The first time I got fired, I was seventeen. I was working at a fast food restaurant during high school, evenings and weekends. The place was in an industrial area, off grid, and I didn’t have a car. There was no natural way for me to get there unless I was already scheduled to work. Several times, they put me on shifts that I wasn’t aware of, and then called to ask where I was. I had no idea I was supposed to be there. This, my friend, is undiagnosed ADHD in a teenager.

The last time the manager called, he said if you don’t come in today, you won’t have this job anymore. I had other plans, so I said I’m not coming. And that was that. It didn’t bother me much.

The research job

The second time, I took a researcher position at a recruitment firm. Before I even started, I knew I wasn’t fully invested. At the interview my inner voice asked me if I really wanted this job, if I would really like doing those assignments. I wanted to get away from a toxic situation at my previous job, so I took it anyways.

I have to be honest here. Once I lost my motivation, my performance went south. I got sick of hearing no on the calls. I struggled with the projects I was working on. I stopped making the same amount of calls. My boss could see it, and I don’t blame him for the decision he made. I wasn’t surprised when it happened, but it still hurt like hell.

They fired me the day before my trial period was supposed to become a permanent position. We’d been on a business trip to Milano, then we flew to the company office in the south of Sweden and worked for a day there. Before we left for the airport, my boss and the regional manager called me into the office, sat me down, and told me. Then I had to go catch my flight.

I flew home to Stockholm alone. It took about an hour. When I landed, my husband picked me up somewhere in the central part of the city. It was late in the evening and I remember it was dark outside. I got in the car and worked up the nerve, then I told him. I was so scared that he would be disappointed in me, scold me (which he never had done before, but still it was in my head).

His answer surprised me. He said, “well, you didn’t like the job anyway, so that’s a good thing. Now you can look for something new.”

And just like that, I was OK. I had been so nervous and scared to tell him, but when he was that calm about it, I got calm about it too. After that, I never felt that kind of shame about being let go of again. At least not with him.

The consulting job

The third time was the one that broke me. I was a consultant at a small firm. We were five people working in the company, with two founders who had about 30 years of experience in leadership, consulting, coaching, and facilitation. They taught me so much. They really educated me on sales, coaching, different leadership models and frameworks. I learned a lot from them.

I had been upfront from the start about what I was good at and what I wasn’t. I told them before they hired me that I wasn’t interested in sales. They said sales was only 20% of the job, and I accepted the job enthusiastically. They did most of the sales to begin with, but when they started struggling financially, that changed. All of a sudden I was expected to do mainly cold outreach sales, and that was exactly what I said I didn’t want to do. That’s the downside of small companies, everyone does everything.

I felt like they also expected me to be as experienced as they were, although I had only worked there for about a year and they had been doing this for three decades. I struggled to meet their expectations, not because I wasn’t trying, but because I needed more time to learn the things that were already in their backbone.

In December 2018, they gave me a bonus and told me how proud they were of my progress and of everything that I brought to the table. By the end of January 2019, they wrecked the little confidence I had built, criticizing everything I did. In retrospect, that was more of a strategy to have me quit than a reflection of my actual performance, because letting me go would cost them more (Swedish labour market regulations).

Their slogan was “when you give, you receive.” One of the founders looked at me at one point and said, “but in your case, your slogan is when you take, you have.” That referred to his view on me misusing the trust they put into me, and it broke my heart. Because it wasn’t true. I just wasn’t as experienced as them. I needed more time.

When the financial situation got worse, I was the one they could spare. They let me go.

The NGO

The fourth time, I had only been in the position for a few months. It was at an NGO, and there were so many things that were being handled wrong. I spoke up. I went to management. I went to the board of directors. I was fired for trying to make things right.

I have a big sense of justice. When I see people doing something wrong, I speak up. In this case, it got me fired. Before I left, I told my boss everything I felt about him. I gave him my unfiltered piece of mind. I learned later that it had really affected him, and I sincerely hope that my words helped him become better for himself and for the other employees.

Looking back, the one thing I should have done differently was to talk directly with my manager from the get go. I do believe that in either case I wouldn’t have stayed in my position, because I also learned that my predecessor had quit in a similar manner like I did, and I was told he didn’t deliver on his assignments. In hind sight, it was an organizational problem.

The pandemic hit right after I was fired, and that timing made it so much harder to find a new job. But the whistleblowing itself? I would probably do that again.

What I know now

I don’t know if there’s one clear pattern across all four. The first two were very ADHD related. Missing shifts I didn’t know about as a teenager. Losing motivation in a job that didn’t fit my brain and watching my performance drop because of it. The third was more about finances and a strategy to push me out. The fourth was because I couldn’t bite my tongue when I saw injustice.

What I do know is that I’m resilient. Each time, I was sad. It felt like a punch in the gut. Then I got over it and continued. I felt like this wasn’t for me, so let’s keep moving. I can be sad for a while, and then it runs off me like water on a goose.

Getting fired from four jobs before I was 36 used to feel like proof that something was wrong with me. Now I see it differently. I wasn’t broken. I was in the wrong rooms, with the wrong expectations, without anyone knowing how my brain worked. Including me.

Next week, point 5. I burned out in April 2023. Everything I had been holding up just collapsed. Stay with me.

With love, Nadine 🫶🏽✨

That pattern didn’t break overnight. But it did break. Here is what I do now, and what I would encourage any ADHD mom to try.

The transition is everything

The space between work and home is not just a commute. It’s where you either reset yourself or carry the weight of your entire day into your family’s evening. I treat that space as sacred now.

If I drive home, I don’t put on loud music. I put on soft audio sounds that calm my mind, something ADHD-friendly like binaural beats or 432Hz frequency sounds, nothing stimulating.

Before I even start the car, I sit for a moment and do a few rounds of deep breathing. It only takes a few minutes. Nothing complicated. Just letting my body know that the work part of the day is done.

When I park the car at home, I don’t get out right away. I sit for a while and reset my mind before I walk through the door. That pause between parking and entering is small, but it changes everything about how I show up for my family.

If I commute and I have time, I walk home instead of taking the bus, without anything in my ears. I just listen to nature, the birds singing in the trees, and let myself debrief my own head. On the days I work from home, I go outside for a walk in the forest or by the water to create that same reset at the end of my workday.

The method doesn’t matter as much as the intention. You need something between work and home that is yours, that tells your nervous system it’s time to shift.

What I do the moment I walk in

The first thing I do when I walk through the door is say hi to everyone. I give them a hug and a kiss. Then I go into our walk-in closet and switch into comfy home clothes. I try to wear as soft clothing as possible at home because I get sensory overload with clothes that are tight on my body, like jeans for example. I take out my lenses. I make myself as comfortable as possible physically.

That has become a ritual for me. Getting out of my work clothes and stepping into my home clothes is a transition in itself. It’s my body telling my brain that I’m not at work anymore. I’m home. I can soften now.

If you’re in the pattern I described on Sunday

If you’re the ADHD mom who is masking all day, saying yes to everything, rushing to pickup, and snapping at your family the moment you walk through the door, I want you to try something.

Try this: for a week, take notes on everything you do during a day, both at work and at home. Not to judge yourself. To understand how much energy is being used up at work. Most of us have no idea how much we’re spending because we’ve been running on empty for so long that empty feels normal. You’ll be surprised of how much you actually fit into a day.

Then try this: the evening before each workday, choose three things you want to focus on the next day. Just three. Not a full to-do list. Three things. This helps your brain know what matters before the day starts pulling you in every direction.

You need to lower your expectations of yourself and of your capacity around how much you can actually manage during one day. Not because you’re not capable. Because your brain is doing ten times more work behind the scenes than anyone around you realizes, and that costs energy that no one sees.

The five words that changed everything

When it comes to saying yes to everything, the reprogramming for me came down to five words. Let me think about it.

Before I say yes to anything now, whether it’s a request from a coworker, a client, my family, or a friend, I ask to think about it first. That pause gives me the space to evaluate how much time and energy something is actually going to take from me, and whether I have the capacity to do it. Not on my best day. Right now.

For years, my philosophy was say yes and figure it out. That philosophy burned me out. Let me think about it is the replacement. It protects my energy, my time, and the version of me that walks through the door at the end of the day.

This is not about being perfect at home

I still have hard evenings. I still get overwhelmed. I still sometimes walk through the door carrying with me more than I wanted to. The difference is that now I have tools that help me catch it before it catches me. The breathing in the car. The walk without headphones. The soft clothes. The three things. The five words.

When it does catch me, because it does, I know now to step away before it escalates and I don’t know how to get back to a calm mode. That’s when I remove myself from the situation completely.

None of it is complicated. All of it is intentional. And all of it exists because I lived the version where I didn’t have any of it, and I know what that cost me and my family.

With love,
Nadine 🫶🏽✨

The open office that drained me before the day was done

I worked in an open office. I would sit down, lay out my work, put music in my ears, and try to focus on my projects. People would come by the dest anyway. Colleagues who wanted to chat, ask a question, say something quick. Every interruption pulled me out of what I was doing, and I never understood at the time how long it took me to get back. I would start over, again and again and again, and that constant restarting consumed all of my mental energy before the day was even done.

I never said no. I never asked anyone to come back later. I didn’t know that I could. I didn’t know that I needed to. I just kept going, kept smiling, kept getting things done in the end the way I always had. My colleagues never saw what it cost me. My boss never saw it. I hid it so well that no one ever questioned whether I was struggling.

Then I would pick up my kids, and walk home with nothing left ( the preschool was next to our house).

What happened when I walked through the door

When I walked through the door, I wanted things to be easy. I didn’t want discussions. I didn’t want to debate things with my husband or with my kids. I just wanted everyone to do as I said because I was so exhausted from work. I didn’t actually know that I didn’t have the energy for full conversations. I just felt like any obstacle, any resistance, would throw me off. Too much noise would make me snap. Too much crying, if the kids had been fighting, would throw me off completely. I would become angry, short, tense. Everyone in our home could sense it when the kids were smaller. There was a tension that lived in our house, and I was carrying it through the door every single evening.

