Lost in Translation: Living With ADHD as an Adult
by Claire Rummery on Sep 20, 2025
For a long time, I felt like I was living in the wrong world.Like everyone else had a map, and I was stumbling around with nothing but guesswork and gut feelings.
I didn’t grow up knowing I had ADHD. No one said the word. Instead, I learned to mask, to push through, to constantly wonder why things felt so much harder for me than they seemed for others. I thought maybe I was just too much. Too talkative. Too forgetful. Too much of a daydreamer.
When I finally tried to seek help, I found out that the system makes you prove it. That to be diagnosed as an adult, you often need evidence of symptoms before the age of twelve. So then came the endless self-advocating: digging through memories, piecing together stories from childhood, trying to figure out what was ADHD and what was trauma, what was PTSD, and what was just me.
It was exhausting.It made me question myself even more.
But when I did finally receive my diagnosis as an adult, something shifted. Suddenly the pieces started to click together. The “too much” had context. The “why can’t I just” finally had an answer. I wasn’t broken. I was wired differently.
And then came motherhood.And with it, an entirely new storm.
ADHD as a mum is a whole other layer because your brain is already juggling a thousand tabs, and then motherhood opens a thousand more. Some days it feels like my head is falling apart. The mental load, the noise, the constant shifting from one task to another. It’s beautiful and overwhelming and impossible all at once.
But I’ve also learned this: naming it has power. Knowing myself better has given me permission to be kinder to myself, to lean on strategies and support, to stop expecting myself to parent in a world built for a brain I don’t have.
ADHD doesn’t make me less of a mum. It makes me the kind of mum who feels things deeply, who notices the details, who can laugh at the chaos and live fully inside of it.
And I know I’m not the only one.So if you’re reading this and nodding along, maybe feeling like you’ve been walking through the wrong world too, I want you to know you’re not alone. You are seen.
Reflection question:Have you experienced something similar navigating ADHD, trauma, or motherhood with a mind that feels like it works differently? What shifted for you when you started to understand yourself better?
