About

I’m a multi-passionate, neurodivergent writer and writing teacher.

Like many people with ADHD, I collect interesting factoids, pursue shiny ideas wherever they may lead, sometimes down one rabbit hole after another.

If you meet me at a party (you won’t—I’m an introvert and I hate parties…but we can pretend for a moment), I’ll listen with rapt attention to your stories about who you are and what you do, for a living or recreation, no matter what your field.

If you’re enthusiastic, I’ll pick up on your enthusiasm and run with it. Call me multi-passionate.

I’ve always had a broad range of interests, which comes in handy sometimes. Like when I helped neurodivergent university students with term papers in different fields (more on that here). Like editing documents in fields ranging from business to law to oral surgery to psychology and more.

And endless curiosity is surprisingly necessary for the work I landed in at mid-life when I found myself working in a small law firm specializing in trademarks.

I helped small entrepreneurs with a huge range of businesses—yoga studios, shoemakers, musicians, high tech, jewellery artists, inventors of all kinds, and more.

Our clients had an equally huge range of products: clothing, housewares, jewellery, hair stylists’ supplies, windmills, dog food and literally anything else you can think of.

It was my job to take what the client told me and translate it into government-speak for the application for registration. Being interested in everything was a really useful skill for this work.

So how does that help you?

Unless your field is pretty specialized, chances are I know enough about it to have a conversation with you about it. And I know how to ask the kinds of questions that can help you articulate your thoughts more clearly, and write them down more clearly and more easily—and without all the pain.

I think of your encouragement every time I sit down to write. You re-patterned my self-image as a writer/blogger/coach. I went from wondering how I’d ever manage to pick a topic (and stick with it and not give up/ramble forever), run each post by an editing crew and integrate all their feedback in time to post every week, to picking a doable schedule and putting things out by myself without hesitation!!!!

— Briana Jacoba, Rational Hearts

Dee’s ADHD Story

Like many women with ADHD, I only got a diagnosis late in life, partly because I was born at a time when ADHD in girls was almost unheard of, partly because I was a quiet, well-behaved, good student who caused no trouble.

I learned early in life how to mask what was going on inside, so nobody knew how hard it was for me just to sit still and listen.

I was also gifted, so nobody knew that I was actually struggling with basic arithmetic. From the outside, it just looked like I was “too slow” (thank you, Miss Solomon!) or “not trying hard enough.”

By the time math and science got hard enough that I really couldn’t manage anymore, I was in high school, where there was some choice about courses.

I coped by simply dropping the courses I didn’t do well in: geography, geometry, and all sciences.

I graduated from high school with an ‘A’ average and a scholarship … and no maths or sciences in my senior year.

I kept coping the same way all the way through university.

But by third year, I’d started to fall behind. The classes I was taking, mostly English literature, had few exams, but the reading load was brutal and my essays were always late. Still, I made the Dean’s list and graduated with an ‘A’ average and a scholarship or two. Then I went on to complete a Master’s degree, which was a struggle, especially the thesis. The wheels finally fell off when I’d finished the coursework for a doctoral program and found myself working on my own preparing my thesis proposal. I dropped out.

I couldn’t figure out why was it so damn hard to get my writing done when I was actually a pretty good writer.

It only started to make sense when, late in life, I was formally diagnosed with ADHD and began my quest to learn more about my brain.

These days, I look for ways to work with my brain instead of against it. One of my best writing strategies turns out to be writing by hand, using a practice called contemplative writing (more about that here).

Once I’ve done that, I can transcribe that first draft, usually editing as I go, right on the computer.

I used to do my first draft right on the computer, but I now know that makes me freeze up.

The screen is so abstract that it takes too much mental energy to visualize not only the content I’m writing, but the actual document too. I can only see a small part of it at a time, whereas on paper I can see everything. On top of that, the computer sits there humming at me, making me feel rushed, which gets the adrenaline going, which shuts my brain down.

Hence my practice of writing the first draft by hand.

And when I’m stuck, I buttonhole somebody who is willing to listen and is sure to ask me challenging questions, which gets my ideas to the surface and breaks the stuckness.

This kind of live audience is what usually helps me break through, especially when the live audience is engaged and asks challenging questions.

And that’s what I want to share with you.