Dear ADHD,
When I got the call about my Dad being in the hospital and heard the panic in my stepmom’s usually matter-of-fact voice, I knew this was the call we had all known was going to come sooner or later. And you sprang right into action, as you always do for me in a crisis.
I memorized everything about this moment and have been playing it over in my mind whenever I get sad and it helps so much. Thanks for the idea, ADHD!
I never take the time to really thank you and maybe that’s why you forget from time to time that even though “Disorder” is part of your name, you’re actually a wonderful asset in times like these.
You took the seemingly ever-darting lens of my mind and you hyperfocused it on action and what to do next. As my ears listened to my stepmom relay to me what the doctors said, you were already planning what I needed to grab in the house before heading over and who I needed to contact. You also listened to the part of our brain that reminded us to be in the moment and breathe. You didn’t ignore it and think, “No time to relax, my needs don’t matter when there’s an emergency! GO! GO! GO!”
You remembered to put your mask on first before assisting others. And you continue to try to do that now when you need it even more now that Dad’s passed and now we’re left with space to grieve.
But in that moment of getting the call and throughout the next few weeks, you astounded me and everyone around. At one point, my stepmom looked at me and said, “where’d you learn to do all this stuff?” And I have a feeling your tenacity has a lot to do with being able to sometimes roleplay as someone who has their sh*t together.
You asked important questions and stayed curious. You were able to quickly read through and understand important paperwork and make arrangements because you become a sponge for knowledge that’s new and novel, which most of this was.
I count myself so lucky to have a basic understanding of estate planning because of being the editor to a couple of personal finance podcasts, Journey to Launch and Worth Listening. You were able to mentally pull up the information I needed because whenever I was editing the episodes about estate planning, you’d be in the background taking mental notes.
When people have been asking me if there’s anything they can do, I’ve started telling them, “make a plan for yourself/loved ones, have a will, learn about estate planning, the conversations are tough and overwhelming, but the peace of mind is so so worth it, especially knowing your loved ones aren’t scrambling to figure it out on their own.”
Learning about what happens when you die is something a lot of people seem to want to avoid talking about, unless it’s in order to sell you a religion.
Speaking of which, please never forget the polite boundary-setting I/we did with the hospital Chaplain on his 3rd attempt to give the last rites in front of your agnostic/atheist family. Your hyperawareness spotted him and he wasn’t even fully in the room before looking him right in the eyes, holding up my hand, and saying a gentle, but firm, “Oh, no thanks.”
You were hellbent on keeping the peace for everyone and you were able to mediate rough situations with ease, especially with your humor.
The fact that humor is one of your go-to defense mechanisms in tough times was very much welcome, especially since Dad was the one who taught me to be funny. He told us “timing was everything.” That’s a tough lesson to remember sometimes when it comes to the impulse to say whatever pops into our head.
You were also hyperaware and vigilant, which was important in a time like this but has been hard to come back from. It’s odd to even adjust to lowering that baseline level of vigilance that came from more than a decade of Dad’s health problems and fears about the call.
It wasn’t easy, but somehow you were also able to juggle clientwork and parenthood (special thanks to my husband for going above and beyond, and to my in-laws for a lot of babysitting that week).
Now the dust is beginning to settle, and I can feel myself coming out of these big emotions that were, at the same time, long-expected but also shocking.
While I’m not rushing myself to “get over” any of this soon, this letter is to let you know that you are now free to RELEASE some of that anxiety. It was useful and so valuable to me in my time of need — that’s one of your best qualities and why I choose to love my beautiful brain — but now I’d like to begin to shift my focus to rest and recovery. Some therapy might be in the near future, as well.
My darling ADHD, thank you for how you’ve gotten me through it all and more. You even distracted me enough from my work today with this idea to write this and make me realize I was still holding onto a lot of those panic emotions that are hard to let go of. It feels good to write and I hope maybe someone is going to read this letter and think about their own ADHD in a more positive light.
Thanks for everything!
Love,
Emily (Me/You/Us)
Sign up for my monthly newsletter for updates and new posts, including tips for independent creative podcasters! And don’t forget to follow me on Instagram to catch up between posts!
Enjoying Emily: Out Loud and want more? You can help by buying me a cup of coffee over at BuyMeACoffee.com/emilyprokop 🙂