My ADHD Recovery: It's Not What You Think

Here's what I've learned in the year since my diagnosis.

I’m seven-and-a-half days late, you guys. I am under no illusion that two Monday mornings in a row have found you despondently gazing into your inbox looking for me, but still. I’ve been sick with a tenacious sinus infection, produced the first Reclamation show of 2025 on Saturday, and have spent as many spare moments as possible doing intense second round manuscript revisions. Can I gush about that for a minute before our regularly scheduled programming? Oh, thank you. I finished my first draft an entire year ago, wrapped up revisions in April, wrote the proposal in August, and then let it sit for the entirety of the Great Fall Slump. And sometimes, walking away is exactly what you need for clarity.

Reclamation: The Fempire Strikes Back at Junkyard Social Club

When I returned to my manuscript in January—printed out and spiral bound—for the first time in four months, I found that all of a sudden, I knew exactly what I needed to do to make it better. Even though I could only sometimes decipher the notes I left myself (fortunately the color-coded highlights were less obtuse)), I made the changes I’d noted while re-reading it, and then some. I attribute that unprecedented clarity to a few things: See also, the podcast interview with Jessica Buchanan about trusting your intuition, and diving into The Artist’s Way this year. The synchronicities, flow, and a direct line to my creativity have felt like a balm after a dry season. What an exhale. OK, enough verbal throat-clearing. On to this week’s column!

It’s been an entire year since I got an ADHD diagnosis—Facebook reminded me, and even though I knew it was around the corner, I was still excited when I saw the “I have a diagnosis!” story pop up from one year ago. Despite the obvious irony of having “attention” issues, I actually have an excellent memory.  (Not an excellent *working* memory, but we can talk about executive functioning another day.) I love to celebrate anniversaries, and I usually remember dates and numbers with uncanny accuracy. But this one snuck up on me, and seeing my column—and the bittersweet picture of where I was at this time in January 2024, complete with ADHD books, manuscript draft, and sweet Tigger—gave me a flood of emotions.

ADHD has been such a significant part of the last year of my life. I was talking recently with a good friend about the icky feeling associated with declaring oneself in a particular way. It’s always so exciting when we learn something about ourselves, but some of us also feel embarrassed and sensitive when we get too loud about self-discovery, diagnoses, and labels. I remember when I became gluten free seven years ago and felt awkward and sheepish about my proclamation. I had eliminated it from my diet after realizing it exacerbated a medical condition, but honestly, who cares why I did it? Asking for gluten free menus made me feel so damn precious. I didn’t want people to think I was pretentious or fussy or high maintenance.

Getting an ADHD diagnosis felt a bit like that. It’s hard to explain what a relief it is when you finally understand yourself, when someone hands you a pair of glasses with the correct prescription and you can see finally yourself clearly. It’s hard to convey how meaningful it is when everything about your life comes into focus and makes so much more sense. And it’s easy to go down a rabbit hole (or twenty) in your pursuit to understand everything you possibly can about this aspect of yourself.

Surely we all have experience with *that person* who takes one identifying thread and lets it take over everything about their life. The last thing I wanted was to be “that person.” I hated the idea of people being irritated by my overbearing enthusiasm for this new label. Of course, having ADHD is only one element of who I am—let’s not dismiss the importance of one’s astrological makeup, Myers-Briggs result, birth order, and Enneagram number. 😍 (Double Cancer, Sag moon, ENFJ, firstborn, 4, respectively. 😉)

Self-deprecation aside, getting diagnosed with ADHD at midlife is actually a huge fucking deal. It feels like recovery.

What does recovery actually mean?

I started to think a lot about the concept of recovery lately. Because obviously, I’m not going to “recover” from ADHD—and even if I could, I wouldn’t want to. But getting a diagnosis of neurodivergence played a huge role in the recovery of me. Working with the IFS model of therapy for nearly three years set something foundational in motion and gave me the right tools for the excavation that had been pulling at me. Writing my memoir was another breadcrumb—incidentally, I finished the first draft almost exactly one year ago, in tandem with my diagnosis. And together, IFS therapy and my memoir breadcrumb trail adventure led me right to this diagnosis.

In the midst of all this transformation and the chaos of divorce and single motherhood, I inadvertently recovered myself. I didn’t even notice it happening at first. It was sometime around then that I renamed this column The Reclamation Era, because that’s what life suddenly felt like: I had reclaimed myself. I had recovered myself. And ADHD was inextricably linked to this recovery.

Reclamation and recovery feels a lot like remembering. It’s not about creating something brand new—it’s about remembering what was always deep within you, recovering it, reclaiming it. And then letting it radiate out of you and guide you.

One of the most profound things to come from my ADHD diagnosis is the work we have been able to do with the Mother Plus podcast. We have had the honor of speaking with Tracy Otsuka, Dr. Sharon Saline, Dr. Christine Li, Jessica Buchanan, Dr. Rebecca Richey, and so many others who have helped us understand ourselves better. These women have reminded us who we are. They have helped us understand and have compassion for ourselves. They have guided us back to our intuition, back towards our superpowers.

The Power of the ADHD Woman

In the past few months, I had a profound realization. Some of the qualities I had always been ashamed of—sensitivity and emotionality—were actually my greatest strengths. I’d like to say I came to this conclusion all on my own as evidence of some inner wisdom and self-love, but it took conversations with podcast guests to drive the point home.

We had the incredible pleasure of interviewing the one and only Susan Bratton (her episode will air next week—make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss this conversation!) about intimacy and the ADHD woman. And she said something that actually made me cry.

“ADHD women create very strong emotional connections. There are so many people running around in this world who have a flattened heart. The heart is both a muscle and a door. You practice love. You build the muscle and you feel more love than a lot of other people walking around the world. It's a beautiful benefit of ADHD.”—Susan Bratton

It’s hard to describe why these words made me cry. I think as Susan spoke, I realized that something I had always been embarrassed by—how damn emotional I am, how dysregulated I sometimes become—was directly linked to how deeply I love. Susan reminded me that loving so deeply and fully is a gift—it makes us passionate and compassionate, intuitive and connected. It makes us good partners.

Look at this radiant goddess!!

In case I had missed the memo, the lesson popped up again as I edited an episode where we interviewed neuropsychologist Dr. Diana Barrett and Dr. Lynne Baldwin about executive functioning and moms with ADHD (that one airs this week!). Diana said,

“Emotions make us human, and passionate people have these “disinhibited emotions” that are the reason we do crazy things, like maybe run into a burning building to save an animal or to save a child. It’s the reason you can fall deeply in love—that raw emotional space. So as much as it gets in the way for us and depletes us, there are also some things that we can access that other people may not be able to access.”

We discussed that it really is a package deal—our emotions are big and wild and deep, and they can cause distress at times, but they also cause us to connect with our children, our partners, and our friends. It’s this depth of emotion that can make the ADHD woman more effective at her work, more creative, more intuitive.

I needed these reminders this past month, as I’ve been sick and overwhelmed and, like many others, devastated and terrified when I dare to tune into what is happening in the world. Even when things around us are crumbling or burning or threatening to bury us, it is never the wrong time to recover ourselves. The path to recovery looks different for all of us, but it is always a path worth walking. I needed to remember that my ADHD diagnosis helped me to recover myself, and even if it isn’t the only thing that defines me, I will always be grateful for the role it played in my reclamation. And I will celebrate that, loudly, and maybe even shed some tears.

XO,
Steph