About

Hey there. My name is Nikki, and I have ADHD (inattentive type).

I didn’t discover that I had ADHD until pretty late in life. Mine is a typical story: my son was diagnosed, and as I learned about it, I realized… oh. Wait a second… I think I have ADHD, too! I got a formal diagnosis, and suddenly, everything about my life made sense.

Now that I know, I’ve been slowly unpacking all the memories of my childhood, the failures, the criticism, the shame, the incomplete projects, the intense emotions, the many ways I’ve adapted to compensate for my inability to manage day-to-day things.

As with many people, I’d been misdiagnosed many times when I was younger. Those misdiagnoses wound up causing further damage. As I’ve come to understand more about ADHD, especially in women, ADHD is the first diagnosis that resonated; its treatment options are the first that made a difference. I’ve also learned more about what it means to be “gifted” and “2e” (gifted + ADHD), which both my son and I are.

Even though ADHD is more well-known today than it was when I was a kid, there’s still an extraordinary amount of misinformation, stigma, and judgement. As for “gifted,”… well, it might be the only thing more widely misunderstood and dismissed than ADHD.

This site is a journal of my life as 2e/with ADHD in hindsight, my experience managing it with medication, how ADHD plays out throughout my days, learning how to get things done, mental health, and what it’s like homeschooling an ADHD combined subtype kid. (You’d think I’d have all the answers, having ADHD myself… but nope. It’s hard work undoing years of “wrong.”)