I thought it was me

I didn’t know any of this was ADHD. I thought it was me. I thought I was just someone who couldn’t handle things the way other people could. Someone who was too reactive, too impatient, too aggressive, too easily overwhelmed. I didn’t have a word for what was happening in my brain. I just had the feeling that I was failing at something everyone else seemed to manage just fine.

I tried to be normal all day and fell apart every evening. I thought something was wrong with me. There wasn’t. I just didn’t know who I was yet.

Say yes, then figure it out

I also lived by a philosophy that had never actually worked for me. Say yes, then figure it out. I said yes to every project, every speaking request, every opportunity because it felt exciting in the moment. I never stopped to ask whether I had the capacity. I would wonder later how I could have said yes when I already had so much on my plate, but by then it was too late.

The most vivid example happened right before I burned out. Me and my boss were asked to do a presentation for our colleagues about our work in social sustainability. We were getting a lot of attention from outside, from other real estate companies, from industry magazines. Twenty minutes to talk about what we were doing and why it was working. We said yes. And then we both looked at each other and said, this is the last thing we’re going to do for a long time because we just need to rest. I remember thinking that this came at a really bad time. I was so tired, so exhausted, and there was already so much going on. I should have said, let me think about it, and then come back with a suggestion to do it later in the year. Instead, we said yes anyway. We did a wonderful presentation. We were completely in sync with each other. It went very well. There was just no energy left after. Nothing.

The questions I started asking after I burned out

It wasn’t until April 2023, when I burned out, that I started to see the pattern. I started reprogramming myself. Not saying yes to everyone. Not people-pleasing. Not taking on every project just because it was interesting. I also started questioning the loyalty I had given my employer for so many years. Why was I putting all of this effort, all of this love, all of this energy into a job where I knew that I would never receive the same kind of loyalty back? That question changed something in me.

When I was diagnosed with ADHD in January 2024, everything I had been experiencing for years finally had a vocabulary. The masking, the overwhelm, the constant restarting, the evening explosions, all of it. These weren’t personality flaws. They were my brain functioning in a way that no one, including me, had ever recognized.

What I know now

For years, I tried to be normal all day and fell apart every evening. It got worse when we started to build our family, and I had to tend to tiny human’s needs, other than just my own needs. I thought something was wrong with me. There wasn’t. I just didn’t know who I was yet.

If you read the essay about my birthday meltdown, you know what it looks like when everything you’ve been holding finally breaks. If you read the essay about my daughter’s question, you know what repair looks like the day after.

This essay is about what came before all of that. The 40 years of not knowing, but feeling different. The years of masking. The years of wondering why I couldn’t just be like everyone else.

Next week, point 4. I got fired from four jobs. Stay with me.

With love,
Nadine 🫶🏽✨

The slow buildup

Here’s what was happening in the weeks before my birthday meltdown. I was on vacation from my nine to five. That sounds like rest. It wasn’t. I was working endlessly with my business. Content, learning, networking, all of it consuming my energy completely. I wasn’t resting, and by resting I mean not using my mental energy as much. I wasn’t giving myself the space to just be still.

At the same time, I was spiraling. I was feeling less and less joy, less excitement, less motivation to keep going with my business because nothing was sticking. I wanted nothing more than to succeed, to get my first client, to start getting paid. That wanting turned into stress that lived in my body all the time because I didn’t want to go back to my job. So instead of resting on my vacation, I was pouring every drop of energy into something that wasn’t giving anything back yet.

I was also signing up for everything. Webinars, summits, networking events, masterclasses, freebies. I would sign up out of desperation, when I had a lot of energy, without considering that the event might be two weeks away and my energy at that point might not be the same as when I signed up. Everything felt urgent. Everything felt important. I didn’t want to miss out on the next thing that might push me forward. That’s executive dysfunction doing what it does best, making everything feel equally critical until nothing gets done well.

The fast buildup

The slow buildup happens over weeks and months. But there’s another kind that can hit you within a single day.

Every day, an ADHD mom is the project manager of her own life. Her kids’ lives. School drop-offs, pickups, after-school activities, homework, grocery shopping, appointments, chores, bedtime routines, being on time to work, being on time to everything. There is so much planning going on in your head at all times because there’s a constant fear of forgetting something important. It feels like you’re always fighting an invisible force that you can’t beat.

Then add the things you don’t even realize are draining you. For too many ADHD moms, vacation itself causes stress. All of a sudden you’re free, you’re off from work, your kids are home, and every routine disappears. There’s no schedule to follow. The stress of not having any structure builds towards snapping more at the kids, at your partner. Crying in the shower in silence because you don’t know how you’re going to get through the vacation. Feeling exhausted just by thinking about having to cook three times a day instead of one. Having to plan activities so the kids don’t sit on their screens all day, so they can move, have fun, make good memories. That’s pressure too, and most of us don’t recognize it as a warning sign because it just feels like life.

The signs you’ve probably normalized

If any of these sound familiar, pay attention. They’re not just life. They’re your body telling you something:

You’re snapping at the people you love more often than usual. You’re crying when no one can see you. You feel less joy, less excitement, less motivation for the things that used to light you up. You’re signing up for everything but finishing nothing. You’re not resting even when you technically have the time to rest (we’ll talk about rest in another article, but it’s not only lying down and laying still). Everything feels like a battle. Getting out the door, getting through dinner, getting to bedtime. You feel like everyone else is moving forward while you’re stuck.

These are not personality traits. These are warning signs.

What I do now when I feel the buildup

It was a very long time ago since I felt like I was heading towards that level of overwhelming exhaustion and feeling worthless. Not that long ago, though, I started to feel like I was taking on too much again. Too many freebies (again), too many platforms, too many things going on at once. I recognized the pattern.

So I sat down and looked at everything I wanted to do and started to sort it out. I removed the things that weren’t crucial for my business to grow. The free webinars, the masterclasses, the freebies, all the things that felt like quick fixes or stole my attention and energy from what would actually move me forward.

That clarity is freeing so much mental space for me now. Knowing the difference between what I should focus on and what is just nice to have, not need to have, gives my brain room to breathe. I also work with AI tools and systems that help me prioritize tasks so I’m not trying to hold it all in my head.

What you can do right now

When you’re in the middle of a chaotic brain, trying to keep yourself calm and present for your kids, wanting to have some energy left to take care of yourself, knowing you need it but not knowing how, here is where to start.

Stop and look at everything on your plate. Not in your head, on paper or on a screen. Get it out of your brain. Then ask yourself, what is actually essential this week? What did I say yes to out of fear of missing out? What can I remove without anything falling apart?

You don’t have to do everything. You don’t have to cut corners either. You just have to be honest about what your energy can actually hold right now, not what it could hold on your best day, but what it can hold today.

The meltdown on my birthday didn’t happen because of one bad day. It happened because I ignored weeks of signals that my body was sending me. I know those signals now. I hope after reading this, you’ll start to recognize yours too.

With love,
Nadine 🫶🏽✨

The kids came into the bedroom to sing happy birthday. We always do breakfast in bed on birthdays. They were smiling, excited, doing what kids do when they want to make you feel special. I smiled back. But somewhere underneath, there was a heaviness I couldn't name. Something had been building for a long time, and that morning I could feel it sitting in my chest.

We had a table booked for brunch. My mom joined us too. I sat there trying to laugh, trying to be present, trying to be goofy as I always am. Masking the way I always had. This time there was too much happening on the inside. Too many emotions, too many things I had been carrying quietly for too long. So I held it all in and smiled through the meal.

We came home. My husband was about to start the barbecue for dinner. I was standing in the kitchen, and the weight of everything just caught up with me. Months of pressure, months of trying to keep everything together, months of performing fine. I felt something inside me break.

I walked into our bedroom and I couldn’t hold anything together anymore. I just let it all out.

My husband tried to calm me down, but I was past the point of calming down. Everything I had been carrying came pouring out at once.

After a while, I realized the kids were home. They could hear me. They could feel it. So I made a decision. I kissed them both, told them I would be back, got in the car, and drove away to calm down.

I drove for a few minutes and just let myself have it out in the car. Then I parked the car, got out, and walked up a steep hill. It’s a ski slope in the winter, but in July it’s just a long climb through green and silence. At the top, there’s a bench that overlooks a lake. I sat down.

From up there, I could see the hill falling away towards the lake beneath me. I also saw bushes and trees, and then an endless view of water stretching out under thick gray clouds. It had rained all day. But when I sat down on that bench, the rain slowed. Then it stopped. For the entire time I was up there, not a single drop. As if Mother Earth gave me the space to heal and to calm down before she started to pour into the earth again.

I called my mom. She has always been my safety. She let me speak. She let me pour my heart out. Then she asked a few questions about what had happened, and she was just there. Supportive. Present. Listening.

When I felt calm enough, I walked back down to the car. And the rain started again.

Going back home caused me so much anxiety that I had to gasp for air. So many feelings and emotions at once. What had unfolded at the house before I left was something I was not proud of.

I don’t think it was any one thing. It was the pressure I had been putting on myself for months. Trying to hold everything together. I was close to breaking again, close to another burnout. All of that combined is a dangerous mixture for my brain.

If you read last week’s essay, you know what happened the next evening.

My daughter was laying in her bed. I was sitting beside her. Her question, my answer. That conversation was the beginning of repair. But this day, this birthday, was the moment everything I had been holding finally fell apart.

I hated the way I left. But I knew I had to tend to my broken spirit in that moment before I could return home to my family. They deserved better. And so did I.

