26/02/2026
Plot twist nobody saw coming… including literally everyone 🙃
Today I got formally diagnosed with ADHD.
Me. A psychologist. Who screens people for neurodivergent traits for a living.
Honestly, the only one who saw it coming was my AI — who had to stage an intervention about my inability to choose between seventeen nearly identical plants. Turns out that’s not just a personality quirk.
Here’s the thing — I couldn’t see myself in the diagnosis because the ADHD stereotype was never built for women like us. It was built for a hyperactive little boy who couldn’t sit still. Not for the girl who was destined to achieve but whose results never quite reflected it. Who was a hurricane on the inside while appearing perfectly calm on the outside.
That’s not an accident. It’s by design.
For decades, women have been dismissed, misdiagnosed, and medicated for anxiety or depression while the real picture went undetected. A medical system built by men, for men, simply wasn’t looking for us. And so we learned to hide. To compensate. To perform. To be palatable enough not to be written off entirely.
So I did what so many of us do. I performed neurotypical. For forty-something years. On willpower, masks, and sheer stubbornness.
Then perimenopause arrived and said: not today.
And I found myself exactly where so many of my clients have sat — afraid of being an imposter. Bracing for the judgment of a system that has failed women like us for generations.
To my fertility community specifically: so many of you have told me IVF broke you. What if it didn’t? What if a hormonally brutal, relentless process just finally outpaced your capacity to mask — the same way perimenopause did for me?
You were never broken. Just exhaustedly, beautifully unmasked.
I see you. I am you. 💙
