[00:00:00] Hi, welcome to An ADD Woman. This is episode 13 and part two of ADHD in Your 20s. Let’s do it.
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So, to summarize the last episode and what we talked about, I talked about a lot of personal stuff. I talked about, you know, a custody battle that I had to deal with. I talked about. Being really broke and not having very much money and being a young mom in my twenties.
[00:00:28] And, you know, I just kind of want to talk to you about, you know, why I feel it’s important for you to know all of the nitty-gritty and all the understandings of everything going, going on in my life, in my twenties. And there’s a reason for that. And it’s because I want you to actually be able to see the big picture because when you have ADHD, and you have the circumstances that just feel like they’re against you and against you and against you.
[00:00:54] And especially if you’re not diagnosed, you internalize a lot of it. Especially as a woman, I internalize all of my struggles. I thought that almost everything was my fault, that nothing was circumstantial. And when I am able to tell you guys about the entire, the, the big picture of everything, it helps you to see what I wasn’t saying.
[00:01:16] You know, when I, when I talk about my story and I tell my story to other people and I look back on it, it’s definitely something where I can talk about how I was feeling at the time. But now that I’ve been through it and I’m on the other side of it, it’s so much easier for me to say, obviously my concerns or my thought process at that time was not, was not in line with what was actually going.
[00:01:40] So, I just want you to know, you know, if you, if you listened to the first episode of ADHD in your twenties and you were thinking, oh my gosh, I, this is like way more information than I, I even wanted to know or needed to know it’s because I want you to be able to do it for yourself. You know, if you’re 25 and you’re thinking to yourself, well, I dropped out of college and don’t have kids yet, but you know, my last relationship didn’t work out and I don’t know why, or, you know, maybe you pick guys the last three guys you’ve been with, they all cheated on you.
[00:02:11] And some part of you starts to feel like you’re the common denominator and. You know, the cycle in the spiral of self-blame is that you need to step back from those circumstances and look at how your ADHD is playing a role in who you’re choosing to be with what you’re choosing to spend your time doing.
[00:02:32] And then also are your circumstances really the, your fault or are they just your circumstances? You know, I had a child at night. So, there was a pull for me, constantly of wanting to go back to my ex-husband. I wanted us to get it. And a lot of me thought that a lot of it was my fault. So that’s why I tell you all of the things that I tell you.
[00:02:58] I don’t just say it because, you know, I want you to feel bad for me. I don’t actually, I don’t even, I don’t feel bad for younger me anymore and I don’t even regret being her. She is what helped me to honestly, to find that. And to feel so reliant on him that I don’t actually have to have it altogether anymore.
[00:03:18] And thank you Lord for that. So that’s why I tell you all the tiny things. So, I feel like all of my circumstances, they were directly affected by me having ADHD. And how was that? Well, toxic relationships. I was struggling with money, uh, struggling with my time management. I was making impulsive decisions.
[00:03:40] I still didn’t know who I was. Like innately. I didn’t understand where my worst Kim comes from. I had terrible, terrible self-blame and I was unmedicated, you know, I had over those three years that I had spent apart. I know where we left off on my last episode was that, you know, it was coming near, near my 24th year.
[00:04:01] And, um, you know, I had spent three years in and out of other relationships that, that weren’t good. They were toxic as well. They were not healthy relationships, but I had a very warped perception of how, how much was my fault, how much was somebody else’s fault? And also, how much was I worth? Because self-love culture and I, a lot of times we don’t agree. I don’t agree in the idea of you got to love yourself. You got to put yourself first in a sense. But I actually, because I’m a Christian and because of the way that I believe in God and God’s character and who he is, I didn’t have a good perception of love. And what love actually was what it does, how it plays out in a relationship, how it plays out in a relationship with God.
[00:04:50] And because of that warped perception. Of what love was. I was constantly accepting, not love. I was, I was accepting any sort of acceptance. I was accepting any sort of validation from guys that I thought, you know, um, were my ticket out of poverty, which is really selfish if I think about it. But also, I just wanted, I wanted somebody to say, you know, yeah, you you’re worth it.
[00:05:14] You’re worth all the. You’re worth overlooking all of your, you know, your character flaws, things that I thought were my character flaws were actually just struggles I was having because of ADHD that I didn’t know I had. So, all that to say, all of that was going on. And then here we are at my 24th year, I’m coming to the end of a long custody battle.
[00:05:34] I’ve lost a bunch of money I’m in court, and this was right around this time. I actually dated my husband for the first time, and we dated for a very short period of time. He was just getting divorced. And I was in the mindset of, I want to get married. I was 24, you know, and I know a lot of you, if any of you are listening to this and you’re still in your twenties and you’re thinking, you know, in your mind, you’re telling yourself, well, I’ll be married by the time and 25.