This is what burnout does when it’s still living in your body. This is what happens when an ADHD mom masks for too long, holds for too long, performs for too long. It doesn’t come out in a scheduled, controlled, acceptable way. It comes out on your birthday, in your kitchen, in front of the people you love most. Not because you are a bad mother or a bad wife. Because you were carrying something that was never meant to be carried alone, and your body finally told you the truth your mind had been refusing to hear.

Next week, I share point 3 from the list. For years, I would come home from work and completely fall apart and explode because I had tried to be normal all day, not knowing I was neurodiverse. Stay with me.

With love,
Nadine🫶🏽✨

If you read Sunday’s essay, you know my daughter once asked me, “Did you think about us when you started to shout?” She asked me that because I sat down beside her bed the evening after and opened the conversation. Not because I had the perfect words. Because I refused to let her sit alone with what she had seen.

This is something I do every time. Not just after the big moments. After the small ones too. The evenings where I’m exhausted from a full day of work, social interactions, hosting meetings, being a leader, and all I need is a calmer scene at home. My kids walk through the door and they joke, they laugh, they fight, they’re loud, not because they’re doing anything wrong, but because they’re being kids. Sometimes they fight with each other, like all siblings do and sometimes they fight with me or my husband.

Sometimes I snap. Sometimes my voice gets louder than it needs to be. Sometimes I’m so overwhelmed that I don’t hear my own warning signs and lash out at them, and they don’t deserve it.

Those are the moments where I always go back to talk things through. Not instantly. After we’ve all had the time to calm down and think. Because I don’t want to continue the argument. I want to heal the relationship.

Here is what I actually do, and what I would encourage any ADHD mom to try.

Wait until your body is ready, not just your mind

This is the hardest part for us. When we know we’ve done something wrong, we also know that sitting down means we might have to listen to our children tell us what we did. That can spiral a lot of shame and guilt in our bodies. The instinct is either to avoid the conversation altogether or to rush into it before we’ve regulated, and then things escalate again.

Don’t go to your child when your chest is still tight and your thoughts are still racing. Wait until you feel like you’re in a better place yourself. That might be twenty minutes. It might be a few hours. The conversation doesn’t need to happen immediately. It needs to happen from a grounded place.

Go to them, don’t wait for them to come to you

Your child should not have to carry the responsibility of reopening what happened. That is yours to carry. I always start the conversation. I always go to them. Every single time.

Start with how they feel, not with what happened

Don’t open with your explanation. Don’t open with your apology. Open with a question. How are you feeling right now? What is it like in your body after what happened?

Let them tell you. Let them say they were sad, or scared, or confused, or angry. Let them say it without you jumping in to fix it or explain it away. Just listen and take it in.

Tell them what happened with you

After you’ve heard them, share your side. Not to justify it. To help them understand that what they witnessed had nothing to do with them. I always make sure my kids know that they are not the reason and they are not the villain in the story. That is one of the most important things you can give your child after a hard moment.

Apologize without a “but”

When the wrongdoing is on your end, say so. Apologize. And then stop. Don’t say “I’m sorry, but I was really overwhelmed” or “I’m sorry, but you weren’t listening.” To me, that’s not apologizing. That’s excusing yourself. An apology that comes with a “but” teaches your child that accountability always has a back door.

Make it a pattern, not a one-time thing

The reason my daughter felt safe enough to ask me that question, ”did you ever think about us”, is because she knew we talk things through in our family. She knew that after something difficult, we don’t just move on and pretend it didn’t happen. We sit with it. We name it. We clear the air.

That doesn’t happen overnight. It’s built over dozens of small moments where you went back, asked how they felt, and told the truth.

What this is really about

You are not a bad mother because you snapped. You are not a bad mother because you lost it after a long day. You are not a bad mother because your emotional regulation was stretched too thin. You are a human being with ADHD, navigating a world that was not designed for the way your brain works, and sometimes your body reaches its limit before you have a chance to catch it.

The meltdown is not where the damage happens. The silence after is. When you go back to your child, sit beside their bed, and ask them how they feel, you are teaching them something that most of us were never taught. That the people who love you don’t disappear after the hard moments. They come back, they listen, and they tell the truth.

With love,

Nadine 🫶🏾✨

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But that night I wasn’t there to say good night, yet. I needed to check in with her first.

Something had happened the day before. Something I’m not ready to tell you about yet. That story is coming next week.

Why I always talk to my kids through the hard things

It has always been important to me to talk to my kids through the things they see and hear. Whether it’s a disagreement between me and my husband that they’ve overheard, or something that happens outside our home. I don’t want to be a parent who puts a lid on things and bottles them up because I know they’re going to come out eventually. I want us to have an open relationship with each other where we can say what we feel and sit with what we need to sit with.

So I asked her how she was feeling after everything that happened.

She told me she was sad. She told me she had been a little bit afraid.

I apologized deeply. I told her that what happened was never about her and never her fault. I needed her to know that she and her brother had nothing to do with it. ( I had the same talk with my son that same night).

The question I wasn’t prepared for

She looked at me and asked: did you ever think about us?

I didn’t expect that question. I was startled at first and didn’t know what to do with it. My instinct wanted to protect her. To say of course I did, of course you were on my mind the whole time, of course.

Then I decided to be honest with her. In a way that was ok for a nine-year-old, but still the truth.

I told her that in the moment when it happened, when I broke down, I couldn’t handle anything. No, I was not thinking about anyone. I was too overwhelmed with emotions, with sadness, with grief, with anger. I couldn’t control or keep anything in anymore. Everything I had been holding just came out, and in that moment there was no space for anything else.

What she did next

She laid there for a bit. Quiet. Taking it in. Then she accepted it. I think somewhere she could relate, the way children do when their own feelings are all over the place and they feel overwhelmed too.

I walked out of her room that night after saying Good Night, feeling relieved that I had sat there and listened to her reflections and talked her through my perspective. I also walked out feeling sad. Ashamed. Like I had let everyone down. Like I had let things get so far out of hand that my daughter needed to ask me whether I had thought about her at all.

What I understand now that I didn’t understand then

What I understand now about that evening, and about the day that came before it, is that I had been carrying way too much on the inside for far too long. The meltdown was not one moment. It was months and years of masking, of holding things together, of performing fine while everything was building underneath. I had a burnout in my history, which meant my resilience towards stress and stressful events was so much lower than I had been used to. It didn’t take as much to break me as I thought it would.

The pattern I see in every ADHD mom I talk to

This is the pattern I see in my own story. It’s also the pattern I see in every ADHD mom I talk to. The masking. The holding it all together for too long. The emotional regulation stretched thin by stress and disagreements that stay unresolved for far too long. Then adding the need to perform in public on top of all of it. Until the one moment where there is simply nothing left to hold, and everything comes out at once. Not because we are bad mothers or because we set out to hurt our family in any way. Not because we are broken. Because we were never taught what was happening inside us, and we were never given the tools to do it differently.

Why I chose honesty over protection

I chose to be honest with my daughter that night because I refuse to teach her that we hide the hard things. She deserved the truth, and I deserved to stop pretending. That conversation didn’t fix anything. It didn’t erase the shame. But it cracked something open between us that I am grateful for to this day. She saw me as I was, not as I perform, and she stayed.

Next week, I’m telling you what happened the day before. Stay with me.

With love, Nadine

After dinner yesterday evening, I was sitting on the sofa in our living room, reading through Substack. I was going through the Notes section, and there was this one Note that stopped me in my tracks.

Notes aren’t like doomscrolling through reels. I take them in and read every word. This one stood out because the author was writing about bravery when it comes to sharing your stories, your experiences, your opinions.

They were asking something along the lines of, when did it become brave to share our story? Have we built a world where we can’t voice what we’ve lived without being judged for it?

It really resonated with me because that is something I have been feeling for such a long time, myself.

I get told all the time that I am brave for sharing my story. And every time I hear it, something doesn’t quite sit right. I don’t find myself brave. I just find myself human.

Are we brave for being open?

This isn’t about being brave or being seen as a hero or any of those things. It’s just me being honest and sharing my truth. I wish more people would share their stories because we have so much to learn from each other.

I didn’t start sharing because I wanted to be courageous. I started sharing after I burned out because I had struggled alone for so many years. As a woman, as a mom, with ADHD, with the diagnosis, with everything that came after.

I remember times when walking down a street in the company of a group of people, and so many times I would be the one that walked alone. I rarely was the person that was walking together with someone. I always thought to myself, why am I always the one at the back on my own? Not because I felt sorry for myself, but because I couldn’t engage in small talk naturally like other people I knew.

After burning out, I came to a point where I felt like I don’t want another woman to feel that she’s alone in this. I can’t prevent women from burning out, but I can prevent women from feeling so lonely in their burnout. That’s why I decided to start sharing my story.

In certain parts of the world, people have never been lonelier than right now. Sharing stories and sharing experiences with each other is a way of getting closer, of uniting, of finding our tribes. So when we call it brave, we are actually reinforcing the idea that it’s abnormal to be honest with each other. What if it’s not brave at all? What if it’s just human connection?

Does it mean sharing everything with the world?

No, sharing your story does not mean sharing everything. There are certain parts of my story that I will not share with anyone outside of the people who know me the closest, and that is completely fine.

The way I decide what to share and what to keep to myself comes down to a few things.

First, I consider who is involved. If someone else is in the story, especially my children be or my husband, it’s not only mine to tell. My children have their own stories and if they one day want to share them, that will be their choice. I will not make that choice for them. It’s about their integrity, and the same goes for anyone I have a relationship with. We all own our truths and our stories.

Then there is the line between personal and private. I can be personal. I can share experiences, things that I have done, things that have happened to me. There are certain things where I draw my line, and I don’t always know how to explain it other than I feel through it. Is this something I really want to share?

