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That’s My Story And I’m Sticking To It

Hello. This is The Adulting with ADHD podcast, with Sarah. I’m so glad you’re here, this is a podcast for women with ADHD just like me. All right off the bat, this isn’t painfully obvious, I’m an amateur. This is actually my very first podcast episode ever so be gentle, okay?

I think before I delve into all the things I want to unpack for women with ADHD I think I should start the first episode by just sharing my story. So I’m going to go ahead and do that. I was diagnosed really late in life, in my mid-thirties with ADHD. I got by on my wits, I guess. I remember in kindergarten getting some low grades on cutting and pasting, but at the same time I really excelled in reading and that all makes sense now. Looking back, because I was really good at the stuff I was interested in and the stuff I couldn’t be bothered with I wasn’t patient enough to finish those things. And so of course hindsight is 20/20.

This followed me through middle and high school, I was smart I was in the advanced classes but I wasn’t like this super-uver overachiever. There was always room for improvement and I wasn’t failing, so therefore there were never any flags. We now know that ADHD in girls, it can express itself differently, it could present differently.

So yeah, I’m inattentive type, those day dreamers, that kind of stuff. I fell through the cracks. Made it to college, got into a good school, immediately almost, got put on scholastic probation, because guess what? I never developed those studying skills that are so important. I did however develop a passion for journalism, so I was working at the best damn college newspaper in the nation, I always like to say. And I was covering these really hot stories, chasing ambulances, going to the capital. I had a very exciting college career, it just wasn’t in the books. I was already working and that may have served me well, but not when you’re trying to make good grades.

I pulled myself out of scholastic probation, but I was still more than a decade from being diagnosed. But I did learn that, hey I can’t chase ambulances all day, I actually need to pass these classes or I’m getting kicked out. Fast forward in my career, I had a good career in journalism, I ended up leaving it just because newspapers were dying or whatever.

Once again, just like school I wasn’t the superstar but I wasn’t failing either. I was just kind of there, getting by on my wits, barely making it. It just wasn’t obvious but now that I know, I can go back and tell you exactly, oh that huge reporting error I made, could totally attribute it to my ADHD. Just the lack of precision there, the amount of errors I made, the amount of errors I didn’t catch. I was a copy editor guys, and I remember one of my performance reviews the guy said I was underperforming compared to my peers. And he was right, yeah I thought he was a jerk, but he was right. I think in the back of my mind I always knew something was up, but whatever right?

So I kept trucking, I kept trucking I made a career change, I became an entrepreneur which really was awesome for me. And then the economy went bad so I had to go get a real job, and this real job it was a really awesome job, but the people there performed at a very high level and this my friends, is how I found out I had ADHD. Because I was performing at such a level that failure was not an option, honestly. I had a conversation with my boss after enough mistakes and it was basically the conversation amounted to, you can’t make any more mistakes. None, or you’re out. He was a great boss, but he was just telling me how it was. Scared the crap out of me and at the time I had already been seeing a psychiatrist, I also have depression I have anxiety disorder. I will later learn these were all tied into the ADHD as well. So I already had been seeking treatment for that and she had already diagnosed me with ADHD, when I got this really bad news, that hey, you’re screwing up way too badly.

Yeah, so it was good timing, I broke down I ended up telling my boss and my supervisor. I ended up just telling them what was going on, that I had it and that my medicine was literally in the mail. It’s not something I wanted to talk about because at the time it felt like an excuse, it felt like I was putting a name on something instead of owning, owning my dysfunction. But now I know better, and I got a lot of great recommendations from my psychiatrist and it included a lot of tips on changing my work environment, limiting distractions, plugging into light noise. Went on medication and I’ve been on the medication and I’ve been off medication when I was pregnant so, by no means is medication the only way to manage it but I am totally all about the medication in my case.

So that’s the kind of ADHD’er I am, I feel like everybody’s story is different and when I blog and when I run my online community, the way I go into it is I’m very inclusive of all types of ADHD and I know we’re not all the same and I know that we all approach our thing differently.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it, that’s me in a nutshell. That was really the point of this first episode but I’m going to be jumping on here once a week and it’s going to get better every week. And I’m super excited, I’ve been blogging about ADHD since 2016 I think, but I’ve never been able to do all the things I really wanted to do. Like write continuously, really dig in, really connect with my readers, I’m building out this amazing community. I’m just super excited and this podcast was the next step and you’re listening to it, and if you’ve made it this far thank you so much for giving a gal a chance to dip her toes in this podcast thing and I just can’t wait to keep going. I hope you stick around and until then happy adulting.

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