It’s been a few weeks since I last wrote.
I didn’t disappear. I’ve been resting, walking, listening, and — for the first time in a long time — letting myself sit still.
These past few weeks have held some of the biggest changes I’ve lived through in years. A diagnosis. A new medication. A memoir taking shape one voice memo at a time. And a Mother’s Day that asked me to be still in ways I wasn’t expecting.
So this post is a catch-up. A check-in. A here’s-where-I-am.
If you read my last post, you know I hinted that I had answers coming. I have them now.
I sat with my doctor and we went through the results of the assessment I took. Six diagnoses. ADHD at the top of the list, followed by a sleep disorder, OCD, mild depression, and a couple of anxiety-related diagnoses underneath. None of them surprised me. All of them explained me.
Because of how much was sitting in the anxiety bucket, my doctor put me on a non-stimulant medication that should help with both the ADHD and the anxiety side at the same time. I’m on day 8. I haven’t felt much yet — except I’m sleeping better, and I honestly don’t know if that’s the medication starting to work or just the relief of finally having a name for what I’ve been living with.
I think it might be both.
Here’s what the diagnosis has given me, in this order:
Forgiveness. I’ve spent a lifetime beating myself up for things I didn’t know how to do any differently. Reactions I couldn’t control. Decisions I made in the dark. Now I know that my brain processes things differently — and that, untreated, surrounded by traumatic events, I did the best I could with the wiring I had. There was no other version of me available. That woman did her best. I’m not mad at her anymore.
Understanding. This part comes after forgiveness. It’s slower. It’s the work of looking back at my whole life through a new lens and saying oh — that’s what that was. And that. And that. It’s a lot. It’s not painful exactly, but it’s a lot.
Compassion. This is the hard one. I don’t want compassion to turn into an excuse. I want it to be a reason — a reason to be gentler with myself when my brain does what brains like mine do, without using the diagnosis as a pass to stay stuck. There’s a line in there I’m still learning to walk.
Here’s the reframe I’m sitting with:
ADHD is not a disability that weakens me. It’s a fucking superpower that makes me who I am.
It’s the reason I can run a CPA firm and write a memoir on hiking trails and raise kids and chase wildflowers on a paved trail the morning after thunderstorms close the rocky ones. It’s the reason my brain goes wide instead of narrow, and notices everything, and connects things other people don’t see. The trick — the thing this next season of my life is going to be about — is learning what I can really do with this superpower when I understand it, manage it, and stop apologizing for it.
That’s the work now. Not fixing myself. Knowing myself.
The memoir is moving.
I’ve recorded three chapters so far, all of them on the trail — well, on benches, on rocks, on the side of paved paths after I’ve stopped to catch my breath. I’m finding that the trail keeps offering me exactly what I need to write about that day. I don’t plan the chapters. They surface. I record them. I keep walking.
I’m not going to share the contents here. Those belong to the book. But I’ll tell you the practice is taking — and that’s what I was most afraid of when I announced this. That the announcement would be louder than the work. So far, the work is louder. That’s how I want it to stay.
Yesterday was Mother’s Day. I spent it quietly at home with my two littles, and I talked with my older kids during the day. It was a softer Mother’s Day than usual — less about doing and more about being. Some Mother’s Days ask you to celebrate. This one asked me to reflect.
I’ll leave the reflecting in the memoir.
So here’s where I am, on day 8 of medication, three chapters into a book I never thought I’d write, in the early weeks of an era I’m calling Lupe 3.0:
I’m not well. But I have a roadmap now. I have a medication that might help. I have a memoir that’s actually getting written instead of just imagined. I have answers to questions I didn’t even know I was allowed to ask.
And — like I learned on Canyon Ridge — I have a walking stick.
Out on the trail, my walking stick is the only thing that’s kept me upright more than once. It doesn’t hike for me. It doesn’t carry me. It just gives me something to lean on when the ground shifts under my feet.
That’s what all of this is. The diagnosis is a walking stick. The medication is a walking stick. The memoir is a walking stick. The faith is a walking stick. The trail itself is a walking stick.
I’m still walking. I’m just not doing it alone anymore.
This is Lupe 3.0.
With love and trail dust, Lupe
Runmom_6 