Ignored to icons: These trailblazers changed the game for women with ADHD

For decades, ADHD was generally thought of as something only boys could have. But in the 1990s, a group of trailblazing women discovered that what they were feeling and experiencing was indeed ADHD. So, they wrote books, conducted research, and gave speeches, paving the way for women with ADHD.

On this very special episode of Hyperfocus, host Rae Jacobson interviews three of these women — Sari Solden, Terry Matlen, and Dr. Ellen Littman — along with Dr. Michelle Frank, a psychologist taking up the torch for a new generation. 

Together, they discuss how they met, their journey to legitimize ADHD in women, and what they hope for the future. 

We love hearing from our listeners! Email us at hyperfocus@understood.org.

• Climbing the Walls 

• MissUnderstood: The ADHD in Women Channel 

(06:22) Discovering you aren’t alone

(13:18) The disconnect between academia and the rest of the world

(21:22) The benefits of treatment and community 

(28:05) ADHD isn’t always a superpower

Rae: 30 years ago, if you had suggested that women had ADHD, you'd be laughed out of the room. I know this because today I'm sitting here with some of the trailblazing women who changed the landscape for women with ADHD forever. They stayed in the room, refused to be dismissed, and on this very special episode of Hyperfocus, we had the chance to hear their story, what it was like, what's changed, what hasn't, and where they hope to see us go from here.

I'm Rae Jacobson, and I'm joined by four incredible women who've been at the forefront of ADHD advocacy, research, treatment, shaping how we understand women and girls with ADHD.

They say you should not meet your idols, but I'm sitting here with three of mine and one of my new idols, Michelle. And so, I'm going to introduce my heroes. Dr. Ellen Littman, who is a clinical psychologist. She's been working on this topic for over 35 years. She's written over 60 articles. You're a public speaker. You authored a book, which I read as a kid and was very helpful for me, called "Understanding Girls and ADHD," and you wrote that with two of my other heroes, Dr. Kathleen Nadeau and Dr. Patricia Quinn. And I'm so excited that you're here.

Ellen: And thank you that, I mean, that is why we do this work is to hear the fact that we did make an impact in someone's life.

Rae: So, I mean, honestly, in this intro, I am trying not to cry. So, and it's just because, just so we're clear, it's because I'm wearing very permeable eyeliner and I don't wanna just like start embarrassing myself from the beginning, so. And then I am, sitting next to Terry Matlen, another wonderful and amazing psychotherapist. You're a consultant, you're a creator, you're an ADHD educator. You've written two books that I loved, "Survival Tips for ADHD" and "Queens of Distraction," which is a fantastic name, or anything.

And also, and I know that you don't like this, but I'm going to say it anyway, Terry is one of the OG influencers. You were online with ADHD before like anyone else. And you have kept it going. You have a Facebook group that has 36,000 women with ADHD in it.

Terry: 36,00 from all over the world.

Rae: That is amazing. And bananas. And I'm a member. And then we have Michelle, who is part of our new guard, who is just like delightful, and I've gotten to know you and. You're a clinical psychologist, you're a speaker and an author, and you wrote a book with Sari Solden, who is... If there were a world in which I could say someone who needs no introduction, I feel like this would be it.

But because you are just somebody who has changed the world for so many of us, Sari is a psychotherapist, she's written three books, including one of the first books I and many other people ever read about women with ADHD, one of first books that made us feel seen, and where we got a name for what was going on with ourselves at all, the groundbreaking "Women with Attention Deficit Disorder." And that book came out 30 years ago?

Sari: This year, yeah.

Rae: That is wild and so cool and, you know, I don't know. I just feel like sometimes you're in a situation where you're like, I can't believe I'm really here, and I can believe I am really here. You guys are here, I get to talk to you. This is unbelievable for me.

Sari: It makes it all worthwhile for us to see the impact and the ripples over the years.

Rae: I just wanna like start by kind of just asking some general stuff and I'm gonna start by really talking to Ellen and Sari and Terry because you guys are some of the pioneers of this work. And without you, we wouldn't really have any of the terminology. I don't think we'd be anywhere close to where we are now for women with ADHD, which, even in the short time that I've been aware of it has changed so much. So, I wanted to say, how did you meet each other? And what was... The world of women with ADHD like when you started doing this work?

