Abby Days

Podcast Episode: Re-Defining Community , Social Media as a resource for ADHD. Click below to listen to my podcast on my experience with growing up undiagnosed, and the role that social media played in bringing me to a diagnosis and the betterment of my life!  

I've had a passion for story-telling since I was a little kid. There's something about being able to create a world inside your mind, and then bring it to life on the page, that fuels my little attention-deficit heart. I shamelessly admit that I was a One Direction fanfiction writer on Wattpad, before I matured and moved on to Walking Dead fanfiction as a freshman in High School.  Hey -- everyone starts somewhere. Needless to say, the positive feedback I received as a kid on something that I loved to do so much is what solidified my dream of one day being a published author.  Writing is difficult for everyone, regardless if you have ADHD or not. (Unless you're Stephen King or James Patterson.) For those of us who cannot finish a 600-page original novel in our sleep , the number one struggle that comes with being a writer is remaining on task. Now, every now and then my ADHD superpowers will kick into over-drive, and I will find myself kicking out three or four chapters in a

I joke a lot around my family about how COVID-19 saved my college education, but there's a little bit of truth in that.  With reverence to the horrible effects and negative outcomes of the recent pandemic, the experiences we were able to learn from during this challenging time were inevitable. I think that's just a part of human nature -- we tend to take what we can and do our best to make it into something good. This especially applies to college students.  Before COVID, a lot of things were normal that didn't meet much speculation. Blowing out birthday candles, holding a menu in a restaurant, giving your grandma a hug when you visit her from out of town without a second thought... It never occurred to me that the classroom experience might be one of them. I personally hit a couple of different demographics when it comes to my student role in college. I have a learning disorder, and I'm a commuter.  For reference, my experience in the College Classroom has been a littl

I want you to hold onto something for me.  Do you remember where this started? Do you remember what it felt like, sitting on that colorful plush carpet in the Library while your teacher read Where The Wild Things Are? The way it smelt -- the way that it transported you? Do you remember the first time you read a Magic Tree House book? Or Goosebumps? The hours you would loose in your imagination -- the man times you'd look for a glimmer of magic wherever you thought you could find it? The way it felt to climb that tree in your backyard, and how it was just easier to breathe up there?  Don't lose that. Don't loosen your grip on that feeling for even a second. I know being a kid is scary, and that feeling of vulnerability is something you can't wait to shed off. But do me a favor, just between the two of us... wrap that feeling around you like a blanket. Use it when you start to doubt yourself, when you start to look around and wonder why it doesn't feel like you belong

Everyone's experience with ADHD varies so much. I've talked to so many people with the same diagnosis. What one person experiences, the other hasn't ever -- the spectrum is so vast with ADHD, and makes it difficult to nail down solutions for some of our common issues. (That -- and the fact that we are all just very different people at our core.)  The number one thing I personally struggle with thanks to my ADHD is productivity. My mother would say that I can't ever "... get my ducks in a row ." For those of you who didn't grow up under the insightful wisdom and guidance of Judy Polvado Criswell, it was a nice way of saying I never had my crap together. I've tried keeping a planner, setting alarms, having someone to keep me accountable... anything and everything that has ever been suggested to me, but those solutions come with their own set of problems too.  The planner gets lost in my messy backpack or the back of my car, and I completely forget I own

1. You have ADHD so some of this is going to really suck. Ha. No, but really.  ADHD is super underdiagnosed in girls, despite being just as present. I wasn't the best at school. Despite being in the gifted programs and my senior year English teacher asking me "What do you mean you don't take any medication?" it never really surfaced that my school-related issues were rooted in a cognitive learning disorder. I wish it had. Getting a diagnosis and helpful medication was the best thing that truly ever happened to my education. 2. Sometimes you'll have to sit alone in the lunch hall & it doesn't mean there's something wrong with you. My freshman year of college was great because I actually had the opportunity to experience it with my best friend of 18 (now 23) years. When she left, I realized that I was really bad at making friends in college. Everyone is so busy, and their friend groups are pretty much already established. You have to learn to enjoy your