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GIRLHOOD / Can We Stop Looking at ADHD as a Weakness?

Can We Stop Looking at ADHD as a Weakness?

Can We Stop Looking at ADHD as a Weakness?

You know what I haven't been doing lately? Blaming things on my ADHD.

Not because it went anywhere. I was diagnosed in my mid-30s, the same year I finally understood why I was always losing my car keys, starting four businesses in my head while making coffee, and never once managing one thing at a time. What changed is I stopped treating it as the explanation for everything that goes wrong, and started noticing when it's responsible for things going right.

That reframe got a boost this week when my mom sent me a video of Mike Repole (Queens guy, my people) talking about how much of his career he credits to the way his brain works. Coming from a guy who sold two beverage companies to Coca-Cola for $9.7 billion, that's not nothing.

I feel it, too. Rescripted is my greatest hyperfixation, and my ability to take risks, pivot quickly, and hold six ideas at once instead of picking one is exactly why it works — even when my process doesn't look like anything you'd find in a business book. It shouldn't have taken me until 37 to believe that about myself.

For years I apologized for the parts of my brain that move too fast, never once realizing those were the same parts building the business, the ones that jump into someone's story at girl dinner before they've finished it and somehow still get the table laughing.

So yes, actually, I do think ADHD is a superpower, just not the TikTok-caption kind. It's the kind that comes with real cost, real chaos, and days you can't get out of your own way — but also real creativity and the kind of momentum most people spend years trying to manufacture.

I just spent thirty-some-odd years only loving myself enough to admit to the first part.

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