Dreams Can Come True
By Cynthia Hammer, MSW, Executive Director, Inattentive ADHD Coalition, www.iadhd.org
I guess you could say my journey with ADHD started at birth, as it is a disorder that a person is usually born with. My brain was wired differently, but I didn’t learn that until I was 49. I had bumbled along until then—believing I was intelligent but not understanding why I wasn’t in the top group in high school—thinking I was smart but not understanding why I was a B student with my only A in Physical Education.
I didn’t know why I wasn’t hired for jobs where I was qualified. I couldn’t understand why supervisors were dissatisfied with my work. Why wasn’t I making progress in my life?I only knew I wasn’t living up to my expectations.
Over the years I lost my aspirations to make a difference in the world. How could I save the world when I couldn’t leave the house on time, in presentable attire?
My diagnosis occurred in a typical way but was still unusual.
Many adults get diagnosed after their child’s diagnosis with ADHD. It was the same for me as my son had been diagnosed with ADHD two years earlier.
Now for an adult to be diagnosed with ADHD, they must complete numerous forms and answer many questions, but I didn’t have to do that in 1992.
My son and I had attended 15-minute monthly appointments with my son’s pediatrician for two years. During one meeting I said, “I think I have ADHD.” He replied, “You do.” He easily made my momentous diagnosis just from observing me! That sounds shocking, but in the years following my diagnosis, even I believed I could discern those with undiagnosed ADHD.
They are late. They are disorganized. They interrupt conversations with seemingly irrelevant thoughts. They may have a rambling conversational style that includes everything that occurs to them, even if only tangentially related to their discussion. My husband began to roll his eyes whenever I said, “I bet she has ADHD” or “He seems like a perfect ADHD candidate.”
After making the diagnosis, the pediatrician said, “I envy you. You get to start a whole new life.” I certainly didn’t feel that way. I was devastated, believing everyone else saw and recognized something wrong with me. My weirdness, my undiagnosed ADHD, explained why I didn’t get the jobs I wanted, didn’t have the friends I hoped for, and struggled to be an acceptable mother, wife and homemaker.
After my diagnosis, it was five years before I was content and happy in my new life as someone with ADHD. It felt like a rebirth as I became the person I thought I was always meant to be. After my diagnosis, I started to save the world, at least a small ADHD section of it.
I started and ran the non-profit organization ADD Resources for fifteen years. Its mission was to educate adults about ADHD. In 2021 I founded another non-profit, Inattentive ADHD Coalition. Its mission is that children with inattentive ADHD are diagnosed by age eight and adults with inattentive ADHD are readily and correctly diagnosed when they seek help.
I wrote a book about my life, Living with Inattentive ADHD. It is available for purchase wherever you buy books. All royalties from the book sales benefit the Inattentive ADHD Coalition.
*This article may be freely copied and distributed.