Show Notes
ADHD symptoms can be easy to miss — even when you’re someone who knows a lot about ADHD. Kim Holderness shares her adult ADHD diagnosis and the complicated feelings that came with it.
Kim felt embarrassed and like a fraud. For years, she assumed her anxiety and emotional ups and downs were simply part of the very real load many busy moms carry.
Kim and Penn Holderness — creators, authors, and the couple behind the Holderness Family — have long been surrounded by ADHD in their life and work. In a quick, sweet cameo, Penn (who also has ADHD) shares how he supports Kim in practical ways, like handling paperwork and day-to-day logistics.
More from ADHD Aha!
Derek Sheen spent decades being told he was difficult, a bad listener, not smart enough — while testing in the top one percentile of his state. That’s ADHD for you.
Journalist Lizzie O’Leary spent decades asking sharp questions for a living. Then the words started disappearing. Brain fog. Surprising rage. A head full of buzzing bees.
Jim Leitch could intubate a patient in the middle of the night — alone, short-staffed, smiling — and feel completely calm. Ask him to follow a pasta recipe? That’s where things got hard: Everyday tasks and executive function challenges.
A former boss once described their first meeting this way: “She showed up late and disheveled, and I hired her anyway.” That’s Sabrina Caluori in a nutshell. Sabrina is the chief marketing officer at Chief, the largest private network for ambitious women. Diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, she describes herself as a contradiction: “High achieving and a hot mess in equal measure” — a leader who can hold an entire company’s strategy in her head but can’t manage her own calendar. Sabrina shares what it’s like to be gifted with ADHD — twice exceptional — and how that experience bonds her to her 2e child. She gets into ADHD burnout, self-doubt, and how the things she once considered character flaws turned out to make her exceptional at reading people and leading teams.
From the outside, Susie Owens looked like she was gliding. Straight-A student, entrepreneur, devoted mom — and exhausted in ways nobody could see. When you’re an ADHD high achiever, masking is a whole job.