Ellen: Well, I guess I can start by saying how I met Sari. Oh, please. And because it was a wasteland in the 90s. And I mean, no one knew anything about women. Or I mean they weren't even really sure girls had ADD, so it was really the Wild West. And I was standing online at a conference, and Sari was standing in front of me. And I looked over her shoulder, and she had a book that said, "Women with Attention Deficit Disorder," and I couldn't believe that I saw those words. And even though I rarely talk to strangers, I was overwhelmed, and I said, "Whoever wrote that book is a genius."

Sari: I liked her right away.

Ellen: Fast friendship. And she said that she had written it, and that was the first book, she had just published it, and it changed my life. First of all, to know that there is at least one other person in the world seeing what I was seeing, and that has led to a wonderful professional and personal connection over 35 years.

Sari: 30 years.

Ellen: Yeah, 30 years.

Sari: The book had just come out. It was in 1995. We were standing in line at, you know, waiting to see Hallowell and Ratey. It was a long line in Washington, D.C., and, yeah, it was the first moment my book was out, we met and we've been friends ever since.

Rae: That's amazing. How did it feel to have someone say that to you, like, you know, as you're holding this book that you just wrote?

Sari: I said, "I love this woman." No, it was the first, you know, of many moments where I've had to learn to take in some of the kind things that you're saying to me and so the whole process has been very healing for me since I published that book my life has changed, and healing, and as a woman with ADHD to be seen and heard and valued and have an impact. So, that was a huge turning point in my life.

Rae: 30 years ago, the ADHD field was a pretty small world. And that small world got even tinier, microscopic practically, when you zeroed in on people who were talking about women with ADHD. So when Terry, newly diagnosed and on her own, heard someone had written a book about ADHD and women, it felt like kismet.

Terry: I was at a conference, and it was about 30 years ago. And I had recently been diagnosed with ADHD, but felt very lonely. And my daughter, as many women have been diagnosed, we learn through our children, you know, that they're ADD and it's highly genetic. You know, maybe that's what's going on with me. So, I started looking for all kinds of information going to these conferences.

So, I was a national, international conference, and the person who was presenting at that at that session said, "Well, we have somebody in the audience that I want you all to meet." And she said, "This is Sari Solden, and she has a new book out, 'Women with Attention Deficit Disorder,' and it's going to be released soon." So, like Ellen, you know, I just went, oh, gaga, I just want gaga. And I think that we initiated a little bit of a conversation, and then I reached out to Sari because it was a very lonely world back then, very lonely.

Rae: Can you guys tell me a little bit more about that? Because I feel like this is something that I'm only from having spoken to you in a group, starting to truly understand how lonely it really was.

Sari: Well, I was lonely because I was alone in a little room in Northern California at a family service agency, and we had this little office for adults with learning disabilities in like 89. And believe me, I wasn't alone, and I was just searching in between clients for anything about, to explain my disorganization. I was at an agency where I was being shamed every day by the administrative staff. "I can't read your handwriting, blah, blah blah." Moving from this office to that office and picking up on my papers, stuffing them in a little bag, and taking them home, and trying to have all these papers in the basement.

I spend all my weekends and days trying to organize. And so, I was, but I was seeing women and men who now I probably would have say had ADHD by the time were classified with learning disabilities. And as I was hearing their stories, that's where I started to identify and feel not so alone. But there were several years there that I was just... You know, observing things and in the end, I just said what I saw, and other clinicians recognized that and had had the same experiences.

Rae: And when you guys were, were you all on just separate islands, kind of like living these lives of wondering who else is out there?

Sari: Yes.

Terry: And she broke it all open. And so, when her book came out, shortly after that conference, I just grabbed it, I read it, and I was crying. Like this person knows what's going on in my head. She understands my life. Nobody else really did until that point.

Sari: Well, yeah, there was no internet. I like to tell anybody listening to this, they can't imagine it, but women had never spoken to any other women. So, when they read my book, that was why it had a lot of impact, because they said, "Well, if it's in a book, that must mean that other people actually have this, that it's not just me, it's just not my character." So, right at that time, the internet became a place where people could start talking to each other, and we did start to have conferences, and women did start to define their own experiences, which was unheard of.

