Because of my ADHD:
1. I have sat down to write this blog post over a dozen times in the past few months, but somehow instead ended up being a member of the Love Your Melon monthly club, reorganized my mug cabinet, watched every video of my children ever recorded, typed up my lines for a show….
2. I have spent countless minutes trying to explain to my husband why I didn’t get the To Do List done when I cannot actually think of what I did that day.
3. I started cleaning and organizing the playroom with gusto and then left it unfinished for over a year.
4. I spent 10 hours straight completely cleaning and organizing the office until it looked like the cover of an organizational magazine and vowed it would never get cluttered again.
5. I spent minutes staring at the foot-tall piles on my desk that only a week earlier was #4.
6. I see beauty in things that some others do not.
7. I cry because I feel inept at helping my kids keep their school work organized.
8. I am spontaneous.
9. I have pretty endless energy.
10. I am creative.
11. I went downstairs to get the dust buster to clean up after the kids’ haircuts and later had to figure out why the hair was still on the bathroom floor.
12. I have noticed my pants are unzipped, only to realize I never made it to the bathroom, but I did get a load of laundry put in the dryer.
13. I bite my nails down to the nubbins, as Mama Bear would say.
14. I look around to see that no one else has doodled all over their paper tablecloth.
15. I lose my….everything. I lose everything.
16. I feel guilty that my son struggles with ADHD because I feel like it is my fault. 
17. I have every intention of getting my errands done everyday….and then the next day I have the same list.
18. Sometimes I look up and I am at Whole Foods and I don’t remember where I was actually going.
19. I feel stupid and beat myself up about struggling to do mundane tasks like meal planning for my family.
20. I have a lot of very detailed plans of when and how to get things done, but starting can feel paralyzing.
21. I reread the same page of a book five or six times before remembering what I just read.
22. When time really comes to get shit done, I can hyperfocus like nothing you have ever seen.
23. I have never responded to an evite on time because once I read it, it disappears in my mind forever….or until I get the reminder email a week before the party.
24. I tell my husband he does not have to text me what I need at the store because I will remember (even though I will not remember, but I swear this time I will).
25. While I work to improve my executive functioning skills and efficiency (and I do…I work VERY hard), I also recognize that ADHD makes me the loving, energetic, creative, loud, empath that I am and I LOVE those things about myself.
Being an adult with ADHD and parenting a child with ADHD can feel overwhelming at times (LOTS of times). That said, I would not change who I am nor the person Elliott is because it brings us both such unique and beautiful qualities. That does not mean that we leave the frustrating characteristics untouched…we work hard, we develop strategies, we meet with therapists, and we both take medication (which is a whole rabbit hole of a post on its own). It can be challenging for someone who does not have ADHD to understand how an ADHD brain works and it is up to both sides to help educate and understand. Patience truly is a virtue. Thanks for reading…I have walked away from this post countless times because it is actually quite challenging to summarize my feelings around ADHD and also because…oh look! A squirrel!
