A while ago, I discovered a YouTube channel called How to ADHD, and the videos have been quite helpful in understanding ADHD.
Someone in a Facebook group shared a video today that had me in tears. Click here to view it.
It’s talking about how we are enough ‘as is’, we don’t have to overcome to be ‘normal’, we are OK as we are. We are awesome just the way we are. We don’t have to change everything about us to be accepted. We are able to be ‘as is’.
One thing I’ve found over my life is that everyone expects me to do certain things, act a certain way, achieve certain goals. This could be anything from getting married and having kids (which I did), having a career, a piece of paper to show I know what I know, a clean house, or whatever.
It often feels that no matter what I do or how I act, I’m not good enough. Being ‘as is’ isn’t enough.
Some days, I wonder if I even know who I am as I’ve spent my whole life trying to fit in and being someone that others expect me to be.
One of the reasons the video had me in tears as it talks about being ‘as is’. Just being me. It’s one of the first times I’ve heard someone say that my crazy, creative, weird brain is ok as it is.
And this made me cry.
I have spent most of my life trying to change myself, to be the person that I think everyone else wants me to be. I keep forgetting that I’m all kinds of amazing ‘as is’. Even the writers groups I run, that I know are amazing, that changes kids lives, that I run the way that suits me and my brain, I forget how amazing they are and think that I have to do something different in order to be accepted.
I am on a journey to embrace myself ‘as is’.
To stop trying to be someone else.
To stop trying to be someone other than who I am.
To embrace the quirky, the crazy, the amazing person that I am.
To do things in the way that suits me, that suits my brain, that suits every part of me.
I am trying to work through what that looks like.
Some is reaching out for help with things like housework.
Some is acknowledging that I don’t have to work harder to do things in a way that other people do, instead find my own way of doing things, and reminding myself that that is OK.
Some is spending the day reading, or saying no to activities.
I know this is a process. It’s hard to kick the habit of a lifetime thinking that I need to be better or different somehow, but I know I’ll get there.
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