Rae: Yeah, I mean, that, to define your own experience, that that is such a privilege, that you get to say what your life is like, that you got to be in charge.

Ellen: In some realms, but not in the academic realm.

Rae: Tell me about that. Because you were seeing it from a different side.

Ellen: Yeah. And I got involved in this aspect of it when I was at a conference and listening to a keynote speaker, I think in maybe 93, who said that girls were ADD wannabes.

Rae: What did that feel like?

Ellen: Well, it felt like I had to go up to the microphone and argue with him vociferously. And he kept saying, "Sit down." And I said, "I'm not done." And he said, "Well, yes, you are." And I said, "No, I'm not." And this was for, they were, at that point, there were 800 people at that conference. And I didn't sit down for about 20 minutes. And I argued with him. And then I went out in the lobby and had my hands over my face, thinking that was professional suicide. I mean, I may have been slightly out of control.

And then Kathleen Nadeau and Patricia Quinn walked up to me. I didn't know who they were. And they said, "That was amazing," which was so much better than professional suicide. And "Would you write a book about girls for us?" Because they needed someone who felt that passionately about it. But the point is that girls, even girls with ADD did not exist and were not accepted as existing at that time. So, I came into it as a fighter, and I'm still being a fighter.

Rae: I witnessed this firsthand, and it is genuinely delightful.

Sari: Well, you know, because it was in the early 90s where we first learned that adults continued to have difficulties, even if they lost their hyperactivity, which was a big help. But still, women had to continue to translate, you know, because it didn't really describe their own experiences, because most women were not hyperactive. And so, you still had to figure out, well, what does that mean about all these symptoms and problems I'm experiencing and differences that I have?

So, it wasn't until we realized that you never had to have hyperactivity. There was ADD without hyperactivity, is what we called it then, that we sort of became aware and accepting, starting to accept that women had it, but it was different. Every article I read right before I wrote my book said, "Women have it too, but it's different." That was all anybody ever said.

Terry: But I think the part that really got to me with Sari's book, and it's the only book I've ever read more than once because I get bored easily reading, but I've read her book at least three times, and that was the shame part that really hit me hard that I lived with a tremendous amount of shame because I couldn't do laundry, I couldn' get dinner on the table, I couldn't do a lot of things that other women could do. So, I would refer back to your book and remind myself, "Hey, you know. That's just the way my brain works, and it's OK."

Rae: But even as Sari's book had begun helping women with ADHD see our experiences as valid and real, in the academic world, Ellen was seeing something very different. I don't know about y'all, but for me, it felt like I just, it's just me, it just me and everybody else has got it figured out and I don' have it and if I let on that it's happening, then I'm exposing myself in this way that is, now I can see is masking and coping, but at the time felt like just hold it all together, just keep it together until they just look away and then you can fall apart.

Ellen: And every undiagnosed woman still feels that way and attributes any difficulties to their characters, character flaws, and without having a neurological umbrella to, you know, explain it. I mean, everyone still lives with so much stigma and so much shame, and that makes them isolate, and they don't want to share that information. So, there's a real disconnect, because... You know, Sari's book opened up a world of conversation in the lay public, but academically, no one was acknowledging that any of those things were existing, so that when they tried to get diagnosed, they can't get diagnosed.

Sari: So, yeah, what I wrote about in the book was based on all the women and men I was seeing, but it was so clear that the women were the ones that were deeply internalizing these cultural expectations because not only was it hard to do those things, but it deeply embedded that you needed to be able to do that, to be a woman, a wife, a friend, anybody worthwhile at all.

And like Ellen's saying, even though there's so much more acceptance today when you see people in your clinical practice, young women even, these things, the shame and the stigma, the difficulty, the voice, how you are in relationships, the power dynamics that is still deeply affecting you, women today, even when you get really down to it.

Terry: It's like it's become easier to say the words "I have ADHD," but to actually have it, to have it happen, to experience it in front of other people is just the same as it's always been in terms of the struggle of shame and internalization.

