Plot Twist: It's ADHD
What a suspiciously calm Sunday taught me about 40 years of my life
On a warm Sunday afternoon in August of 2022, I sat down to answer some emails and prep for the week, and something strange happened.
I was focused.
Not in the intense, slightly manic hyperfocus way (though at the time I didn’t even know what that was), just calm focus. No intrusive thoughts, no urge to stop and start five different tasks at once, no mental static, and no glazed-over feeling that made me want to quit and take a nap.
If you know, you know.
I noticed it almost immediately and thought: Huh.
I felt good. Really good.
With my training as a health coach, whenever I notice a significant shift in behavior or mood, I ask myself one question: What am I doing differently?
At the time, I was co-hosting a podcast called Circling the Drain, where my co-host Ellie and I talked about the perimenopausal transition and interviewed experts on all things midlife and menopause. In the spirit of scientific curiosity and midlife chaos, we occasionally experimented with pharmaceutical interventions ourselves so we could talk about them honestly on the show.
One of our recurring topics was low libido, and one of the medications I was experimenting with was bupropion — better known as Wellbutrin. At 150 mg a day, I noticed a small shift in libido. But something else became clear too: I had probably been depressed for a long time without fully realizing it, and with this medication, I simply felt better.
So I stayed on it.
Which brings us back to that Sunday in 2022, sitting at my computer with a suspiciously quiet brain. I had been on Wellbutrin for about a month, and when I reviewed the variables in my life, it was the only thing that had changed.
So naturally, I did what everyone does. I asked Dr. Google.
That’s when I discovered that Wellbutrin is also prescribed off-label for ADHD.
I was gobsmacked.
Suddenly my brain flooded with questions. Did I have ADHD? Is this how “normal” people feel ALL the time?
Along with the questions came a swirl of emotions: relief, shame, and a surprising amount of anger. Anger that I hadn’t known this was even a possibility. Anger that after years in and out of therapy, not a single doctor had thought to connect the dots.
I made an appointment with a specialist, got a proper diagnosis, and started Vyvanse.
For decades, ADHD was framed as a disorder of hyperactive little boys bouncing off classroom walls. But many people, especially those raised as girls, those socialized to be quiet, compliant, organized, and emotionally regulated, developed a very different presentation.
Less obvious hyperactivity. More internal chaos.
As kids, it might have looked like emotional sensitivity, quiet fidgeting, or shutting down entirely. As adults, it often shows up as chronic overwhelm, perfectionism, emotional dysregulation, and a lifetime of elaborate coping strategies.
Lists. Systems. Over-preparing. Working twice as hard but still barely keeping up.
Many people build entire lives around these scaffolds, and for a long time, they work.
Until they don’t.
Which is why so many women, trans people, and nonbinary folks spend years hearing the same story about themselves: You’re overwhelmed. You’re disorganized. You procrastinate. You just need a better system. Maybe just try harder.
Or the midlife version: You’re burned out. You’re hormonal. You’re getting older.
Different words, same message: This is your fault. Something is wrong with you.
But for a growing number of adults diagnosed in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, the truth is something else entirely. ADHD didn’t suddenly appear in midlife — it’s that the systems that helped them mask and compensate simply stopped working.
I spent nearly 15 years as a C-suite executive assistant. On the surface, I appeared to have exceptional executive function, and in some ways, I did. At work, I was high-functioning. But I was also short-tempered and super stressed.
Outside of work, things were much messier: manic spending habits, decision fatigue, no real capacity for socializing, and plenty of behaviors that probably looked strange to the people around me.
As perimenopause approached, the adaptive behaviors that had kept me afloat began to unravel.
This isn’t uncommon. Hormonal shifts like perimenopause, testosterone therapy, and surgical menopause can influence dopamine regulation and cognitive function, intensifying ADHD symptoms that were already barely managed. Strategies that once kept everything intact start to fall apart. What used to look like “high-functioning but stressed” starts looking like missed deadlines, dropped balls, and a kind of fog you can’t explain.
For some people, that moment leads to an evaluation, a diagnosis, and a reframe of decades of their own life.
When a diagnosis comes later in life, it lands differently than it does in childhood.
By this point, most people have built entire identities around the belief that their struggles were personal failures rather than neurological differences. Which is why so many people say the same thing after diagnosis:
“I thought it was just me.”
Once you see it, you start reviewing everything. Report cards that said bright, but not applying herself. Projects started with enthusiasm but were abandoned halfway through. Chronic lateness, time blindness, and the constant, low-grade feeling of being slightly out of sync with the world.
There’s relief in having a name for it.
And yes — sometimes there’s grief and anger.
What fascinates me isn’t just the rise in ADHD diagnoses among adults. It’s the pattern.
Midlife is often the moment when hidden systems reveal themselves. Bodies shift. Identities evolve. Assumptions about ourselves begin to unravel.
Sometimes what we thought was burnout was undiagnosed neurodivergence. Sometimes what we thought was laziness was executive dysfunction. Sometimes what we called “getting worse with age” was simply a brain that had been compensating for decades (brilliantly, exhaustingly, quietly) and finally ran out of bandwidth.
Naming the thing gives us power. Not because it fixes everything, but because it lets us stop fighting ourselves and start working with the brain we actually have.
That shift from shame to strategy is exactly what I built The Magpie Circle around.
The Magpie Circle - For brilliant minds distracted by shiny objects!
In this virtual workshop for women, genderqueer, and nonbinary adults with ADHD — the ones who were told they were “so smart but just not applying themselves,” who have cried in bathroom stalls over missed deadlines, and who have approximately 47 browser tabs open right now for a reason.
In 60 focused minutes, we’ll dig into:
Time Blindness: Why you’re simultaneously always late and shocked that it’s already Thursday
Emotional Dysregulation: The part of ADHD nobody talks about until you’re ugly-crying over a mildly passive-aggressive email
Shame & the Stories We Carry: Because most of us have been quietly believing we’re broken since approximately the third grade
No boring slides. No “just use a planner!” energy. Just honest tools, a coach who gets it, and a room full of fellow Magpies who absolutely stopped paying attention for 30 seconds mid-workshop, and that’s completely fine.
✨ Tuesday, June 9, 2026 · 10–11 AM ET · Live Virtual · $47
✨ $37 EARLY BIRD SPECIAL · Use code magpie26 at checkout · Expires June 1st
Recording available if you can’t make it live.
Spots are limited — mostly because intimacy matters, and also because managing a giant Zoom is genuinely chaotic, and I have ADHD too.
BIG TRUTHS