Hi, I’m Adria.
I help AuDHDers identify what they actually need (not what they’ve been told they should need — or NOT need) and create an environment and lifestyle that supports those needs.
I want you to unmask, get out of the burnout cycle and live a life as a healthy neurodivergent person, not an exhausted wannabe neurotypical.
I’ve been doing this for a decade, without even knowing it. (Because, late-identified.) I’m also a TEDx Speaker, long-time podcaster and I’ve supported hundreds of women & nonbinary folks who don’t fit the mold to find their own ways.
I’ve spent over a decade as a self-employed coach designing my life around my needs…and helping my clients do the same.
And yet, after going through the first few stages of being a newly identified neurodivergent person — diagnosis grief, imposter syndrome, hyperfocused research on ADHD & Autism — I was stuck.
I was 40 years old and living the #freedomlifestyle. Nomadic, living with my partner and our pup part time in two different states, doing the 2-day drive back and forth every month in our campervan, bouncing between his business and my family.
My ADHD side loved that I was never one place long enough to feel stagnant, but my Autistic side was frequently in meltdown from the transitions and instability.
The more I understood my needs, the more meeting them felt like a complicated riddle.
When I did stay in one place for more than a month, it meant being apart from my husband for weeks at a time and living in my parents’ spare bedroom with family members coming and going regularly, a living environment that short-circuited my visual hypersensitivity and 8-person family dinners three times a week.
I was in constant overwhelm, with frequent shutdowns and daily executive function struggles.
I knew this wasn’t sustainable. But rent & housing prices had shot through the roof, and it was way out of the budget of my partner’s start up paycheck and my scaled back work schedule, recovering from burnout.
Every way I turned, I saw no answers.
I knew what I needed, but the how felt impossible.
Nobody in my life got it — not family, friends, therapists or coaches — because they hadn’t been in my shoes.
When I was alone without distractions, I’d feel the hopelessness rushing in — worry that there was no answer and this was the way it would always be.
It was only once I started getting creative, letting go of my expectations of how life should look (how neurotypical life looked) that I began to set things in motion.
Then one day, I realized that I had achieved that impossible. It just looked really different than I expected.
Instead of going the kids route with a white picket fence, I had a down-payment on an intergenerational house that would give me roots and nomadic flexibility while keeping expenses low. I could continue to work part time while supporting my parents as they aged. #communitycare
Instead of living up to what I’d been told (by the women’s empowerment industry, no less) was how to build healthy female friendships, I had replaced exhausting friendships that required me to contort myself with friendships where I could be truly unmasked.
I was eating in my room during family dinners, playing video games in my free time, and not wearing a bra on the daily.
I was redesigning what it looked like to be a smart, accomplished adult.
And life was looking up.
