A diagnosis doesn’t change who you are. But it does change how much energy you spend pretending to be someone else — and that’s where things get complicated.

Getting diagnosed with AuDHD at 55 doesn’t just explain who you are, it forces you to grieve who you might have been. That’s a harder thing to sit with than any diagnosis.

Getting diagnosed with both autism and ADHD isn’t a contradiction—it’s finally understanding why your mental hardware has always felt like it’s running competing programs simultaneously.