Rae: What I keep hearing from all of you, and Ellen, you've talked about this quite a bit, is that there's not that much research done on women and girls with ADHD.

Ellen: Well, that is an overstatement. There's almost negligible research done. Women have not been the subjects of studies at all, in really any biomedical field. And they don't look at women, whether it's crash test dummies or whether it is animal research. All of those mice are male. And so, the prevailing science has been measure things that happen in boys and men and just generalize it to just that quieter, weaker, other people who live here.

NIH has made two really strong statements about "We won't give you any more money for studies unless you have parity in terms of gender, in terms of subjects." They ignore it completely, I mean, completely.

Rae: You mean the field of people doing research on ADHD?

Ellen: Yes, and they are still getting grants. So, it's a really serious problem in that it's almost, it's unclear. They've said that it's too expensive because you have to work around hormones.

Rae: How do you work around them?

Ellen: And that it is easier and it's faster. These are all words that really are not compelling when we're trying to understand, so that we still, it's such a dearth of understanding, so that people who want to, clinicians cannot learn more, for example, about the inattentive type of ADHD. Some girls and women who are in clinics, they'll go to clinics and they'll collect some subjects there. But those will probably be the people who have the most difficult symptoms.

There'll be impulsivity and hyperactivity. But we can't learn anything about the inattentive group. And that is the larger group of women. And so, that is why, when they go to be diagnosed, They say. You couldn't have ADD because you're not jumping around.

Rae: We didn't see you in the research we are not doing.

Ellen: Yeah. Exactly.

Terry: Right. And so, combined type or hyperactive presentation are more likely to be referred for treatment because the squeaky wheel gets the greasing and you're maybe displaying some externalizing behaviors that lines up with, "Oh, they're acting like a boy with ADHD would," and so, you kind of like fit the bill a little and it feels a little disruptive. So, we send them, you know, to get treatment, not always to like embrace and understand their differences at the same time, but that's a different soapbox. But inattentive type is much less likely to get diagnosed, and even if they are diagnosed to get treatment.

Sari: Yeah, right. So, then even so, by the time we see women who were inattentive, they're, of course, depressed or anxious, who wouldn't be, you know, from just living that experience of not knowing what is going on with them and what's to account for their experience. And so, it's very hard for those women who are smart, "Oh, you have a college degree, you're successful, you can't possibly have these problems." So, then it just compounds it. And if people aren't trained or don't understand it, they just see the results, the secondary effects of which are depression, anxiety, and they don't treat the primary cause often.

Terry: That's a huge problem with most, and I'm sure for all of us, is that the majority of women who come to me and to us say, "I'm depressed and I've been treated for depression, but I'm not getting better." So, you know, it's common to see depression with ADHD as part of the ADHD presentation that Sori's describing. You know, we work so hard to be OK and do what other people are doing, and so you can get depressed.

But you can also have both ADHD and a separate depression or anxiety, or substance abuse. And so, that's where we are, is how do you tease out what's going on and give them the appropriate treatment.

Rae: Ellen, you said something to me, you mentioned that funding for research on women in all mental health fields is not really present. I mean, it's something that we're not doing.

Ellen: Right. We are still not doing it. So, we actually have not succeeded in clarifying the fact that we are physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physiologically different. And it seems like that would be a biologically obvious fact. But that is really not being accepted as a reason to study women. And now we know that women have much worse outcomes than men, so starkly and dramatically more serious in terms of self-harm, in terms lack of self-care, in terms of accidents, in terms of suicidality, in terms of earlier mortality. I don't know how much more serious it can get.

Rae: Ellen saw the foot-dragging, the sexism, the research that wasn't, and it's worth noting still largely isn't being done. And Sari, up close and personal with women who came to her or reached out after reading her book, saw a different phenomenon in action. The massive difference that treatment and awareness, and community could make. These two realities existed at the same time, both valid, both part of the greater story of women with ADHD.

Sari: Well, also, you know, not just the terrible consequences of not getting diagnosed and treated, but what I don't think is talked about enough, it'd be nice to have a study on that some days, like the amazing outcomes of successful treatment, you mean, because otherwise people just hear these terrible stories and they don't have the hope. And I think we're all here to tell people that what can happen as a result of the things we do every day, the result of successful treatment, and how huge that impact is of having that healing relationship, that attunement, that understood, being understood.

