on when truth hurts, then heals
moving towards reconnection
Hey friends,
It might seem a bit woo-woo, but if I’m out here trying to write what I think people want to hear, the words don’t come, the energy drains, and I fall apart.
And I can’t sustain a creative practice from a place of disconnection.
Initiating my creative process typically goes like this:
Breathe (to reconnect to the present)
Notice my fears (to release every single one I have about what I’m about to create before I start)
Pray (to reconnect to the goodness in myself and the world around me)
Ask for guidance (to be of service in what I create to ultimately share).
When I think about it, the process is all about reconnection. Connection to the present, to myself and the world around me. Connection to others, to the universe, Spirit, Goddess, Creator (whatever you want to call it) and to my purpose. I think a lot about how everything is connected and what’s possible when I lean into that truth.
I also think about when I’ve tried to deny it.
This society does all it can to keep us disconnected - from the universe, the natural world, each other and ourselves. I’m learning that part of creating is learning to reconnect to what is true, no matter how disheartening, big or scary that seems. No matter how hard that truth might be to accept.
I suppose this piece is a little about that.
With love and gratitude,
SC xo
I was diagnosed with ADHD in 2019, a full year before everyone else had it.
I didn’t know that late-in-life ADHD diagnoses were a thing. I had no idea there was this whole culture of white ADHD content creators, influencers and coaches either. They were the ones who told us what ADHD was and wasn’t, and I didn’t understand why it was like that. All I knew was that I couldn’t see myself in their stories. Sharing my own on Instagram became a way of changing that.
I never anticipated what would come from that decision.
There was something very special about my early days on IG, before I knew of algorithms, ADHD content creator influencers or white supremacy culture. I would write, hoping someone might resonate and maybe they’d writet back. I wasn’t trying to change the world or even be an advocate at that point. Looking back, I just wanted to feel less alone. Less isolated in the experience. Or maybe, for once in my life, a part of something bigger.
I wanted to feel a connection.
But I also remember the first time I googled “Black women undiagnosed ADHD”. I found nothing that I could connect to. Being a transracial adoptee made my experience of Blackness different from many in the Black community. Yet, my ADHD experience felt incomplete when told through a white lens, too. I didn’t know where I fit. Like most of my life, once again, I didn’t feel I belonged anywhere.
It wasn’t long after that when I stumbled upon an essay on Medium. In it, a Black woman wrote about asking a white woman if the group she was curating was an “intersectional space”. That word stopped me in my tracks. Intersectional!? What did that mean??? And why did I know exactly what that Black woman was asking about without ever having heard that word before? That’s when my whole world cracked wide open, forcing me to rethink everything I thought I knew about the world and my place in it.
But it was June 2020 when I shattered into a million pieces.
That was when my IG account went from 500 followers to 10,000, and I felt disconnected again. That was when all the big names in ADHD wanted to work with me, a relative nobody just a few days earlier. That was when everyone suddenly wanted to interview me or join my Patreon. Overnight, I became a Black influencer on ADHD.
But in truth, I became a resource.
Whiteness needed a resource to relieve its guilt, and I became one to be extracted from and further dehumanised. But contrary to what I grew up being told, no matter how much I know, how hard I work or how much I achieve, I will never change enough or prove that my Blackness could be enough for whiteness.
My denial could no longer hold up against the clarity that comes from truth.
It’s taken me a while to find it, but it’s always been there, just waiting to be known. The relationship that will always matter most is the one I have with myself. My initial diagnosis offered me the chance to reconnect to myself in ways that could work for me - not in ways society expected me to.
I wrote on IG to support those whose ADHD experiences were missing. In the process, I was learning to humanise myself and, therefore, humanise others. But I wrote to reconnect to myself and others while still in a society that never truly saw me as someone worthy of being connected to.
My understanding of the world shattered into a million pieces five years ago when my IG blew up, but what was left was the truth.
And that’s where real connection starts.
In preparation for my Substack essay in progress, reflect on this: What are you learning about finding connection, building connection and sustaining connection?
PS. Remember to buy my book, It’s Never Just ADHD, leave a 5-star review on Amazon, share my Substack or become a paid subscriber cuz that would be awesome and less extractive, ya know? Thank you!!!