For a long time, there was a lot I didn’t want to share that I later shared. So maybe I am pushing my own boundaries over time. I also know that there are certain things I will never share. They are mine and mine alone.

And then there is what your body tells you. Feeling scared is a good thing when it comes to daring and developing yourself. Sharing your thoughts, your emotions, your stories with the world. If it scares you, it’s probably worth it. That fear is just the weight of honesty.

Then there are situations involving trauma or experiences that you know somewhere inside yourself are too private to share. You don’t have to share them. You might feel it in your chest, like pressure, or like you’re all of a sudden panicking.

Oh my God, I don’t want to do this. Why am I doing this? Should I really do this?

If you’re starting to question it from a place of panic, then you need to sit with it. Don’t share anything where you feel like you are violating your boundaries or violating your integrity, because that is not what storytelling should be about.

If you feel that you want to share your story, even though it’s traumatic, and you are OK with it, go right ahead. If there’s any doubt, any feeling of panic, shortness of breath, like you can’t catch your breath, then sit with it and pause.

Does everyone have to share their story?

Not everyone wants to share their story and that is completely OK. Those who do want to share their stories don’t need to be called brave for doing so.

Yes, it is brave to share your story, but we can’t reduce storytelling and connecting with people to bravery only, because then it becomes something that is only for a few people in the world.

I feel like we are so many who can share stories that would make an impact in someone else’s life. So don’t minimize your words. Don’t minimize the impact that you could actually have when you share your story with the world.

Do you have something you want to share?

Ask yourself these questions:

1. What’s one thing you’ve carried quietly for years that you’re starting to feel ready to say out loud?

2. Think of something you’ve never shared publicly. Now ask yourself: is it fear, or is it a no? If it’s fear, that might be your sign.

3. What’s a small piece of your truth you could share this week? Not the whole story. Just one sentence.

   Who is the woman who needs to hear your story? Write it for her.

I can’t wait to read your story, be you and be true.

With love,

Nadine

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I was sitting on my balcony yesterday. The sky blue café set, the clear blue sky, the sun finally warm enough to stay outside without a jacket. One of the first real warm days of the year here in Stockholm. Just me and the birds. And maybe a neighbor or two working in their gardens.

Something anchored in me. Not a thought exactly. More like a deep knowing.

The shame spiral that so many ADHD women carry, that so many ADHD moms carry in particular, needs to be broken. Someone needs to go first.

So I decided I would.

I opened my phone and started writing a list. Not a polished list. Not a curated list. Just the raw truth. Ten things I have said, done, been told, and carried, sometimes for decades, that used to be wrapped up in so much shame. Ten things that are part of me, part of my story, and part of my growth. These ten things have shaped me. They’re not evidence that something is wrong with me.

It was scary to hit publish. That’s exactly why I needed to. If that wasn’t enough, I published a very short video where I was dancing to ‘Say a little prayer’ by Aretha Franklin. Ugh, it felt so cringe, I almost cancelled all of it. But decided to stick with it anyways.

Every time we say these things out loud, shame loses a little bit of its control over us. Every time we talk about what we have carried quietly within, we take back the narrative. And, every time one of us goes first, it makes it easier for the next woman to say, me too.

Here are my ten.

I am 42 and not afraid to admit that:

1. My daughter asked me, “Did you think about us when you started to shout?” I told her the truth. “No. Not at the time. But after, I was very ashamed and remorseful.”

2. I had a complete meltdown on one of my birthdays. I had to leave the house because I could not contain myself.

3. For years, I would come home from work and completely fall apart and explode because I had tried to be normal all day, not knowing I was neurodiverse.

4. I got fired from four jobs until I was 36.

5. I burned out in April 2023. Everything I had been holding up just collapsed.

6. In January 2024, I was diagnosed with ADHD at 40 years old. For the first time in my life, I had a vocabulary for everything I thought was wrong with me.

7. I tried to build my business while working nine to five and raising my kids, and nearly burned out again.

8. I spent most of my life performing being fine. I became the good girl to survive.

9. I got expelled from school in seventh grade and still had perfect grades.

10. I was too loud, too bossy, too emotional, too dramatic. I was told that my whole childhood, and I believed it until I was 40.

That is not a highlight reel. This is a life. My life. I am not sharing it because I have it all figured out now. I am sharing it because I spent too many years believing these things made me broken, when they actually made me who I am.

This is for you

If you read this list and something in you whispered, that is me too, I want you to know this:
You are not too much. You are not failing. You are not the only one.

Over the next ten weeks, each of these are getting their own essay. The full story. The scene I have never told publicly. What I carried, what it cost me, and what I understand about it now. Because a list tells you what happened. A story tells you what it meant.

This is the first one. Stay with me.

With love,
Nadine 🫶🏽✨

I used to be part of the 5 AM Club. The one created by Robin Sharma. And for the first few years, I genuinely loved it. My alarm would go off at 4:45 and I would get up happily, put on my workout clothes, and do a 20 minute intense workout. Zumba, HIIT, or Poweryoga. Then 20 minutes of meditating and reflecting. Then 20 minutes of reading. I read so many books during that time, books I had wanted to read for years but never felt like I had the time for.

The 5 AM gave me structure. It gave me a system I could follow. And I got so much done. I felt that THAT Golden Hour in the morning made me capable of handling anything.

So I did it every single day. Weekdays, weekends, holidays. Even when I was in Thailand with my family during vacation, I would wake up at 5 AM, tiptoe into the bathroom, and do my workout there so that I would not wake them up. That is how devoted and dedicated I was.

Somewhere along the way, it stopped working. I stopped feeling the magic behind that Golden Hour. I started dragging myself out of bed instead of jumping out. I started feeling overwhelmed and resentful, but I kept going because I wanted to get back to that feeling of happiness and satisfaction I had felt in the beginning. I kept pushing, hoping the feeling would return.

It never did.

The Sunday that I felt myself breaking, I had done the 5 AM Club that morning. I had gotten up as usual even though it was a Sunday. While I had danced Zumba, I remember feeling completely numb. It felt so meaningless and I questioned why the hell I was even standing there. On Monday, I called in sick from work. Even though I had decided that enough was enough the Sunday, I got up at 4:45 and did the whole morning routine again, then I remembered that I had to stop doing that, because it was hurting me. It took me a while to understand that I actually could stop. I don’t even know if I had realized at that point that I was burned out.

That Monday was the absolute last time I did that morning routine. Ever.

Today I am building a coaching business alongside my full-time job and my life as a mom and wife. I have done this before, the building, the pushing, the performing. I know where that road ends because I have already been there. So this time, I refuse to do it the same way.

Here is what I have learned about building something on the side as a neurodiverse mom without losing yourself in the process.

I burned out once. I refuse to build this business the same way.

The 5 AM Club was not bad. It was rigid. It had no room for what my body needed on any given day, no room for my cycle, no room for the fact that my brain does not operate on a straight line. I followed a system that someone else designed for a brain that works nothing like mine.

This time, I am not following anyone else’s blueprint. I am building my own. And the first rule is: if it creates resentment, it is not the right system. No matter how productive it looks from the outside. Novelty drives an ADHD brain, so I tweak and switch when I need to.

I work with my brain, not against it.

I do most of my creative work in the early morning or while I commute to work, because that is when my brain is most refreshed. It hasn’t been bombarded yet with all of the impressions that come during the day from E-mails, colleagues, meetings and socializing. By evening, my brain is full. So I do not try to write or create when my head is heavy. I save that time for lighter tasks, reviewing my schedule, answering messages, planning the next day. Watching videos or reading. Or just putting on a Netflix series.

I also use Claude AI as a co-creation tool. Not to write for me, but to help me shape my ideas, structure my thoughts, and get unstuck when my ADHD brain is spinning in ten directions at once. It’s like having a thinking partner available at any hour, which matters when your working hours are early mornings, evenings, and weekends.

Because my time for this business is limited, I can’t afford to waste it. I am ruthless about what gets my attention. No doom scrolling at certain times. No tasks that feel productive but do not actually move me forward. I look at my schedule every morning and I ask myself: what is the most important thing I can do today for my business with the time I have?

I listen to my body. Even when my brain wants to keep going.

This is the one I am still practicing. With ADHD, it is so easy to forget the basics. Water. Breaks. Pauses. Food. We get locked into what we are doing (hyperfocus) and hours pass without us noticing that we have not moved, have not eaten, have not had a sip of water.

My mornings now look nothing like the 5 AM Club. I wake up, I get my coffee ready while I wash my face. I sit on the sofa in the living room and just breathe for a while. I check my Moon X app to see where the moon is and sync that with my own cycle, so I know how the day might feel before it even starts. Then I give myself 20 minutes to meditate before I start anything that has to do with my business.

That’s not a luxury. That is the foundation. Because I know what happens when I skip it. I know what happens when I go straight into “go mode” and forget that I am a human being with a body that needs care.

Being kind to myself is not something that comes naturally after decades of pushing. It’s something I choose every single morning. Some days I choose it better than others. That is okay too.

The honest truth about what this looks like.

I post Instagram reels at 9 PM after my kids are in bed. I wrote my last Substack essay on Easter Sunday. I work on my business in pockets of time that most people would not even notice. It is not glamorous. It is not a perfectly curated morning routine filmed for content. It is real life, and I am building inside of it, not on top of it.

I don’t have it all figured out. I do feel like I need more time for my business, and I am working towards creating that. What I do have is a system that holds me when motivation does not show up, and the self-awareness to stop before I break again.

If you are thinking about building something on the side while raising kids and holding down a full time job, here is a journaling prompt for you:

What is the thing you are most passionate about building right now, and what does your body need from you in order to keep going? Not what does your to-do list need. Not what does your audience need. What does your body need so that you can sustain the energy for this thing you care about?

Write it down. Be honest with yourself. And then ask yourself if you are actually giving yourself that.

