You Will Need to Wait for My Epitaph
by Cynthia Hammer, MSW
Although I am 79-years-old, you can’t read my epitaph until 2033, as, according to actuarial tables, I have 11 more years to live. I am glad to learn this as there is much I want to accomplish before leaving planet earth.
In 2012 I retired as the Executive Director of ADD Resources, a non-profit organization which I founded in 1997. In retirement I was doing this and that. During the COVID shutdown, I wrote a memoir/self-help book about my life with inattentive ADHD. I had been away from the world of ADHD for nine years, so I needed to update my knowledge about the field for the book.
I read a guest blog at www.ADDitudemag.com by a 23-year-old woman who had recently been diagnosed with inattentive ADHD. She wrote, “I am told I should focus on my future, but I can’t do that. I am so angry, so very angry, that no one recognized my inattentive ADHD much earlier. It would have made a huge difference.” Her anger was my “wake up” call.
I thought, “There are people who need me. Don’t be intimidated by the challenge. If not you, who?” And I told myself, “The only time you fail is the last time you try.” Feeling like Don Quixote, I envisioned mounting my trusty steed and setting forth to dispel myths and vanquish misinformation about inattentive ADHD.
In March, 2021 I founded the non-profit organization, the Inattentive ADHD Coalition with a mission that children with inattentive ADHD are diagnosed by age 8 and adults with inattentive ADHD are readily and correctly diagnosed when they seek help.
The initial Board of Directors consisted of me and two accommodating friends, neither with an interest in ADHD. Soon, they submitted their resignations, and I found others with a commitment to the mission to join the board.
My first task was to create a website solely about inattentive ADHD. (www.iadhd.org) Then I began to learn the ins and out of social media—LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter--making connections and friends, blogging and writing articles. It is enough to keep me busy. I usually spend two hours a day writing. That, and typing, are two areas of my life that have improved with age!
It is impossible to know my future, but if I envision my epitaph, it will say “She tried her best to make a difference.”