I did not fully understand the depth of this experience at first.
I was diagnosed with ADHD in 2012. It gave me language for things I had experienced for years but could not fully explain. As I began to understand my own patterns, I started to notice similar traits in my daughter. At first, they were subtle. Then they became harder to ignore.
I remember my mother mentioning similarities between us. The ways we moved, the things we forgot, how we approached tasks. At the time, those comments landed one way. Later, they began to take on new meaning.
I had my suspicions.
I noticed the patterns, both subtle and overt. Some I wanted to dismiss. Some I hoped were just phases. But there came a point where it was no longer something I could explain away.
That process was not simple. My husband and I were not on the same page at first about having her evaluated. There were different perspectives, different levels of readiness, and that added another layer to an already emotional experience.
I remember it clearly. When I saw her cubby, and we kept having to return to school multiple times for the things she had forgotten, the writing was there on the wall.
A year later, I stood in the middle of the principals office, crying uncontrollably as a veteran educator, saying that my daughter needed help. In that moment, I came to the realization that she was neurodivergent, just like me.
And the grieving process started all over again.
This time, it was different.
The grief had taken a new seat. It was no longer just about me. It was about my child.
Parenting is deeply personal. It is emotional. It is layered with love, responsibility, identity, and expectation. Realizing that your child may experience some of the same challenges brings a weight that is hard to prepare for.
As I moved forward, I began to see this same pattern reflected in my clients.
Adults diagnosed later in life, capable and insightful, but carrying something quieter underneath. Grief that did not always have language. Grief that showed up in reflection, in questions about the past, in moments where things finally made sense and at the same time felt heavy.
Then the lens would shift again when their child was diagnosed.
That is where things often began to feel disorienting.
They questioned how they had parented. They wondered how they might have responded differently if they had known earlier. They reflected on how they themselves were parented and what might have been different with more understanding and support.
Underneath those questions, something deeper began to surface.
They began to notice where their ideas about success, behavior, and worth were shaped. Where perfectionism took root. Where expectations were not just personal, but cultural and familial. Narratives about discipline, achievement, and responsibility came into focus.
These patterns were not just individual. They were inherited. Reinforced over time. Passed down, often with care, but without an understanding of how differently a neurodivergent brain might experience them.
That is where many people begin to feel lost.
Because it is no longer just about understanding ADHD. It becomes about untangling identity. About separating who you are from what you were taught to believe about yourself. About noticing the inner critic, the masking, the pressure to perform, and the quiet ways people learn to hide parts of themselves in order to be accepted.
That is also where I realized that executive function coaching alone could not hold all of what people were carrying.
Because you can build systems. You can improve planning and follow through. You can develop strategies.
But if identity is still tangled, if perfectionism is still driving, if the inner critic is still loud, those strategies will only go so far.
I needed a way to work with what people could not always put into words.
That is where expressive work became essential.
Not as art for the sake of art, but as a way to make the invisible visible. To externalize what lives in the body, in memory, and in emotion. To access what sits underneath the strategies.
Because when people are given another way to express what they are carrying, they often reveal what they could not say directly.
And in that space, we are no longer just working on skills.
We are working with the whole person.
At the same time, you are trying to parent differently.
There can be relief in knowing your child has been seen earlier. There can also be grief in knowing you were not. There is hope that their experience will be different, and at the same time a quiet awareness that the world has not changed as much as you might wish it had.
You may want to protect them from misunderstanding, from being mislabeled, from the ways the world can chip away at someone who does not fit neatly within its expectations.
At the same time, you come up against a difficult truth. You cannot protect them from everything.
Even when things are different for them, even when there is earlier recognition or more support, it does not erase what you are now able to see about your own experience.
Awareness does not remove grief. It deepens understanding.
It brings forward questions about what could have been different and highlights the effort it took to navigate daily life without that understanding.
This is not something that needs to be rushed.
Grief is not a sign that something is wrong. It is a response to something that mattered.
It can exist alongside growth. It can exist alongside change. It can exist alongside the decision to do things differently moving forward.
An ADHD diagnosis does not only affect how someone functions day to day. It reshapes how a person understands their past, how they show up in the present, and how they hold space for others, especially their children.
If clarity brings more than just relief, that does not mean something has gone wrong.
It means you are seeing more fully.
And in that clarity, there is both weight and possibility.
If this resonates, take a moment to name where you are in your own process. Not where you think you should be, but where you actually are.
And if you are navigating the space where grief and growth exist at the same time, you do not have to do it alone. This is the work I hold space for every day.