I Didn’t Know It Was ADHD: A Mother’s Story of Shame, Masking, and Discovery

For most of my life, I thought I was just too sensitive. Too emotional. Too much.

I learned early on that if I wanted to be loved, accepted, or even just tolerated, I needed to be easy. I needed to keep it together. So I did. I became the good girl, the high-achiever, the one who could juggle a million things at once. And for a while, it worked—on the outside.

But inside, I was crumbling.

The mental load of motherhood, the overwhelm of everyday life, the guilt for not doing it all “right”—it was all building up. And I thought it was just me. That I was broken. That I needed to try harder, be better, get it together.

It wasn’t until I stumbled into an article about women and ADHD that something clicked. It wasn’t the stereotypical picture I had in my head—bouncing-off-the-walls hyperactivity in little boys. No, this was something else. Something quieter. Something that had been hiding in plain sight my whole life.

Reading that article felt like someone had been watching me for decades and finally handed me a mirror.

I cried.

Because suddenly, there was a name for the shame I had carried for years. For the way I’d forget simple things, lose track of time, get distracted mid-sentence, or feel like my brain was going a million miles an hour while the world expected calm and order from me.

It was ADHD. And I had it.

The diagnosis didn’t fix everything overnight, but it cracked open the door to self-compassion. It gave me language for what I had been masking for so long. It helped me understand why motherhood felt especially hard, why I often felt like I was drowning in tasks others seemed to handle with ease, and why I had been so good at pretending everything was fine—until I couldn’t anymore.

I’ve learned to stop pushing through in silence and start speaking up. To stop blaming myself and start getting curious about what I need. And more than anything, I’ve learned that I am not alone.

There are so many of us—women, mothers, daughters—who spent years thinking we were just lazy, scattered, or emotionally unstable. And we weren’t. We were doing our best with a brain that was wired differently, in a world that didn’t see us.

If this resonates with you, I want you to know: you’re not broken. You’re not too much. You don’t have to carry the shame anymore. There’s another way.

And it begins with finally seeing yourself clearly—for the first time.

✨ Want to hear the full story?
Listen to this powerful episode of The Good Daughter Society Podcast:
🎧 I Didn’t Know It Was ADHD

I open up about the moment everything clicked, the years of silent shame, and what it’s like to finally understand your brain—especially as a mother who was always trying to hold it all together.
If you’ve ever wondered, “Is it just me?” — this one’s for you.

XO, LB