Reply To: mom of ADHD son and just diagnosed with ADD & SAD

[Patte Rosebank]

The advice I have (and you’ll probably fail, we all do, I did) is to not look back with bitterness or regret.

@Babyjo, I don’t think of it as “failing”.  It’s just gradually going through the natural process of coming to terms with a life-changing experience.

For me, it’s a bit like the death of a loved one.  Only, it’s the “death” of the “old me”, and the birth and gradual growing-up of the “new me”.  And like any “death”, I need to take time to understand it and mourn it, before I can accept it and move on.

And I *have* moved on.

I’m working on an audio-project with @Rick, and I put a lot of my own story into a couple of the segments I wrote and will be voicing.   A few days ago, I recorded a test-read of those segments, and when I listened to it, I heard the voice of the “old me”.

And it knocked me sideways, to hear all that pain and depression and guilt and hopelessness that used to be so much a part of me.  It was like listening to an old tape-recording of a long-gone relative…a ghost from my past, whom I now barely know.

As my coach said (after we’d both listened to it and been moved to tears), what’s most remarkable is not just how much I’ve changed since then, but that I was able to take all that pain and turn it into something so powerful.

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