For us women who spent decades masking — suppressing instinctive responses, performing neurotypicality, exhausting ourselves in the effort to seem fine — diagnosis does more than deliver crucial clinical benefits. It reframes the friction we experience on a daily basis as structural, not personal.

“When we talk about stopping medication…we need to ask, ‘What are we asking this person to give up and what supports are we using to replace it?’”

“I felt like a fraud because I wrote an entire book on how to support someone with ADHD yet never had the courage to raise my hand and ask the question for myself. I felt grief for all the years believing my struggles were character flaws. I felt some anger on behalf of all the women like me whole were simply… missed.”

If you’re in or nearing perimenopause and are experiencing disruptive changes — overwhelm, difficulty focusing, the sense that your brain just doesn’t work like it used to — could these signs point to a more complex story?

Perimenopause is highly impairing for women with ADHD, who experience more severe symptoms and at an earlier age than neurotypical women.

Kim Holderness thought she knew a lot about neurodivergence being married to a man with ADHD and raising a child with the condition. Then, she received her own surprise diagnosis, and learned much more.

“The collision of ADHD and menopause is not a footnote. It is not rare. It is not a personal failing. It is a perfect storm that nobody warned us about, and the silence around it has cost too many women too much, for too long.”

Click on each image below to explore the science, expert insight, lived experiences, and camaraderie that surrounds women with ADHD.