van window, “Have a great day!”, corrected me: “No, I’ll makeit a great day. Havinga great day is a passive activity.” You see what I’m saying with this guy? Luny or brilliant or hobo or another angel? Conceivably, I've decided, he was all four.)