[00:06:00] Listen, it’s great to have goals, but don’t blindly assume that there’s some sort of check box. You have to check just because you turned 25. I know in my head, I told myself, you know, by the time I was 25, I’d have it all. And that just was unrealistic. Not only was it unrealistic for me, um, because of my ADHD, it was just unrealistic.
[00:06:20] It’s just unrealistic in general. I have friends now that are they’re in their thirties and they’re still finishing their college degrees. They went on to get their masters or their doctorate or whatever, and they’re, you know, they’re stumbling along, but they’re, they’re managing, I have one friend who just finally finished nursing school and I’m so insanely proud of her, but, you know, I know she finished it in her mind later than she wanted to.
[00:06:39] She wanted it done, you know, three, four years ago. So, all that to say, don’t box yourself into that because it, it there’s, there’s no marker. There’s no marker for when you have success. You know, I, I know that there was something that I saw or something that I read some time ago that said, you know, you have to remind yourself that majority of the presidents in this country, they’re not, they’re not young, they’re not in their forties or fifties.
[00:07:04] Maybe they’re late. Most of them are in their fifties. Um, and a lot of them, you know, didn’t even have children until just the few years prior to becoming president. So, you know, if you’re worried about not having done enough, not having checked enough boxes, not have, you know, bought a house, got married, you know, did the whole, you know, two and a half kids thing, American dream, there’s nothing that says you have to hit it by a certain point or you won’t ever hit it at all.
[00:07:33] Even though in my twenties, I definitely felt that way. So, when I was 24, I dated my husband for the first time we dated for a very short period of time got along. Great. And I think it freaked him out because I kind of told him that. I said, you know, I, I can see myself falling in love with you. And how does that make you feel?
[00:07:52] And he’s like, okay, and so we, we were great friends and we decided, you know, after just like three months that we just weren’t on the same page. Cause I was like, well, I really want to get married. And he said, um, yeah, I, I don’t, I don’t know if I ever want to get married again. Cause he had just gone through a really nasty divorce and was really brokenhearted.
[00:08:13] And when he hugged me goodbye, um, after we, you know, set our partying ways, and decided that the relationship decision just wasn’t a good time, um, he hugged me and he said, I think I’m probably gonna regret this. And I was like, eh, you know, probably not. I thought that this was just one of those things where, you know, we, we came together, and it wasn’t right.
[00:08:34] And so I was supposed to be with somebody else. I remember leaving and I’m not the type of person that thinks that there’s a, you know, a lot of divine revelation. I don’t, I don’t necessarily think that God imbues everybody with divine. Daily, but I will say, do you have, and especially this time of my life, I felt like I had a pretty strong relationship with Jesus and I remember leaving and it was probably the only time that I truly audibly heard, you know, a voice my best guess would be God’s voice Jesus voice say, um, give me a few years with him.
[00:09:11] And I just kind of brushed it off. And in a lot of times, you know, sometimes that sort of stuff happens, and you just assume that it was. Yourself, you know, yourself hoping for something better or whatnot, or, or being hopeful about the future, whatever. And I totally forgot that that even happened and just went about my life.
[00:09:29] And, um, we stayed in touch, and we always were friends. And so, court got done in when court, when, when all the dust settled from court, but we had, my ex-husband had managed to get more parenting time. He had convinced me that I would obviously lose if I kept fighting with him. I was convinced that the courts were not on my side.
[00:09:49] Um, no matter how many times I tried to get them to recognize the type of manipulation that I was dealing with. Um, they just, they didn’t see it. And so being scared, I took the loss and I cut his child support and I, um, made it so he could pay me directly instead of having to, you know, go through the front of the court.
[00:10:11] And because of that, I, I lost. I started to lose everything. I told my parents that I was going to have to move back in with them. Um, I was really fortunate that I had parents that were willing to allow me to do such a thing in, in what I’m about to tell you next is going to blow your mind and you’re going to want to reach through whatever device it is that you’re listening to.
[00:10:34] And you’re going to want to smack me across the face and that’s okay. Because this part, I actually think this part is probably one of the most important parts of my story. As I’m starting to move out of this home that I’ve lost. That I, I didn’t, it was, I didn’t purchase it. It was a rental. I contacted my landlord.
[00:10:51] He said, I’m so sorry. My, my circumstances have changed. My income has drastically. I have to move out. You know, I’ll be out within 30 days and I’m, I’m so sorry. You can keep my deposit just as a gesture of good measure, because I, I feel bad cause you’re going to have to be able to fill this place and, um, you know, My ex-husband, you know, he flipped his switch and he was like, Hey, you know, if you need help, move in, I’ll help you move.
