I've always been interested in stories: stories of magic; stories from people long passed; stories of how now just came to be.

In my life and career, I've grown by finding routes & strategies to leverage my strengths while filling gaps where I falter. I've learned to recognize my emotions, listening to address them. I've developed strategies to help with my prioritisation, using calendars, and planning ahead.
Yet—
I've always had this constant feeling of difference. No matter where I searched, I couldn't find the right words, the label, grasping at something just out of reach. While Friday June 19th, 2020 started off like many others, it was the day I finally found the right words:
I’m ADHD!
After a friend’s post lit the spark, I went to my first places to start investigating a new interesting topic: Reddit. Sometimes, I'm lucky, and there's an active, respectful, engaged, and moderated community that's an invaluable resource.
r/ADHD didn't let me down.
Their wiki sent me to a video of Russell Barkley—a clinical psychologist who’s spent most of his scientific career researching and communicating about ADHD—that explains what ADHD really is.
I was on the couch as I watched; in happy, ugly tears.
I had never felt so seen.
It's like every story of a character approached by a magical entity where they're told, for the first time, of their powers. They reflect at the strange, random things that happened in their life; those that just didn't add up.
It’s like lightning hit the sand of my brain, crystalizing into fulguritic clarity.
I continued my dive down the ADHD Rabbit Hole and found a thriving community, my people. They were sharing their ADHD experiences, describing their lives, and I continued to see how it aligned so much with mine. I had never seen my life laid bare with such clarity and consistency.
Well-timed epiphany
That afternoon, I had a therapy session; I couldn’t wait to go and share my discovery. I had begun working with this therapist as the pandemic began, to prepare for the expected challenges of the Works Council responsibilities and, well, the pandemic.
I hadn’t expected such a revelation, but so very grateful I had this support when I did.
For the whole session, I shared just what had come up, what I was learning, and how I knew this was right. She sent me tests they had at the time, not specializing in ADHD but had resources available to help guide me. After taking the tests, they were clear as well: I’m ADHD.
An introduction to: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
There are three diagnosable presentations of ADHD:
- Predominantly Hyperactive & Impulsive
(ADHD-HI): Difficulties primarily with impulsive and hyperactive behavior and not with attention or concentration - Predominantly Inattentive
(ADHD-I): Significant inattentiveness without being impulsive or hyperactive - Combined Type
(ADHD-C): Significant inattentiveness with impulsive and hyperactive behaviour
ADHD is not something everyone has a little bit of. It's deeply intwined with every aspect of living life:
- It impacts cognition, attention, perception, motor skills, behaviour, social relations...oral and written communication.
- It doesn't solely impact one single thing, but is an interconnected aspect of experiencing life.
- It comes with a lot of comorbidities—additional health challenges that are much more likely to be present with this “primary” diagnosis
- It’s commonly missed and dismissed because of societal expectations put on other humans, radically influencing diagnosis possibilities or any ability to receive support.
Learning this has constructed a more solid frame, gifting clearer lenses to look through and see some of the why of my life...but, it hasn’t magically made anything “better” per-se.
It’s not that I can “fix” or “grow out of.” Some liken it to having super powers, it's not the metaphor for me. Superpowers tend to be born of extraordinary events, creating people with extraordinary talents who feel a responsibility because of the great power.
ADHD is a neurological difference that makes things others consider "ordinary" become extraordinary.
I liken ADHD more to magic. It's something that's fundamental to the collective human experience, stories across time and place have stories of humans:
Q: Why?
A: Because magic.
Most magicks are powered and influenced by an individual's affinity or unique trait. It's one that's recurring, again, and again, throughout life.
- It's part of the good—tenacity, impulsivity, curiosity, insatiety.
- It's part of the bad—lack of awareness, accidents, relationships lost, opportunities missed, moments forgotten, fines paid.
There's always a give and take when performing magic, whether it be your own energies or inadvertant costs; magic has a price.
Unaware, I've experienced my plenty of the good, and far more of the bad than I had realized. Understanding is one thing, but accepting ADHD as a disability has been a mountain I'm still trekking.
The more I do accept this magic has a cost, and it is a disability, the smaller this particular hurdle’s gotten. Disability's not a bad word. It's helped give myself permission to ask for help, because I really do need it.
We all do.