I started this on Sunday. You know, ADHD. Point is I am finishing it and I still did the plank and meditated. BOOM. (Mostly.)
The thing with ADHD is that unless you have it, it’s hard to totally understand. Or as the folks at ADHD U say, “If you don’t got it, you don’t get it!”. While ADHD is variable and no two of us are alike (like, of course, with just about any diagnosis), community helps.
The ladies—especially our team of administrators—at Smart Girls with ADHD are equally good at providing empathy and laughing at ourselves for the things we do… At volumes that only ADHDers seem to do those sorts of things. Even when I am not posting or responding frequently, if I do something that the other ladies will relate to—usually funny, sometimes frustrating—I will most often pop over to the group and share it! It’s fun to see the comments come in of other girls’ stories from the preceding few days saying “I get ya!”
Community is important to know that you may be different from most people around you because of ADHD or LD, but that you are not alone. I shared a blog post earlier this month, and I always don’t know how to feel when I get a response like this:
Mostly, I am overjoyed that someone knows that we get it. However, there’s still a part of me that still hurts because we are so enthusiastic to find people that get it because of all those who don’t get it. This, though, is why community is so important—and for me, an important part of self-care, one that I can choose to access more when I need it, and less when I don’t. Because when nobody gets it? The ADHD community—whether that’s our Smart Girls (or the Smart Girls admins), the #ADDcheckin tweeps, or just sending off a message to a friend who I know gets it, like Aaron or Jess if I’m needing to be a tad less public about the whole thing.
I’ve said it before about chronic disease, but it really applies to ADHD too. Find your people, your community. The ones that get you. Even if they’re halfway across the country or the continent or the world, my little neurodiverse, ADHD community is so important to me to have—to know that even in my brain’s quirks, other people have the same variation of normal that I do. And just having that safe space to share or rant or whatever is so important, and often reminds me that yes, patience is important and that applies SO MUCH to being patient with myself, too.