When a woman has that first experience with you of being understood, it's amazingly impactful. And so just, I think the therapeutic relationship, whether it's an ADD expert or not, if somebody's ADHD informed, if you have that kind of relationship where a woman takes a long time before she can begin to see herself whole. Yes, and yes, I have these very difficult things. It's not reductionistic. It's no gift or not gift. It's like all of who you are, your core traits that you've developed often in the process of getting to this point, the resilience, the determination. There's so many positives that you can develop.

So, not all is lost if you haven't been diagnosed early on. It's just, you've been developing and growing. And when you get diagnosed and treated. You know, all that stuff gets released. And so, I just want to put out a hopeful idea of being in a good therapeutic relationship, learning to see yourself whole, to value yourself, to be seen, has impacts in all your relationships, your achievement, and every area for life. So, I don't think we say it enough, like good treatment that you can have amazing outcomes.

Rae: I have a question for you guys because I feel like, and I really wanna hear what you think about this, this is just for everybody, which is that in the past four years or something, since the pandemic, it does feel, and I know, Sari and Terry, you spoke to Danielle about this on "Climbing the Walls," about it has, there's a difference in the way that, I mean, people talk about ADHD in women, people think about it, I can't like turn my head at this point without seeing a social media post about it.

And to me, I may be kind of like, you know, we all come into these things differently, but to me, that's a sign of what you're talking about. There's not a lot of research. There is a lot of lived experience. It's really hard to find things that make you feel heard, make you feel seen, the way that your book did for so many of us when there was no internet.

But it does kind of have the problem that Michelle was talking about, which is that it stops at the water's edge because what's behind it isn't there. Like you don't have a next step a lot of the time. It's like, "Oh, well, I feel like I'm not alone." And then what happens next? Like you're sort of stuck. And I wondered if I could kind of ask Sari and Michelle, you just wrote another book together.

Michelle: In 2019, we published "A Radical Guide for Women with ADHD," and we're currently working on the revision.

Rae: Can you tell me, like, what radical means in that context?

Michelle: I mean, it was a joke between us, honestly.

Sari: Looking for medical acceptance originally, but then it got into sort of a sarcastic…

Michelle: It was sort of sarcastic between us because we're like so radical that maybe a woman with ADHD could like herself.

Sari: Radical idea instead of trying to fix herself.

Michelle: She spent her life fixing herself maybe. Not to say we don't need to work on symptom management, these sorts of things, but this deeper dive into like, yeah, you can be a woman with ADHD and not spend your life feeling broken. So radical. It shouldn't be radical. And then we realize jokes on us because it kind of is. And I mean, we have people sort of commenting on the book, like, "Where are the strategies?" and it was like "Well, throughout the book, we say there's some strategy and support stuff in it."

But again, kind of missing the message that you can have all of the best support strategies. You can actually have your ADHD incredibly well managed such that you really don't notice it show up that much, but if you lay your head down at night and you feel broken and like a failure and a fraud, I really don't care about your time management. Because that's no.

Rae: That's like what Terry was saying, like just the piece of feeling heard, of feeling genuinely understood. It's different than being able to function.

Ellen: And those are the symptoms that are in the DSM, and it's left at that. So, well, if you're not late that often and you can find your keys, then what's the big deal? Whereas the emotional costs of the lived experience is what devastates most people and creates the most shame for most people, and is still unaddressed. And as someone who spends a lot of time diagnosing people, they've gone to so many people who have, they don't ever ask those questions. They don't care if you're overwhelmed. They don't care if you spend every moment being frantic about things that you might fall through the cracks. They don't get the essence of what it's like to live...

Rae: The real experience.

Ellen: Yeah.

Terry: I think it's also interesting to talk a bit about where we are now, and women who maybe have been diagnosed and treated for years, it doesn't go away. ADHD doesn't goes away, and we work so hard on ourselves, but it can still pop up, we're born with it, we die with it. But with the proper treatment and connecting with people who really get you and find joy in who you are, because a lot of people with ADHD are a little bit eccentric. They have great humor and creativity. They think outside the box. These are the positives that we need to look at more.

