S2E4 ADHD Women and the Person We Thought We’d Be by Now

Birthdays are weird when you've spent your whole life waiting for a different version of yourself to show up. The organized one. The consistent one. The one who isn't always overwhelmed. The one who finally gets her shit together and somehow stays that way. In ADHD Women and the Person We Thought We’d Be by Now, Jess and Jeannine are both celebrating birthdays and looking at all the women they thought they'd have become by this point. For Jeannine, that gets personal. Before her late ADHD diagnosis, there was always a future Jeannine coming. She'd try harder. Be less emotional. Be more organized. Follow through. Become easier to live with. And maybe then she'd finally earn the right to have needs, set boundaries and take up some damn space. Except that woman wasn't only a goal. She was a promise that someday everything would be easier. So what happens when an ADHD diagnosis makes you question whether she was ever supposed to exist? Jess and Jeannine talk about ADHD masking, inconsistent capacity, the grief that can follow a late ADHD diagnosis, relationships, the exhausting promise to “try harder,” and those glorious weeks when your brain cooperates long enough to convince you that you've finally cracked the code. Because maybe the most important question isn't why you never became the woman you thought you'd be. Who did you become while you were so busy looking for her?