Re-blogging Because I Am ADHD And After 1 Year Post Diagnoses I Am Just Getting T These Issues. Do Want

Re-blogging because I am ADHD and after 1 year post diagnoses I am just getting t these issues. Do want to point that the social model is not that there are no meds, or no illness, but about who directs the care, and the focus of how services are delivered. I am an ADHD  adult of 50, and have so much to learn, but I am a CEO of a government agency that delivers home health services to seniors and disabled persons to keep them safely in their homes. The social model is so important to the people who get the services. The social model is really about the person directing their own care, with the professionals acting as support, expert consultants etc.  

I have not read enough about adhd, but like the concept/movement to rename it "executive function disorder". I got help because of major problems at work. If I had a boss I wold have been fired. I almost had to lay someone off because some of my mistakes cost so much money. That would have meant someone supporting their family would have lost a job.

I do wish I had dealt with it sooner, I have no friends, my family excludes me from lots of things (thanks Facebook!) and I am, struggling to get m,y work and personal life, space and especially, routine tasks in order. Feel bad when I get the warning notices because the something like health insurance hasn't been paid.

So, disability? no doubt. I appreciate the opportunity to learn from you.

Things I’m slowly realizing:

I have found some people who have ADHD who think it’s a terrible curse, who seem to have trouble convincing people that they have a serious, debilitating condition. They come from an ableist perspective, and it sounds to me like they might be disabled but do not use that language and do not know about disability rights or anything.

I have found lots of people who have ADHD and have “overcome” it and are eager to have me shut up and get over it and stop ruining their reputation.

I have found zero people (except for myself) who call ADHD a disability.

I have found lots of and lots of people, both ADHD and non-, who think ADHD is no big deal or maybe a big deal but certainly no disability or it’s unclear what they think.

Since I can’t find anybody like me calling ADHD a disability, why would I expect anybody discussing disability rights on the internet to have a different impression than the lots and lots of people I just mentioned?

As time passes and I realize how alone I am, I understand how I might be charging into this tumblr space unwelcomed. I might be seen as unfairly claiming the identity “disabled.”

Well, I know right now that there’s no way for me to convince any hypothetical skeptical person that I’m worthy of calling myself disabled. Anyone with an “invisible” disability knows that can be a giant a waste of time.

I know for myself that I’m disabled because my life didn’t start to make sense until I started to learn about disability rights. My life is extremely different from the lives of the neurotypical people around me. Their lives never made sense to me. My life never made sense to them. Getting a diagnosis seemed to help at first, but when I tried to put into practice the things I was learning about ADHD, everything made less sense than it had before. I can’t even describe the confusion and hopelessness and the struggling to understand every part of my life, my efforts to work, my efforts to learn, my efforts to socialize, everything. My whole life was a series of train wrecks with no identifiable cause. I started making some progress when I read The Rejected Body by Susan Wendell and Claiming Disability by Simi Linton. I’m just starting to make sense of myself, and if you’re reading this because it’s tagged “disability,” then you might be one of the people helping me make sense of myself by helping me understand ableism, whether you like it or not. So, thank you. And, so there.

Maybe I’m the first person with ADHD ever to identify as disabled. That’s fine with me. I know who I am, finally.