I write about this every week. If you are a neurodiverse mom trying to build something without losing yourself, you are in the right place. Subscribe and stay.

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I hate waiting for people, and many times I was the one who was late.
In my mind, I expected everyone to be ready at the door. We’re going out somewhere, so just put your shoes on and let’s leave. But that was never the case because I was always late, and then I also had to wait for everyone else.

That would make me furious, and it caused so many conflicts. I would start ranting and losing my shit, asking why no one was ready to go when I was.
I would take care of the kids, get them ready, and then it would be my turn to get ready with what little amount of time I had left. It would always make me late because I didn’t have enough time for myself.

We would then go to our friends’ och families’ homes where we were invited, and I would put on a mask. Through the entire time visiting, I sensed the energy in the room between me and my family, but I put it aside (actually I shoved it down).

I was the most happy, fun, loving guest. I helped out with everything. I was always on my feet because I didn’t want to sit down. The hyperactivity intensified a lot, and I needed to be constantly occupied with something so that I didn’t have to sit and think about what had happened earlier.
The whole time, I was aware of the conversation I would have to have. The anxiety was there the entire evening, knowing that I had some explaining to do once we got home.

This pattern didn’t start with motherhood.

When I was 14, I moved to Lebanon to live with my dad and grandparents, and stayed there for two years. I quickly learned that being a rebel there meant real consequences. I became the good girl everyone expected me to be. I served, I solved, I helped. That pattern followed me all the way into adulthood.

When I came back to Sweden and started high school, I did well my first year, started rebelling again my second year, and I did well my third year.
I graduated with good grades. Not excellent, but good grades.

I was struggling a lot. It became harder for me to read long texts, and all of these challenges started showing even more because everything became more advanced.

When I graduated from high school, I got a scholarship because I had been extra active with extracurricular activities. Me and my friends had a culture association and we organized culture festivals, invited singers and dancers and activated the entire high school.

At university I did well. I still struggled a lot. I had to read the literature over and over and over and over again. I sometimes forgot to hand in assignments and essays. I still got good grades and even did charity projects.

I would think that my impulsivity was spontaneity.

I had built strategies and systems to cope in a neurotypical world, and those systems worked for me as an individual when I only had myself to take care of.

Once my husband and I had children, my systems and strategies stopped working. I couldn’t be as “spontaneous” anymore.

My closest friends didn’t have kids, so I also felt like I couldn’t be who I used to be together with them because we had a child to take care of and that came first. My husband was working a lot and building his business, so it was me and the kids.

It tore me apart slowly, because I felt like I was losing my identity. I love my children, make no mistake. I still love my children deeply. However, the transition was really difficult for me because the struggles escalated, and became worse over time. I didn’t know what I didn’t know back then.

I wanted to be the perfect mom.

Like all the moms I would see on social media, on Facebook and Instagram, having their clean homes, everything tidy, children looking perfect, not a stain on their clothes, fed, sleeping well.

Everything looked so effortless. My struggle was thinking that I needed to be exactly like those moms on social media, to be a good mom.
To be present all the time. To put my kids first at all times. I know now that a lot of that was a facade. During those years, I felt so much shame that I couldn’t live as effortlessly as the influencer moms I was watching on social media.

I didn’t talk about it with anyone. No one knew. I kept it to myself because it felt shameful. The meltdowns where couldn’t control my emotions and would lash out, shout cry because I couldn’t cope with the situations that would appear in front of me.

One post on Instagram changed everything in 2020

It didn’t even dawn on me. Not one single second, all through my life, until I read that post on Instagram where a woman was describing her symptoms after being diagnosed with ADHD. That’s when things started to become clear. Before that, I just thought that I was the only one struggling like this.

It would take me four years and a burnout before finally receiving an ADHD diagnosis. My critique on the Swedish health care system is a post for another day. The wait was unbearable and so was the not knowing, was it ADHD or a crazy personality?

In January 2024, I was diagnosed with ADHD. And suddenly all of it made sense. The too loud, the too bossy, the too emotional that I had been told I was as a child. That wasn’t me being too much. That was me being undiagnosed my whole life. First came relief, then grief and sadness, then doubt, and then slow acceptance. Now, I love every part of me, shamelessly.

Here’s what I would tell myself

If I could sit across from that version of me today, I would want her to know that she doesn’t have to struggle that much. The struggles are there anyways, but they don’t have to be as harsh. They don’t have to be as painful.

She’s not alone. She’s not the only one who is struggling. There is an explanation to what she is going through, and she will find it. There is more to her that she can understand.

There are ways for her to feel better about herself without giving up on the things she loves, the things she wants to do with her life, and the things she wants to do for her children.

I want to invite you along for the ride, this Substack is a shared space, an expression of my journey as an entrepreneur, a woman with ADHD, an ADHD mom, a partner, and a friend. I have chosen to coach ADHD moms so no one else has to break the way I did.

If that is you, welcome home. I can’t wait to connect with you, give your experiences a voice, and hold a space for you to feel love, empowerment and acceptance.

With love,
Nadine 🫶🏽

I’ve been building this business for over a year now. Creating content, refining my voice, trying to reach female leaders with ADHD. It wasn’t working. No leads, barely any comments, no engagement the way that I thought I would get by being raw and open and sharing my story.

I kept holding on because I still had hope. My name, Nadine, literally means hope, and I held onto it for too long. I hoped that maybe if I changed how I wrote my posts or if I added another angle, I would actually be able to inspire these women and encourage them to want to learn more about how I can support them. I looked at other content creators to see how they positioned themselves, how they structured their posts, what kind of hooks they used to attract attention. I tried to adjust my voice and the way I positioned myself.

A very realistic part grew within me that maybe these women are already so developed in their own minds, and maybe they’ve already done all of this work and they don’t need my support. Maybe that is why it’s not clicking for them when they read my posts, if they would even see them.

I didn’t give up, because women are the target group I want to work with. Maybe just not female leaders. Maybe it’s the ADHD moms.

On Monday the 30th of March, I joined a workshop around how to find your target group and who the persona is that you are talking to in all of your content. I was frustrated and looking for advice on how to move forward.

During the workshop I got some amazing feedback from the workshop leader, and also from the participants. They suggested that I look into supporting ADHD parents that are struggling to support their kids while also taking care of themselves and their health. That brought me into an entirely new dimension of things that I had been peeking at before, but not to the extent that I was ready to explore it.

Here’s what’s so interesting about the parent angle. It’s not the first time I hear it. I’ve had conversations like this before, where the person I’d been talking to said that I could work with the teenagers, coach them, and the parents would finance it for the sake of their children.

The thought has been there so many times. I’ve talked to so many people and I just hadn’t reacted the same way that I did during this workshop, because here there were so many suggestions at once leaning towards the same angle. They were so enthusiastic, so passionate about it, and they knew what they were talking about. I couldn’t ignore the sign anymore.

When I started to think about it, I realized something. These moms are leaders too. They’re their families’ project managers, they’re psychologists for their kids, they’re people’s everything. They have so many roles. They are holding it all together. The only person they’re forgetting about in all of this is themselves.

For way too long, I pushed myself so hard trying to stick to routines and strategies that once worked for me that I eventually burned out a few years ago. After having tried to build my business around female leaders with ADHD for more than a year without any success more than becoming known, but not actually having the privilege of working together with a client, I am deciding to bet on myself and see if I can be a bigger service to ADHD moms instead.

This isn’t to say that I am taking this lightly in any way. It’s scary as hell to just change like that, but at the same time I am learning to listen to my intuition and right now it is telling me to try something different and see if this is where my support actually is needed.

This is an open invitation from me to you to follow along on my journey as I pivot my coaching business from coaching female leaders to coaching ADHD moms. On this journey, I will share highs and lows, successes and backlashes, insights and ways that I will grow as I step into a new form of coaching. This is our space, and I want you here with me.

Much love,

Nadine 🫶🏾✨

I was sitting in our living room, spending quality time with our children when I received a phone call. A very close relative of mine had decided not to celebrate Easter with us, and then they asked me to go over to their home and water their plants on Holy Saturday. First I was mad that they didn’t even tell us they were going away, because we always had celebrated Easter together. Then I was pissed at the audacity to ask me to go water their plants on that particular day. So not only did I say no for the first time, I said hell no. It just came out of me, spontaneously. I was surprised at first, because I had helped out with watering plants and looking after their home before. This time came as a shock, but it felt right in the moment. Then came the shame and the fear, the fear of them hating me for saying no.

I blamed myself a lot for saying no because it felt like that was a starting point of a relationship going south. I blamed myself for a very long time because I felt like I had let down the person I said no to. It felt like I was abandoning them, like I was letting people down. It felt so wrong inside because I was so used to being the person who was always supporting, pleasing everyone, just going out of my way to keep everyone happy around me.

Saying yes looked like being there for anyone who asked for my help or for support with anything. I did not even consider how I would actually do it or if it was even possible for me. I would just say yes and then figure things out. I poured my heart into everything I did, especially around birthdays creating surprise parties, and going completely overboard.

A sense of emptiness came over me when something was done for me, but not on the same level of energy that I had poured in myself. I did all of this for them, but they didn’t even do half for me.

After I burned out, and after my ADHD diagnosis, I learned so much more about myself. I began to understand the mechanisms behind my willingness to bend over backwards for anyone who asked me to. It had a name even; Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria.

I was afraid of being rejected and hated because I say no to something or put myself first, or being rejected for not pleasing everyone’s needs or not accommodating every single request from people around me.

Today, everything is completely different. I feel more secure within myself. Sometimes I can still feel that guilty conscience for not being there for someone or not staying in touch like I used to. I used to be so afraid that people would stop liking me or loving me if I didn’t please them, and I did everything to be in a great place with everyone that mattered to me.

Right now I am handling so much at the same time that I don’t even have the space to keep up with connections like I used to. I’m just too busy. The purpose of building this business is bigger that staying liked and accepted.

