ADHD is Awesome: A Guide To (Mostly) Thriving With ADHD

ADHD is a very big part of our lives. We have extended family with ADHD, (I have recently begun to wonder if I have lived most of life with undiagnosed ADHD), we live at a school specializing in ADHD and our youngest son was recently diagnosed with ADHD. Because of all these reasons I was dedicated to becoming an expert. I have ordered so many books and read so many articles and consulted physicians and therapists and websites and everything else. Lots of books are informative, but some of them will make you feel like you are living with a ticking time bomb.This book was so wonderful and so refreshing. It walked a very fine line of being realistic about the challenges of ADHD while still celebrating all the wonderful things that make someone with ADHD, real and beautiful and human.There are elements for people with ADHD and for loved ones who need to understand ADHD. There is good biological and clinical information but not so much that it becomes heavy like a textbook. It is humorous and energizing.Even the layout of the book makes it easy to read with ADHD: breakout sections, bright colors on the edges, illustrations, color coded boxes, checklists and sentences not starting on one page and continuing on the next are just a few of the touches that tell you this is written by someone who really understands what it means to live with ADHD. (And there's an audiobook too!)I love the balance of humility and ownership of the challenges of ADHD/tips for accountability while also embracing the glorious gifts that ADHD can bring and truly embracing the diagnosis and making it into something to celebrate.Ever since we suspected that our son had ADHD we have fiercely rejected the stereotypes and standards that painted it as a life-ruining experience. We knew that our son had a sparkle brain that vibrated with magic and life and imagination and creativity. This book absolutely felt like a validation of that.ADHD is Awesome is an amazing gift to anyone who wants to better understand their own ADHD or the ADHD of someone they love. Everyone could get something out of this book.

I've been "a little bit" ADHD all my life, but was only diagnosed fairly recently - life changes happen, hormone changes happen, pandemics happen... and things that were mostly annoying but manageable suddenly aren't as much, and you have too many meetings and are late for half of them, and the emails you thought you sent are still sitting in your drafts folder, and you're wondering what happened. And then you fight a bit with you doctor to be referred for an evaluation, and eventually you get the diagnosis that was staring you in the face your whole life, and yet was never taken more seriously than a punchline - ADHD happened. And so, as an ADHD person sometime does, you hyperfocus on understanding why, and how, and start reading a bunch of books... because suddenly, certain things are now making so much more sense. Except, the books. The books are mostly not great. They're either dated, or they say the same things over and over, and none of it actually helps you fix the issues ADHD creates. Except this one.To be honest, I bought this book because if nothing else, Penn and Kim Holderness are entertaining. Their videos are hilarious - and smart. I wanted to support them and their work. I was, perhaps, a little biased and inclined to be cynical that a book written by "a couple of influencers" could be all that serious, or useful, or good. I'm a jerk. I forgot that the Holderness' are both hilarious and smart social media moguls AND journalists. They clearly brought their journalism brains along with their influencer-entertainer brains to this project.Not only has this book been interesting and helpful to me, I've recommended it to others - both those living with ADHD and those living with someone with ADHD (sometimes, me) - as a way to get smart on the subject, knowing that it would be both entertaining and readable, and also useful, which ... well, I've read quite a few, and I'm still looking for one that's quite this good at explaining what it is, and isn't, and how it's experienced by those who have it.I'm learning that not everything about ADHD is awesome. And a lot of it is confusing - even when you have it. Maybe especially when you have it. It's also confusing for people around you, who may or may not know you have it. In fact, there's a good chance you might have it and not even know you have it (it's tragically underdiagnosed, especially in women and those who exhibit more of the inattentive, rather than hyperactive, symptoms).If ADHD is, in fact, about as common as being left-handed, it might be good for everyone to read this book. I'd love to see managers in offices reading this book for professional development during disability awareness month. I'd love to see teachers reading it, so they can better support both their students diagnosed with ADHD and those whose symptoms are being overlooked, or attributed to other things.I don't subscribe to the notion that the ADHD brain is "broken." Like all brains, it excels at some things, and not at others. But it is idiosyncratic. It doesn't always respond well to the well-meaning advice that works for the other 90-95% of folks. And because humans are inherently social animals and it can be hard to go through life always feeling like an outsider - or at least an outlier - for any reason.I'm fortunate that I've mostly spent my adult life in careers that keeps me interested and busy, and workplaces that have been at least somewhat tolerant of my propensity for "running late," on a phone call that "just ran a little long," or at least looked the other way all the times I "got stuck in traffic."Or even worse: when I said I was in traffic but the truth is I got there early... but then decided to spend those 15 minutes checking my email on my phone in the car... and then got so absorbed responding to something in them that I temporarily forgot all about the meeting... and so I spontaneously stopped at the coffee shop next door on the way into the office for an ice coffee... thus walking into the meeting 10 minutes late, with a cup of ice coffee, filled to the brim with fresh ice cubes. Like a *jerk.* Or so the meme about it claims. Trust me, it's not F-U energy, its ADHD energy, and I'm as P-Od at me as you are. But thank you for not firing me, because there statistics that say that's a real hazard... so much so, some physicians and even psychologists won't diagnose you with ADHD unless it's happened once or twice. And that's not awesome, not in the good way anyway. Nor are dealing with the restrictions, regulations, and shortages that disrupt my life regularly to obtain medication. Nor is the mistaken belief that medication "fixes" ADHD, rather than merely tamping down a few of the more dopamine-deficiency related symptoms.And if this is exhausting to read, just imagine what it's like being inside my head with all this and ALL my other thoughts!But I love my overthinking, deep-processing, creative, problem-solving ADHD brain. If you have ADHD, maybe this book will help you learn to love yours a little bit better, too. And if you don't, perhaps this book will help you understand ADHD brains a little better... because chances are, you have one or two in your life, whether you (or they) know it or not. And they are not broken, either. They're just different. Often in weird and wonderful ways, if you can make space for them to do the things they are great at, provide the right kind of support for the things they're not as great at, and recognize that we're all awesome - ADHD brains and non-ADHD brains alike - when we're allowed to experience, share, and celebrate all the things that make us that way.