Have you ever felt the grief of realizing your ADHD wasn’t caught until midlife?
It can hit like a wave — all the years you struggled, masked, pushed harder than anyone else, and thought it was just you. The truth is, the grief you’re carrying isn’t just yours. It’s generational. It’s systemic. And naming that grief is the first step toward healing.
Relief and Resentment
As a child, I asked myself questions I couldn’t answer:
- Why was I so stupid?
- Why couldn’t I just turn my work in on time?
- Why was school so stick-pins-in-my-eyes boring?
- And why was math such an epic struggle? Especially advanced math - all of those formulas!
Here’s what my teachers wrote:
- Talks too much.
- Interrupts too much.
- Bright but inconsistent.
- Easily distracted.
- Lacks preparation.
- Loses notes.
- Needs to improve quality of concentration.
- Doesn’t retain material learned.
And my favorite: “With concentrated effort, could be an astounding student.”
When I was finally diagnosed in midlife, I felt two things at once: relief and resentment. Relief because I finally had answers. Resentment because the signs had been there all along.
If I had been a boy, I probably would have been flagged.
But as a girl? I was just told I was talkative. Or careless. Or not living up to my potential.
I grieved the years of self-doubt. The opportunities I might have taken if I had understood my brain sooner.
That grief is natural. When you finally get answers, it makes sense to look back and wonder: what if I’d known sooner?
The Generational Story
But here’s what I’ve learned: the grief isn’t just about me.
When I was a child, no one was talking about ADHD in girls. The research was built almost entirely around boys — the hyperactive, bouncing-off-the-walls stereotype.
Girls like me, who daydreamed, talked too much, or struggled to stay organized, weren’t seen as having ADHD. We were labeled careless, dramatic, or just not living up to our potential.
That meant generations of women were overlooked. Some were misdiagnosed with anxiety or depression. Others were told they were lazy, selfish, or not trying hard enough. And many were simply told to work harder, smile more, or stop being so emotional. (Smile more — see what happens when you tell a man that.)
Our mothers and grandmothers — maybe even us — never had the language, the tools, or the compassion for their brains. We inherited their silence, their shame, and their belief that you had to work twice as hard just to be seen as “enough.” We masked our struggles and used anxiety as the engine to get things done.
My 20-Year Delay
And I didn’t escape that bias either.
I spent 20 years in therapy before I was finally diagnosed. One of my therapists even had ADHD himself — and still looked at me and said, “You’re too smart to have ADHD.”
Think about that. A male clinician with ADHD missed it in me completely. He was so focused on fixing my anxiety and depression that he never asked what was underneath.
That 20-year delay cost me decades of strategies and support that could have made my life so much easier.
And I’m not alone.
A 2020 review found that women are diagnosed with ADHD, on average, five to ten years later than men (Caye et al., Lancet Psychiatry).
Other studies show that as many as 50–75% of girls with ADHD are missed in childhood and only diagnosed in adulthood — often after years of being mislabeled with anxiety or depression (Quinn & Madhoo, Neuropsychiatry, 2014).
The cost of that bias is staggering.
Generations of women have been told they were lazy, careless, dramatic, or simply not living up to their potential — when in reality, they were living with an undiagnosed neurodevelopmental condition.
Feeling Grief vs. Carrying It
And here’s the thing: it’s okay to feel grief about that. In fact, it’s necessary.
Naming it honors what was lost.
But you don’t have to carry it forever. Feeling grief acknowledges the truth. Carrying it lets it weigh you down long after it’s done its work.
So how do we begin to release it?
- By telling our stories out loud to break the silence and to give others permission to tell their stories.
- By writing the what-ifs down — and giving ourselves permission to let them go.
- By reminding ourselves: this grief is part of me, but it is not all of me.
We don’t erase grief, but we can choose not to drag it with us. And that choice is part of the healing.
Reclaiming Your Story
Here’s what I want you to know: this is not your fault. You aren't broken. You aren't lazy. You aren't failing. You're living in a system that was never designed to see you — and you have survived the best way you could.
That grief you feel?
It can become fuel. Because when you name the grief, you take it out of hiding. And when you tell your story, you break the silence that kept generations of women from understanding themselves.
Reclaiming means choosing compassion instead of shame — looking at your past and saying, “I did the best I could with what I knew at the time.”
Reclaiming means letting go of the years you lost, and investing in the years you still have — the time that’s right here, right now.
And reclaiming means modeling something different for the next generation: our daughters, our nieces, our students, our clients.
When we tell the truth about our ADHD, we give them a new story to inherit. One that doesn’t begin with shame, but with self-acceptance.
And this is why I tell my story — all of my stories.
Because it’s my mission to make sure young women don’t have to live the same experience I did. That they grow up knowing they’re not broken, just differently wired.
From Grief to Healing
Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”
So if you’re carrying that heavy grief right now — the resentment, the sorrow, the what-ifs — please hear me: it’s not just yours to carry. It belongs to generations of women who were overlooked, dismissed, and mislabeled.
It’s okay to feel that grief. But you don’t have to carry it forever. By naming it, by reclaiming your story, you begin to release it.
The grief you carry may feel heavy, but it can also become the strongest part of your story. Because every time you tell your truth, you widen the path for someone else.
And that shift — from grief to reclamation — is how healing begins.