Nowadays, I give myself permission to not have the same kind of connections I used to have. That doesn’t mean I don’t care about the people I love. I still care deeply about every single person that means something to me and provides something beautiful into my life. I just don’t have enough time to stay connected as I would like. And to me, that is okay.

Do I still fear being rejected? Yes. Does it affect me as much as it used to? No.
The difference now is that I know more about myself, and I show myself more grace and more love.

I see this pattern in the women I work with. They overpromise and underdeliver, not because they aren’t capable, they are 100% capable of doing all of it, but because they get overwhelmed and don’t know where to begin. Knowing what you’re capable of is not the same thing as actually doing all of it at once. And that is what I do for the women that I work with. Together, we figure out their capabilities, their strengths, and the powers that they hold within themselves. We work with the sense of self empowerment where they feel truly safe within, and don’t blame themselves for saying no to anything. They understand the power of no, and putting themselves first.

I let go of things that I thought were my personality, but actually were parts of having ADHD. I stepped into my independence.

I'm still a work in progress; I still need to learn so many more things, and I don't think that I will ever be fully finished. I now know that rejection will come whether I'm afraid of it or not, and I know that I will be okay however the rejection comes, because I have faced it already. I am okay and even stronger because of it.

That doesn’t mean that the sensitivity goes away and that my people pleasing tendencies aren’t there. I now understand them more, and I can also be kinder to myself when I say no.

I didn’t know I was masking until the burnout forced me to stop. For years I thought I was just disciplined working hard and performing on a high level every day. It turns out that the only thing I was performing was a version of myself that my brain was never built to sustain.

When I came home from work every afternoon I would basically fall apart.
I would snap at my young children when they wanted more from me than I could give them, I would easily get into arguments with my husband and we would end up going to bed without talking to each other.
He would ask how come I could be so fun, loving, happy and energized around everyone else, but treat him and the children like crap.

I wouldn’t have an answer to that.

I would wake up in the middle of the night and ponder. I was so afraid that my husband would have enough, get fed up of all of it and leave me. I knew he loved me, but I was waiting for him to wake up one day and just tell me he was done, that he wanted a divorce.

If any of this sounds familiar, I get it. Here’s what I wish someone had told me back then.

I want you to feel good about yourself, be kinder to yourself when you feel like you don’t deserve it. That’s why I’ve put together four signs that you might be masking, and four small shifts that can help you break the vicious cycle of self criticism.

Sign 1: You’re one person at work and a different person at home.

This isn’t a personality trait, you’re not choosing to be a certain way privately, with family and another way professionally. Beating yourself up over a bad reaction to your child’s meltdown won’t make you feel or do better, you didn’t yell on purpose to cause harm.

The shift: When you do the transition between work and home, don’t just jump from one to the other. Give yourself 5-10 minutes in between (either when you commute or in the car), close your eyes and listen to calming music, like 432hz healing frequencies.

Sign 2: You force yourself to socialize when your brain is screaming for silence.

Forcing yourself to have casual conversation with your colleagues when all you want to do is find a silent place to breathe in, doesn’t mean that you’re doing something wrong.

The shift: When you’re tired and need some alone time at work, go outside and take a 5-10 minute walk, change scenes and get some fresh air. If that’s not possible, go to the bathroom and sit down on the toilet lid, and box breathe (in for 4, hold for 4, out for 4, hold for 4) and repeat 4-7 times.

Sign 3: You push the same performance level every day, no matter what.

You expect yourself to have a linear and even level of energy every day, and on the days that you actually do feel lower in energy, or not as creative or decisive, you still push through, even harder than usual because that’s your default standard in order to be high performing.

The shift: On your low energy days, check which phase of your menstrual cycle you’re in. Track it for one month. You’ll start to see a pattern taking shape, and that pattern changes everything.

Sign 4: You hold yourself to impossible standards and never ask for help.

You hold yourself to extremely high standards, a level of perfectionism that very few people can live up to, and you don’t ask for help when you struggle with too much. Asking for help means that you fail, and you’re weak for not being able to hold everything together.

The shift: If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a community of women to empower one woman. Asking for help IS the real show of strength because it takes courage. Asking one person for one thing, see how it goes and how it feels.

For the coming week, I want to challenge you. I want you to track your energy levels every day, once in the morning before you start your day, and once when you’re finishing up your day at work or in your business. Rate the energy on a scale from 1-10, where 1 means you could basically fall asleep standing and can’t manage to make one more decision, and 10 means you feel like you’re on top of the world and can take on anything.

Try the energy tracking this week and reply to tell me what you notice. I’d love to hear what patterns show up for you.

With love,
Nadine 🫶🏽✨

I stepped off the bus that took me home after a looooong day of work, I had had five meetings during the day. My brain hurt (and so did my head) and it felt like I had replaced my brain with mashed potatoes.

Those five meetings…

Sitting through all of them. Sometimes I leaned back to listen, sometimes I leaned in to engage. My brain worked fast, so fast that I saw the solution very quickly or three steps forward when many of my peers were still just starting out.

I held back, I thought about the consensus, allowing everyone to have the chance to contribute with their thoughts and perspectives. Because I really care that everyone gets included and that they always leave my meetings feeling seen and heard.

Meeting after meeting, morning to late afternoon, lunch in between and a few coffee breaks. Smalltalk in the open landscape, spontaneous ideas bouncing back and forth.

Constant performance. Constantly being on. That entire day flew by, the meetings started and ended, and slowly, my energy was chipped away. That sharp brain slowly turned into something else.

I managed through dinner with my husband and my children, with lit candles for ambiance (we always light candles) and I was able to be fully present, chatting and asking them how their days went.

After clearing the table and doing the dishes, the time came for me to finally have the time to do some work on my business. But I just couldn’t bring myself to start. I just didn’t have any energy left in me. I was so tired I could almost go to sleep, but was only 7 pm, and I had a few hours left to go.

I decided to put on a series on Netflix and just watched that instead, because if I took on anything, even the tiniest thing, I would probably have had a meltdown. So I gave myself the space to just rest.

Then a feeling started creeping up, from my chest, and it started to press against my chest and my head. Guilt.

Guilt over the fact that I was NOT working on my business, learning or creating, or planning or networking. Or spending time with my kids.

That’s how I ended up in my favorite armchair, feet on the foot stand and computer in my lap, binge watching Virgin River. Just some feelgood fantasy land that could keep me entertained.

That version of me in the meetings. She was wearing a mask. She was a sharp, composed, consensus-holding woman in that meeting room. The cost that she paid is the exhaustion. The lack of energy for the things that matter the most to her. Not the 9-5 job. The family and her business that she is building from her heart.

For so many years I didn’t understand that masking cycle. The masking throughout my days, holding myself together all day and then having no energy left at home for anyone or anything. I didn’t get what it was that made me feel that way, be that tired and not being able to do anything other than eat and then just want to be by myself.

It wasn’t until I read an Instagram post of a woman who shared her story to an ADHD diagnosis that something woke up inside of me. I recognized myself in her, what she shared about herself, her symptoms and how it all affected her and her family. She was about my age, married with children.

I finally realized why I was exhausted

It hit me after my own ADHD diagnosis. The fact that the exhaustion wasn't because something was wrong with me, but because I was upholding a level of performance all day that my brain was never designed to run on.

For 40 years before being diagnosed, I had been trained to think that there was one standard way to function, and for almost all of those years I managed to mask my own struggles and cope with how I thought I had to be, in a neurotypical society. When me and my husband had one and then two kids, was when my coping, masking and strategies stopped working.

Before my ADHD diagnosis, I was convinced something was wrong with me. I mean, how could I be so energetic at work and so depleted at home?

I had no connection to my own intuition or reflection because I was stuck in that "on" mode all the time. The ADHD diagnosis gave me the answer: I wasn't broken, I just needed something different to feel good throughout a day.
I needed:
A place to work in silence.
Space and buffer time between meetings.
A place to work where no one interrupted me.

I didn't know that I needed those things until after burnout made everything come to a screeching halt.

It had nothing to do with being lazy

If you’re laying on your couch and reading this, feeling the need to do more, but you just don’t know how to get started after a long day at work, I want to say this: You’re NOT lazy. As a matter of fact, this has nothing to do with laziness at all.

When you get to that stage of exhaustion, it only means that your brain has given its all already. It is not connected to motivation, willpower or interest. It’s like when a car runs out of fuel, that’s what happens to the brain after a long day of masking and keeping it together. You were basically going through your day programmed into a protocol that doesn’t fit a neurodiverse brain.

The woman you were in your work day, and the woman laying on the couch are not two different people, even if you might feel like it. They are one and the same, one had lots of energy at the beginning of the day and spent most of it at work, and the other has nothing left at the end of the day because of that.

What if laying on the couch isn’t the problem?
What if the problem is that neurodiverse women never learned that their brains need different things than what the neurotypical workday offers?

Aaaaand, what if no one ever told you that was okay, you know to need different things?

If you read this and thought “that's me on the couch,” I'd love to hear your version. Hit reply and tell me what your mashed potato moment looks like.

Lots of love,
Nadine

Recognizing a pattern and interrupting it are two very different things. Seeing it clearly is the first step.

What you actually do in the moment when the urge to prove yourself shows up again is the second, and most vital step.

Let me paint a picture: you finished your work for the day and you’re ready to close your computer. Your brain starts to scan for more things to do, not because there is more to do, but because stopping feels too risky and scary. So you sit there and think: “What would they think if I ended my workday? What if I get behind if I go home for the day?”

Here is something that most female leaders with ADHD do not realize: the proving pattern is not just a mindset issue, it is neurological.
Our brains process dopamine differently, which means we are constantly seeking the next hit of validation, achievement, or reassurance that we are doing enough.

