“How Did They Miss This?” – A Neurospicy Retrospective

A common refrain among women who receive a late-in-life neurodivergent diagnosis - ADHD, autism spectrum, or some delightful blend of the two - is: How did they miss this?

It's not a rhetorical question. It's the stunned gasp of someone staring back across the decades of their life and realizing that what they thought was a personal failing was actually a neurological difference. All those years of being told you're lazy, unmotivated, careless, too much, not enough - it hits like a crit when you're at 2% health and out of potions.

Most of the trauma didn’t come from being neurodivergent. It came from being misunderstood and mislabeled, again and again.

I remember the kindergartener who couldn’t nap, who wiggled so much the teacher stuck a literal “Wiggleworm” label on her chest like a Scarlet Letter made of masking tape.

The first grader who couldn’t stay in the room once her work was done and who responded to bullies with berserker rage and a steel lunchbox that doubled as a weapon. (They really were made of steel. OSHA would weep.)

The second grader whose dopamine-seeking snacking made her gain a little weight - just enough to get her passed over for May Queen, despite winning the random name draw.

The third grader who forgot she even had a math workbook and fell weeks behind, but caught up in a single grounded weekend.

The fourth grader who kept having to re-cover her textbooks because she couldn’t not doodle.

The fifth grader who couldn’t make friends after a move and spent recess alone.

The sixth grader always in trouble for reading under her desk.

The seventh grader who invited most of the class to her birthday party and had no one show up.

The eighth grader who couldn’t maintain hygiene or track her belongings but taught herself algebra over the summer.

The freshman whose friend dragged her to the school counselor, worried about her “inappropriate” emotional responses.

The sophomore who devoured a book a day on top of assigned reading.

The junior with a 36 on the ACT who couldn’t keep a backpack organized or arrive anywhere on time.

The senior who scored 1590 on the SAT, got invited to Harvard, and panicked at the welcome event, bolting like a rabbit from the sheer overwhelm of it all.

Then came adulthood. Jobs followed a consistent 2–3 year cycle: first, excellence. Then disengagement. Then the slow spiral: more sick days, harder mornings, and finally - termination. Home life toggled between Good Housekeeping and borderline hoarder den. I chewed my nails. I impulse-bought weird things at 3 a.m. I lived with anxiety and depression and a self-esteem that set up permanent residence somewhere in the Mariana Trench.

Therapists gave me advice that never seemed to work. Meds dulled the edges but didn’t fix the core problem. The worst part? The internal monologue - an endless Greek chorus shrieking that I was a freak, a failure, and a fraud, especially when the world went quiet.

And then, at 52, while getting my child assessed, I got my own diagnosis.

Cue quantum shift.

Suddenly, everything made sense. Not just the recent burnout or the career inconsistencies. All of it. The weird quirks, the “bad” behavior, the patterns of pain and coping. It was like finding the cheat codes to a game I didn’t even know I was playing. And I cried - grief, rage, relief, all of it. I didn't know who I was anymore. Just a tangle of symptoms and half-adaptive strategies stitched together by brute force.

But I wasn’t broken. I was… misunderstood. Including by myself.

The diagnosis didn’t just give me a new lens. It gave me a mission: to take this lifetime of raw experience and reforge it into something useful. I started distilling what I had learned - through books, therapy, mistakes, recoveries, reboots - into a framework that actually works. A way of building contentment.

Notice I said contentment, not happiness. That’s deliberate. Happiness is a high-energy state - it’s amazing when it’s around, but it vanishes like the Cheshire Cat. Contentment, though? That’s sustainable. It’s like finding a well-balanced build for life. It won’t one-shot your problems, but it’ll get you through the dungeon.

And I said simple, not easy. Because it’s not. Changing your life feels impossible at first - like trying to lift a car. And that metaphor was my undoing for years. It implied I couldn’t. But the truth was: I just didn’t have traction yet. Once I saw it as regaining traction - not superhuman strength - it became doable.

Now? I get to help other people find their footing. I get to alchemize my own rotten fruit into potent mojo, into coaching and guidance for others walking a similar path. I still grieve what could have been. But I also celebrate what is - this hard-won, deeply satisfying clarity. I’m not just symptoms and coping mechanisms anymore. I’m something far richer, and far more powerful.

And if you’re reading this and thinking, this sounds like me, then let me say: I see you. You’re not lazy. You’re not broken. You’re not a failure.

You’re running a high-level raid on Hard Mode without the proper class tags. No wonder you’re exhausted. But there’s still time to respec and rewrite the script.

Let’s do it together.