Rae: I often ask people, if you could get rid of your ADHD, would you do it? And it's never an easy answer. Because who would we be without it? These positives Terry's talking about are often at their brightest and most uninhibited when we're with other neurodiverse people. People who just get it, who let us relax into ourselves and let the mask drop, and with it the work and energy it takes to hold it up. It's a relief getting to feel so much like yourself.

But at the same time, the idea that having ADHD is just like a non-stop party of creativity and quirkiness is pretty irritating. The idea that ADHD is a superpower is dismissive and grating, especially when it so often feels like anything but. Because as Michelle explains, the lived experience of ADHD isn't something that can be simplified so easily.

Michelle: The superpower language came in response to and a rejection of like overstigmatization and pathologization of neurodiversity. And so, it was sort of like a backlash or a reaction. Now, have we swung too far? Perhaps, because there's this nice middle place where we own that ADHD is absolutely disabling if it's not managed well. And there are some positive things or gifts that can come with it, and you can never fully separate out your ADHD from yourself in some ways, like my creativity, where does it come from? I don't know, like on a spinning blue ball, who knows?

But what matters is, does the language you're using, is it helpful for you, right? That's what really matters, is it empowering for you and how are you thinking about this balance because one moment ADHD is disabling and the very next minute it can set up a creative opportunity, and you can go up impulsively to this woman you so admire and say, "Will you be my mentor, right? And so, that's this delicate balance we're trying to strike.

Rae: You all work with women with ADHD. And what have you seen, you know, the people who are coming into your offices who are talking about their own lived experience, who are having maybe the moment of being with somebody who gets it for the first time, or have really sought out someone who can do this. What have you see change? And what have not seen change?

Terry: Well, I see people crying. Women crying and, like I said earlier, that "I feel seen. I feel I'm getting there now that I've connected with somebody who really gets me because nobody else in my life gets me." So, that's, you know, a huge thing that a woman can now open up and say, "Well, you know I've been hiding, or I, you now, minimize what my situation is, my problems, but nobody understands what's really going on in my inner life." And so, I see a lot of that emotional coming out.

Sari: And that is what hasn't changed. I mean, so what's changed is, "Oh yeah," they can say the words ADHD and they can use say the word neurodivergence and they have so many more places to go and to meet other women and to bond with other people in these groups. But like we're all saying in what hasn't changed is when you really work with somebody deeply, all those things are still there, surprisingly, in women who are in their 30s. I mean young women, too. Even though they might think differently and the task division looks more equal.

Women are still doing the emotional labor piece of it, all the machinations to take all the executive function, remembering who needs to do what and when. And so, there's still that terrible strain, no matter women are working and they might have success there. But deep down, the executive functions is a huge problem in their relationships. And until they change how they view themselves and to hold onto that image with the help of a therapist, often to continue to understand they are valuable in the relationship, because it flips so easily. Why did I, what do I contribute? Nothing.

Rae: Yeah.

Sari: You know, they don't see all the things they're contributing in their relationship.

Rae: That shame loop is really common.

Sari: And that affects, so that self-image vis-a-vis the executive function, domestically especially, affects their relationships, their power, their agency. It's such an important piece. And it's so easy for women to just flip that script and feel just as bad as we all, you know, like it's 1950s. You know, they go back to Ricky and Lucy. I'm not kidding, like, you know, it's very easy, deep down, generally.

Rae: Yeah, you make the face.

Sari: Yeah.

Ellen: Well, especially that that happens, I mean, you know, as the estrogen fluctuations through the month, I often say that if a woman meets a clinician two weeks before her period, she'll go in and she'll be, you now, weepy and depressed and really down on herself and paranoid and hopeless and she'll get diagnosed with depression and worse. And then if, if she goes in a week after a period, she's like, well, together and she's like, you know, hopeful and "I've got a plan" and, and they're like, "Well, you don't have ADD."