On top of that, many of us live with rejection sensitivity, which means that even the smallest possibility of being questioned, criticized, or perceived as falling short can feel unbearable to us.
So we overcompensate.
We people-please, we mask, we over-deliver, and we perform a version of ourselves that feels safe for our environment rather than true to ourselves.

It’s not because we lack confidence, but because our nervous system has learned that rejection is something to avoid at all costs.
The proving pattern is what happens when a brilliant brain that craves dopamine meets a deep fear of not being enough.

I want to share what I actually do now, when I catch myself in it, that I wasn’t capable of three years ago.
This isn’t a theory, or something that I read in a book. These are the things that pull me out of the loop in real time, that I have learned through my recovery from burnout and rewiring my brain.’

The first thing I do is breathe.

Not a casual deep breath, but a specific pattern that calms my nervous system down enough to think clearly.

• Breathe in for four counts

• Hold for seven counts

• Breathe out for eight counts

• Repeat for a few rounds

Then I give myself one minute to just reflect on what is actually happening. Not what my brain is telling me is happening, but what is really going on. Why did the urge to prove myself come up right now? What triggered it? Usually, when I look at it honestly, there is no real threat. Just an old story replaying itself.

The second thing I do is get up from my desk and go get a glass of water.

This one might sound too simple to matter, but it works precisely because it is physical. The proving pattern lives in your head, in the loop of thoughts that says you have not done enough, you are falling behind, someone is going to notice. When you stand up, walk to the kitchen, pour water, and drink it, you are breaking the loop with your body. You are giving your nervous system something concrete and nourishing to do instead of sitting in the stress of imagined inadequacy. It also creates a small pause between the urge and the action, and that pause is everything.

Are you thirsty? Take a break and get a glass of water 💦

The third thing I do, when I can, is go outside for a walk.

It doesn’t need to be a long one. This is not a workout, just some movement and fresh air.
This is the step that the old me never would have taken, because the old me believed that leaving her desk before 5pm meant she was not working hard enough.
Plus, the old me considered walks as workouts, so she had to do powerwalks if anything.
I have learned that the walk is not a break from productivity, it is what protects my capacity to be productive tomorrow.
This is the difference between running on fumes and building something sustainable. For those of us with ADHD, the movement and change of environment can completely reset the way our brains are processing the moment.

The fourth thing I do, and this used to be the hardest one for me, is I go to a mirror and look myself in the eyes.

I know this might sound uncomfortable, and honestly, it can be. There is something about looking directly at yourself that strips away the layersn of performance. You can’t hide from your own reflection the way you can hide behind a computer screen or a to-do list.

When I look at myself in the mirror, I say something kind and supportive to myself out loud. Something in the likes of:

“You did amazing work today and you deserve to take a break and rest. You can be excellent tomorrow again.”

Then I give myself a high five.

The first time I did this, it felt strange. The proving pattern had been talking to me my entire life and telling me I wasn’t enough, and I was so used to that voice that it was the standard for me.

Here is the process, simplified, so you can save it:

• Step 1: Breathe. Four counts in, seven counts hold, eight counts out. A few rounds. Then one minute of honest reflection: what is actually happening right now, and why do I feel the urge to prove myself?

• Step 2: Move your body, even a little. Get up, get water, break the loop physically.

• Step 3: Go outside if you can. A walk, fresh air, a change of environment. Give your nervous system permission to step out of the stress.

• Step 4: Talk to yourself with kindness. Look at yourself in the mirror if you are ready for it, and say out loud what you would say to a dear friend who is thinking like you are about herself.

The proving pattern will not disappear overnight. It has been with most of us for decades, and it is woven into how we learned to survive as high-performing women in systems that were not designed for us. You don’t have to wait until you’re forced to stop because you burned out. You can start interrupting that pattern now, one moment at a time, with tools that are gentle enough to actually sustain over time.

If you are reading this and thinking, “What if I stop pushing and everything falls apart?” Hey, I hear you.
That was my biggest fear too. Here is what I have learned through all of this: the things that fall apart when you stop over-proving yourself were never yours to hold in the first place.
The things that really matter, the work that is truly yours, your relationships, your impact, they don’t need you to be perfect. They just need you to be present.

I am Nadine, an ADHD coach for female leaders. I help women unlock their ADHD powers and optimize their performance without burning out. If you tried any of these steps this week, I would love to hear how it went. Reply to this email or leave a comment below.

So I wrote, and erased, and rewrote. I erased and rewrote again. I pressed harder, I tried softer, I slowed down, I started over. But no matter how many times I went back to the beginning, my handwriting never looked like hers.

What I could not see at the time was everything else I was brilliant at. I was an exceptional speller for my age, using words that most eight-year-olds could never spell, and my teacher had recognized me for it. But none of that registered within me, because my entire sense of worth had bioled down to this one thing I could not master. The thing someone else was better at. And if I was not the best at it, I was not enough.

That was the first time I remember feeling the proving pattern. It would not be the last.

Fast forward thirty years. I am backstage at Cirkus, a concert hall in Stockholm, Sweden, about to deliver a lecture on customer service excellence for a hotel group. I am there with my boss from the consultancy agency where I work. Everything is prepared. I have my slides, my prompter, my talking points. I have rehearsed this presentation thoroughly in the days before. I know every line.

And yet there I am, pacing back and forth behind the curtains, reading through the material one more time. Then one more time. Then again. Going over it and over it and over it, all the way up until the moment I am supposed to walk out on stage. Not because I did not know the material, but because I was terrified that knowing it would not be enough. I needed to be spotless.

Meanwhile, the audience was right there. I could have walked out, introduced myself, had a conversation, settled into the room. Instead, I spent those final minutes performing for an audience that could not even see me yet, trying to earn a stage I had already been invited to stand on.

That is what the proving pattern does. It does not let you enjoy what you have already earned, because it is too busy preparing you to earn it again.

I wish I could tell you that I outgrew it. That somewhere between my thirties and my forties, I figured it out and stopped. But the truth is that the proving pattern does not disappear just because you get older, more experienced, or more successful. It just gets more sophisticated.

It stops looking like a little girl erasing her handwriting and starts looking like a woman who never leaves the office before 5pm, even when every task on her list was finished hours ago. It looks like saying yes to projects you do not have capacity for because saying no makes you fear that someone might question your commitment. It looks like over-preparing for meetings with people who would never have noticed the difference. It looks like building a career that everyone admires while slowly running yourself into the ground.

For me, it looked like burnout.

And here is what nobody tells you about the proving pattern: it is especially ruthless for women with ADHD. Because when your brain already works differently from what the world expects, when you have spent your entire life sensing that something about you does not quite fit, the urge to compensate for your imagined shortcomings becomes your standard. You don’t just want to be good enough. You have the deep need to be undeniable. You need to leave no room for anyone to question whether you belong in ot or not.

So you people please. You overdeliver. You perform the version of yourself that feels safest instead of the one that is truest, to you. And you do it so well that no one around you has any idea how exhausted you really are. Because from the outside, it looks like ambition. It looks like holding high standards. It looks like drive.

From the inside, it feels like a treadmill that someone keeps making faster, and you are not allowed to step off.

Last Thursday, it happened again. I had finished everything on my list by early afternoon. Every task and every assignment was done. And instead of feeling proud, I felt guilty. Guilty because there was still time left in the day and my brain immediately started looking for more things to do.

By now, I know that voice well. I have known her my whole life actually.

She is the one who used to sit at her desk long after the work was done, just waiting for the clock to hit 5pm, because leaving early felt like cheating on her employer, even when everything was already finished. Then she would rush to pick up the kids, cook dinner on empty fumes, and show up at home with no energy left to give. She was always on the go, and never feeling like it was enough.

But last Thursday, I did something different. I sat down and wrote out everything I had actually accomplished that day. And when I saw it all on paper, I told myself: “You did more than enough today. You can be proud of this. Now go outside. and enjoy the weather”

So I closed the laptop and walked out to the forest, took a long walk.

The old me would not recognize that woman. She would have scrolled through old emails trying to look busy, or she would have sat there performing productivity until the watch on her wrist told her she could leave.

The proving pattern does not care how much you have done. It only knows one word: more. Prove your worth: more. Prove your productivity: more. Prove your competence: more. Prove that you deserve to be here, that you have earned your place, that you are not falling behind: more, more, moooooore!

And for so many female leaders, especially those of us with ADHD, it runs quietly in the back of our heads every day. Not because we are not good enough, but because somewhere along the way we learned that our worth was measured by how much we could push through.

The shift that changed everything for me was not about doing less. It was about learning to see what was already enough. It was about recognizing that the little girl who erased her handwriting over and over was the same woman pacing backstage at Cirkus, was the same woman sitting at her dining table feeling guilty for finishing early. The pattern never changed. Only the setting did.

And the moment I could see it clearly, I could finally start to interrupt it. Not perfectly, not every time, but enough to know that the voice saying “more” is not telling the truth. It never was.

If you are a female leader who has spent your career proving yourself, and you are tired in a way that weekends and vacations cannot fix, I want you to know something. You were never broken. You were just living a pattern that was never yours to begin with. And the first step out of it is not to push harder. It is to stop, look at what you have already done, and let it be enough.

I am Nadine, an ADHD coach for female leaders. I help women unlock their ADHD powers and optimize their performance without burning out. If this resonated with you, I would love to hear your story. What does your proving pattern look like?

Leave a comment

For years, I lived inside questions that had no good answer:

Career or family?

Rest or productivity?

Be professional or be myself?

I kept choosing. And every time I chose one side, the other side suffered. I gave everything to my career and brought home the scraps of me to my family. I earned my rest by finishing every last task on the list. I lowered my voice in meetings, spoke "clean," and code-switched until I almost forgot what my real voice sounded like.

