I said I've learned to live successfully with ADD as a woman. The definition of the word successful is very important, because women very often get locked into a fruitless search for an unachievable goal. When I say I'm living successfully, it doesn't mean that I'm living stress-free. It doesn't mean that I'm perfectly organized. It doesn't mean that I don't have to constantly strategize and struggle. And it doesn't mean I'm never overwhelmed or that I don't sometimes still hide.

What it does mean, for me, to live successfully with ADD, is that I've found a way to move the focus of my life onto my strengths, my talents and my abilities, to increase my choices and options. It means that through medication I am awake, alert, and able to maintain my energy and attention throughout most of the day. It means I can sort out my neurology from my psychology, and figure out what things in my life I can change and what I just need to control or live with. It means that I've learned to separate out my strengths and my weaknesses and to embrace both of those as part of myself, even though it's a long stretch. I've come to accept the fact that I do have deficits out of proportion with the rest of my abilities, and that these do severely impact my life. I've learned to separate out the shame, embarrassment, and guilt surrounding these difficulties from my core sense of self. Now, when my ADD symptoms do appear, I don't add them to a negative self-barrage that creates a downhill cycle.

What I have learned is that to be successful with ADD, you must eventually restructure your life. You move through Shame and Guilt and must ultimately redefine your sense of what it means to be a mature, confident, competent, woman, even if after treatment you are still somewhat messy, disorganized or forgetful. For me, it means I have learned to value myself as a creative woman who will never match some culturally sanctioned image I may have internalized a long time ago about what a woman should be or be able to do.

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