So, either way, you don't get diagnosed with ADD, but that discrepancy in functioning, if you don't know that that's due to the intersection of ADD symptoms and hormones, you have no idea what's happening to you. And it's terrifying, because it also intensifies PMS, and very often gets catapulted into PMDD. And so, it's so important that people understand the central role of hormones. And so, if they don't, I mean, they don't understand that throughout the month, I mean, they feel that they are ambushed by their own brains. They are, you know, everything is unpredictable.

Rae: It's been 30 years since the book came out. Sari's first book. And in that time, so much has changed, and so much hasn't. And just, you know, from what you've all seen, and Michelle, you're sort of in the newer vanguard of this work, like, 30 years from now, what is your dream world for women with ADHD?

Michelle: That there's more professionals out there who can treat, evaluate and treat, that there is more research focused on women with ADHD, that there are more resources in general that women can go to. These conferences is what saved me and saved some of us. There's not as many of them as there used to be, but we could use more. And people to be able to connect with each other better instead of depending on conferences or podcasts. Internet to physically.

Sari: 30 years from now, I won't be here, maybe. And so, I guess I have a dream. I might not get there with you. But, you know, as we were all at Understood last night when you asked what would we imagine, it would be like, the world would be, like, Understood. You know, where there was diversity, there was acceptance, there was love, there was, everybody was just a human being, in the end, is just human beings.

And that's what I would hope in 30 years, we see everybody is just a human being with everybody's different, and we're all the same in terms of our basic emotions. And we just value each other, and we support each other and accommodate what you need. And we look at each other as full human beings, 30 years from now, that's my dream.

Ellen: And I agree, and I think the magic of being understood is this sense that everyone's differences are respected. And so, my vision for the future would be that there aren't a cohort of people out there who still have the power to deny the existence of what millions of women are living with. But there's actually, there are more voices and louder voices denying that. And so, it's just the idea where that does not exist, that you really can't deny someone else's lived experience. And that it would simply be respected just the way it is in this building, Never seen anything like it, don't ever want to leave.

Rae: That means a lot to me. I don't know, Michelle, you're, what do you think? Like you're doing this work now.

Michelle: I think it looks like continuing to broaden representation, having more diversity in the field, in the professional field, and you know, I would love to see more research by and for women of color and beginning to amplify voices that are not here in this room, predominantly that of women of color. This has been a phenomenon focused on white hyperactive school-age boys, and that's where we failed women for so long. But you know, women is just one category of being in-person, there are a lot more.

So, how does ADHD, how is ADHD experienced in people who are LGBTQ? How is ADHD experienced in trans folks? We talk about the hormonal overlap there. How is ADHD experienced in a woman who is Black or Latin American Hispanic? Like, their lived experiences are just as important and need to be represented.

Rae: I love this. I mean. Want to sound naive. But my dream is that these are not dreams. That this is something that's coming. And that it's being made by folks in this room, by folks who are not present. I mean, as you said, Michelle, it does not escape our notice that everybody on these couches is white. And then we are all cis women. There's so far to go.

And there's so much...I don't know, I maybe I'm like a weird optimist, but I have a lot of hope, and I think that that's the thing that moves things forward because everything that all of you have said to me is based in hope, you know, like, "All right, they might not like it, but I'm going to say it anyway." Or, you know, "Maybe somebody just wants to hear it. So, I guess I'll just put it out there." Or "I'm gonna go online and just write this and we'll see what happens." Or like, "I'll just welcome anyone into my space."

Like, this is, to me, what we get to do for each other. We get to show up for each other. We build that community you were talking about, Terry, the place that we all get to just be who we are. And I don't know if the past 30 years are anything to go by, I've got a lot of high hopes for the future.

Thanks for listening to this episode of "Hyperfocus." If you have any questions or ideas for future topics, write me an email or send a voice memo to hyperfocus@understood.org. "Hyperfocus" is made by me, Rae Jacobson, and Cody Nelson. Our video producer is Calvin Knie. Our music comes from Blue Dot Sessions. Ash Beecher is our supervising producer, Briana Berry is our production director, and Neil Drumming is our editorial director.

This show is brought to you by Understood.org. Our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Cocchiere, and Seth Melnick. Understood is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to help us continue this work, you can donate at Understood.org/give.