I thought that was what it meant to be a high-achieving woman. That the price of success was always something you loved.

It took a burnout, a late ADHD diagnosis at 40, and a long, honest look at my life to realize:

The problem was never that I couldn’t handle it all. The problem was that nobody told me I didn’t have to choose.

That’s what I call the Both/And Principle. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

But first, you have to recognize the signs that you’re stuck in either/or. Here are the three I lived through.

Sign 1: You give everything to your career and ”leftovers” to your family

I used to work weekends hosting events. Not once in a while. Regularly. My career was growing. My reputation was solid. My performance reviews were excellent.

And my kids got whatever was left of me. Which, most days, wasn’t much.

I told myself it was temporary. That I was building something. That they’d understand one day when they’d see how far hard work can take you. The truth is, I wasn’t making a strategic trade-off. I was stuck in a belief: that to be taken seriously at work, I had to be all-in, all the time.

That’s either/or thinking. Career OR presence. You can only pick one.

The Both/And reframe: What if presence isn’t about being available 24/7, but about being fully there when you are there?

Today, I have one rule: mobile-free time with my family. Even if it’s just 30 minutes.

Choose full presence.

Phone in another room. Eyes on my kids. Not half-listening while scrolling. Actually there.

I still break this rule sometimes. I’m human. But 30 minutes of real presence is worth more than an entire evening of being physically there but mentally somewhere else.

Sign 2: You treat rest as something you have to earn

There was a version of me that wouldn’t even take the time to drink water until I finished what I was doing.

Read that again.

I wouldn’t give myself the most basic form of care, hydration, until I had earned it by completing a task. Water was a reward. Rest was a reward. Sitting down was a reward.

Everything had to be earned. The to-do list was the gatekeeper, and my body’s needs were always at the bottom.

If this sounds extreme, ask yourself: when was the last time you sat down to rest without finishing something first? When was the last time you went to bed without mentally running through tomorrow’s list? When was the last time you took a break that wasn’t squeezed between two obligations?

That’s either/or. Productive OR resting. And rest always loses.

The Both/And reframe: Rest is not the opposite of productivity. It’s what makes productivity sustainable.

Ask yourself this question: Is anyone going to die if I don’t finish this right now?

No? Then drink the water. Take the break. The list will still be there. You might even come back to it sharper and more alert.

Sign 3: You perform a version of yourself that isn’t you

I speak three languages. Swedish, English, and Arabic. In my real life, they mix. A Swedish sentence with an Arabic expression thrown in. An English phrase that just fits better. That’s how I think, how I feel, how I process the world.

But at work? I spoke "clean." Lowered my voice. Adjusted my language for every room. No slang. No code-mixing. No personality leaking through.

I was so good at it that people thought I was calm. Put-together. Professional.

I was exhausted.

That’s what I call The Chameleon Trap. When you become so skilled at adapting that nobody, including you, remembers what the original looks like. Or maybe they haven’t even seen the original at all?

And my God, was she boring.

The chameleon version of me was safe. Accepted. Promoted, even. But she was flat. Predictable. A woman shaped entirely by what other people expected.

That’s either/or. Professional OR yourself. Pick one.

The Both/And reframe: You can be taken seriously and be fully yourself. In fact, the most magnetic leaders are the ones who stopped performing.

Today I am loud. Unapologetic. Curious. I ask too many questions. If I laugh too loud or my voice goes up, I own it.

Not because I stopped caring what people think. But because I stopped believing that shrinking was the price of belonging.

The pattern underneath all three

Either/or thinking doesn’t look dramatic from the outside. It looks like discipline. Like professionalism. Like being a "good" employee, mother, wife.

But underneath, it’s a belief that says: you can’t have both. You have to sacrifice one thing to earn another. And the thing you sacrifice is almost always yourself.

Your rest. Your voice. Your presence with the people you love.

The Both/And Principle doesn’t mean doing everything at once. It means understanding that you move in seasons. Some weeks you’re in full work mode. Other weeks you pull back and restore. Both count. Both are valid. Both are productive.

You don’t need to choose. You need a different rhythm.

Try this: The Either/Or Audit

Take 10 minutes this week. Grab a notebook, your phone, whatever works. And answer these questions honestly:

1. Where in my life am I choosing either/or right now?

Name the two things you feel like you have to choose between. Write them down: "I feel like I have to choose between _________ and _________."

2. What belief is driving that choice?

Is it "I have to earn rest"?, "I can’t be myself and be taken seriously"? , "Good mothers don’t prioritize their careers"? Write the belief. See it on paper.

3. What would Both/And look like, even imperfectly?

You don’t need a perfect plan, that’s a trap. You just need a first step. "I will close my laptop at 5pm on Tuesdays." "I will drink water before I finish the task, not after." "I will stop lowering my voice in the next meeting." One small act of Both/And.

4. Your two challenges this week:

For rest: every time you feel the pull to finish before you pause, ask yourself “Is anyone going to die if I don’t do this right now?” Listen to the answer.

For presence: put your phone in another room and give your family 30 minutes of your full, undivided attention. See what happens.

The Either/Or life is quiet. It doesn’t announce itself. It just slowly takes pieces of you until one day you look around and realize you’ve been surviving, not living.

The Both/And life isn’t louder. It’s just more honest.

You can be ambitious and present. Productive and rested. Professional and completely, unapologetically yourself.

You just can’t do all of it at the same time. And that’s not a failure. That’s called being human.

With all my love,

Nadine

If this landed, reply to this email with your answer to question 1. I read every reply.

And if you know a woman who needs to hear this today, share this with her.

Teta.

My time with you was the light of my life.

And even my friends at school knew that. Every week, before the weekend, they would ask me: ”are you going to your grandmother’s? Are you sleeping over?”

Because they could see it in me, the way I lit up at the thought of it. A little girl who couldn’t wait to get to her grandmother’s where she could finally, exhale.

I don’t think I ever told you that. That even the other children felt the warmth of what you gave me, from a distance, just by watching what it did to me.

I’m telling you now…

I came home from school one afternoon and my mother was sitting with some of your friends. She was crying.

She took me into the bedroom I shared with my brother. We sat down on the beige carpeted floor. And she told me you were gone. That you had left peacefully in your sleep. That no one could have known, and no one could have done anything.

I remember the carpet. I remember her face. I don’t remember if my brother was there.

What I want you to know, Teta, is that the love I had for you was bigger than any nine year old should be able to carry. And I have carried it ever since.

have a daughter, Teta. Her name is Ella. She is ten years old.

About the age I was when I sat down on that beige carpet and my world changed.

I have been thinking about what I would ask you if I had one more afternoon with you.

Not as the little girl jumping around you during your prayers. But as the woman you somehow always knew I would become. I would want to know everything. About your childhood. About what it felt like to be the oldest daughter, to watch siblings go to school while you couldn’t . About what you were feeling when you came to Stockholm.

And then, after all of that, I would ask you one last question.

What would you want for us?

For my generation. For Ella’s generation. For all the women coming after you who have access to everything you were never given.

I think I know your answer. Because I watched how you lived. And I think you would look at all of us, with our phones in our hands and our time vanishing into screens that give us nothing real back, and you would feel something between sadness and frustration.

You didn’t get to learn. That door was closed before you ever had a chance to reach for the handle. You never got to explore an idea simply because it fascinated you or sit in a classroom and feel the specific joy of understanding something new. And you gave everything you had, your whole early life, to everyone else’s needs, with a grace that I will spend the rest of mine trying to understand.

So I think you would want us to connect more. Really connect, human to human. Not just sit in the same spaces, but stay curious, stay interested, never stop asking questions. To travel. To meet new people, face to face, unhurried, the kind of human connection that leaves something behind in you that no screen ever could. To go out and do all of the things you couldn’t do.

And to stop wasting the freedom you never had.

I catch myself sometimes reacting to Ella’s feelings in ways I don’t like. Wanting to smooth things over too quickly, to manage what she’s feeling instead of just letting her feel it. And in those moments I stop myself. Because I know I was exactly the same when I was growing up. I was her. And I needed someone to hold space for that, not shut it down.

You were that person for me.

I am trying every single day to be that person for her.

That is the most important thing I want to pass forward to Ella from you. Not a lesson. Not a framework. Just this: the knowledge that she is never too much. That her feelings and her fears and the big emotions that live inside her are not problems to be managed. That who she is, exactly as she is, is not only acceptable but worthy of a whole universe of space.

You gave that to me without ever using those words.

I understood it the moment I became a mother.

Everything you needed, you already had inside you, Teta. No formal education, no language, no one holding the door open. And you built a whole life from that inner knowing alone.

That is your real message to us, I think.

Not that we should work harder or hustle more or prove ourselves to a world that keeps moving the goalposts. But that we already carry what we need. That the wisdom, the intuition, the deep knowing of our own worth, it was never something to be earned or granted or validated by anyone outside of us.

You knew that. You lived it every single day.

And on International Women’s Day, in a world that is still telling women to be smaller, younger, quieter, more manageable, I want to say out loud what you showed me without a single word.

You are enough. Exactly as you are. You always were.

بحبك، إنت كنز بقلبي

I love you. You are a treasure in my heart.

That is what my mother wrote about you. Years after you were gone. Still carrying you.

That is what I am writing today.

If you, dear reader, are reading this and you still have a Khadija in your life, a grandmother, an aunt, an older woman who has lived through things she has never been asked to share, please go to her. Sit with her. Ask her what she knows. Ask her what she would want for you.

Do it before it is too late.

And if you are the woman who feels like she is not enough, not ready, not qualified, not whatever the world is currently asking her to be, remember this.

My grandmother came to a country alone, in a language she didn’t speak, without a single word on paper.

And she was the wisest person I have ever known.

So are you. You just haven’t stopped long enough to feel it yet. 🌙

Happy International Women’s Day, teta.

With love, Nadine