As requested, let’s be human and check in with each other.
How in the hell are you? What did the last week bring? What are you looking (or not looking ) forward to this week? Any rants or raves?
Discussion can be about ADHD or off-topic: This is your canvas, ladies!
As I am not a mod of this community, I do not have the capacity to pin this post. I plan on making a post on Sundays where we can check in throughout the week as needed.
Please let me know if there is a better way of doing this - any ideas are welcome :). Grateful to be a part of this community.
I had a pretty good week overall. My favorite highlight was going to Denver Botanic Gardens for their annual Blossoms of Light. They hang lights on all the trees and structures, and it’s magical (see pic below)!
As you may have seen by my post on Saturday, I did not have a great morning in terms of executive functioning, but it got better. It’s so helpful to have a supportive partner, and I got fucking lucky in this regard.
And then this coming week? My son is off school, so I took some time off as well. So excited about that! For Thanksgiving, I ordered a Beef Wellington from a local restaurant. Never had it before, and really looking forward to trying it.
I have been reading a lot of your comments on other posts, and I’m still so angry to hear all of your stories about misdiagnosis or being dismissed and treated poorly by the medical community. My inner justice warrior wants to do something about it, and I already do in my profession (I’m a therapist), but I want to do more. If you have any ideas, please let me know.
Those trees are stunning omg.
I have no idea how long it takes them to wrap those in lights. Those trees are huge, and that’s just a tiny portion of the gardens. Everything is lit up, it’s gorgeous!
That looks awesome! Thanks for sharing.
Thank you!
oooh i live n the front range and didnt know the botanical gardens had this winter event, looks cool 😍
It’s absolutely beautiful, and they have 2 cafes that are open if you want to grab a hot drink. I recommend grabbing tickets now if you want to go because they do tend to sell out for the best days. You can read more and buy tickets here.
Had a pretty good weekend but decided I needed to call off today. We just made through one of our busiest seasons last week, had my birthday this weekend, Thanksgiving coming this week at my cousins house, who passed away last week. My best friend who passed away a few years ago, her bday is tomorrow. I decided I wanted to skip my meds and enjoy coffee and an empty house after everyone else left for work. I wallowed in some some sorrow and some past due self care. Then did some house care for feeling guilty playing hooky. I’m in my 40s and I think this is the first actual mental health day I have ever taken from work. It was kinda nice in the end. Felt really productive overall for a caffeine over meds day in the middle of some crazy stressors.
Whew. Thanks for the safe space to kinda tell all this to. I’m winding down so I can prepare for my new start of the week and this helped to share and kinda get it out.
I hope all of you have a wonderful week and if celebrating, stay safe in that holiday traffic and enjoy some good food!
I’m in my 40s and I think this is the first actual mental health day I have ever taken from work.
Well, shit, I hope you will do it again before another 40 years go by! It sounds like you carved out a little piece of calm and quiet for yourself today, even though it did involve some sorrow and grief, too. I guess that’s life, nothing is ever black and white. You did some self-care and still felt productive, overall that’s a win in my book. May your week start off as smoothly as it can tomorrow!
Thanks so much! I will def do it again if things come up. It was way better than being zoned out at work, making errors and getting more anxious about those consequences. I hope your week has started awesomely and continues through the holidays!
Oh, thank you - my week is relaxing so far, and I am quite happy right now. Awesome to have this community and people who care!
Regarding taking mental health days, my favorite saying is “every time you say ‘No’ to something, you are saying ‘Yes’ to something else.” If you are saying No to work on those days, you are saying Yes to yourself and self-care, and vice versa. I don’t know why, but it stuck with me. We tend to only fret about one side and not focus on the other, but you need to consider both to make a decision.
Well put! I like that and will try and remember it for the next time I’m feeling anguish over my choices!
That’s a really pretty picture.
Thank you! It was a lot of fun to walk around and see all the light combinations.
This week as well as last week, I am still waiting for my diagnostic report to tell me if I have ADHD or not - the sessions were in September. The wait time has been announced, but I am still impatient, which is kinda fitting, I guess… While it is clear to me, my therapist and the diagnostician that I likely have some kind of neurodivergence, it’s not quite clear if ADHD is the ticket. Which also makes sense - if it was super-obvious, somebody would have noticed before my thirties, I hope. I guess I’ll know soon enough.
Either way, I still find the ADHD communities such as this one very, very relatable, so if it’s alright, I’ll just stay on even if I didn’t meet the diagnostic criteria. :)
Please stay! I think there is so, so much stuff about neurodivergence we don’t know or understand yet. You know your brain is different, and if what we post resonates, then you definitely belong. I hope you get your report soon!
Today was my first day back from vacation. So many emails… I just kept scrolling through all the unread and felt defeated. I allowed myself extra distractions today while trying to at least prioritize things, but it ended up being a surprisingly productive day somehow. On to tomorrow.
I love surprisingly productive days! May tomorrow be even better for you. Sounds like allowing extra distractions actually worked to keep you focused?
I got through the urgent ones today and will do the rest tomorrow, sigh.