[00:11:19] If you need anything, I’ll help. You know? And he, here’s why I think this next piece is so important when you are in a bad relationship. When you are in a relationship that you, that is unhealthy, that your friends have told you for years to stay out of, to get out of, get away from. There is a huge amount of shame you have every time you take them back, because then when they do the things to you, again, that you knew they would, do you feel even more trapped because you just don’t want to tell anybody that it was what it was.
[00:11:59] And so he started to be nice to me and I was lonely, and I started to ask myself some questions. You know, we’re older now where our problems three years ago, really, because we were, you know, because things were as bad as they were or where they, because we were young and immature and stupid. You know, I’ve been on my own now and I can see that.
[00:12:23] I, I definitely, I definitely do struggle with, you know, getting things done in a timely manner. And I definitely do struggle with keeping up with house chores. And so, you know, those things used to cause us a lot of fights. And maybe now that I know myself and I know that about myself, um, you know, I won’t feel so upset or something.
[00:12:41] If, you know, he gets upset with me. Maybe, maybe this is all just, maybe our history was SKU. Um, by my PR my immaturity, maybe it wasn’t what I thought it was. Why is this important? This is important because this is what ADHD does. First of all, I was forgetting, I was forgetting all of the toxic things that he had just done to me throughout court.
[00:13:07] I wasn’t paying attention to that. I was only thinking impulsively and using the wrong part of my brain again, because I grew up. The way I had, and I still had no idea. I had ADHD. I had a very skewed perception of how hard I needed to try for something to have success and how much of it was my fault and how much if it was the fault of someone.
[00:13:34] Here’s the other thing too, is at this time in my life, I had a very unhealthy view of who God was, who God’s character was and, and what he wanted for my life. So, I went back to my ex-husband and after three years we tried again to make it work. And, um, we were together for a year before the first time it happened.
[00:14:01] Of course at that time, when everything got really, really bad, of course, he came to me with some confessions, and he said that there were things he’d been doing behind my back that I wasn’t aware of and that he was so sorry, and he wanted help. And I said, okay, you know, this, this is, this is progress is what I told myself.
[00:14:19] So I said, okay, well I think that, you know, that we can, we can figure that. And, um, if you’re willing to get the help that you say you want, then I will, you know, I’ll come back home. And, um, but you know, I have conditions and that is that I want to get married and my thought process and my thought in who God was and how he works, had a lot to do with, I thought in my head, if you do these things, if you all bay, the things that God asked.
[00:14:53] Great, then God will bless you and he will fix all of the things that you need fixed. Basically, that’s false. And that’s really looking at God as a genie and not as a sovereign Lord who makes decisions and makes decisions based on what he feels is best for you, because he is good, and he is all knowing and he’s omniscient.
[00:15:18] And so, you know, I wasn’t even, I wasn’t. Considering personal accountability at all. I was just thinking, well, if we get married, then at least I’m not living in your house. Um, you know, unmarried anymore. And everything will be right with the world and God will bless us because of our obedience. And then he’ll help.
[00:15:38] He’ll help us work out all our problems. First of all, just so you know, that’s not the Christian God. You know, he’s not, he’s not a genie in a bottle that you can rub just right. And you know, he’ll, he’ll help you fix all your problems. That’s another episode for another time, but that was my perception at the time.
[00:15:55] So I said, okay, well, we’ll, we’ll fix this, but you know, you have to, we have to get married. So sorry. And so, we did in hurry. We got married within like two, three weeks and here I was moving back home again. I had a best friend at the time, wrote me a letter and she was like, I never thought we’d be here. I never thought that this would be what I was writing to you on your wedding day.
[00:16:18] I, I I’m shocked. And, um, and in my mind, I just told myself, you know, I, it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter when anybody else. ’cause we’ll figure ourselves out. Well, we’ll make this work. Well, of course, over the next year, things got really, really bad. Um, probably the worst they ever were. And I got to a point where we had been going to counseling and going to counseling and going to counseling.
[00:16:45] And finally, one day in our counseling office, I mean, we’ve been going to counseling for. Finally, one day, this is like, you know, we’re in my 25th year. Now we go to counseling, we’re fighting already about something. And I had gotten to a point to where I had realized that because of how violent he was and because of how angry he was and because of all the different things that it didn’t matter.
[00:17:11] It didn’t matter what I said. It didn’t matter what I did. He was just going to be mad. If he was going to be mad, he was. And there was nothing I could do about it. And that’s how domestic violence people, that’s how toxic people, where they are. You can’t reason with them, because the problem is not even the problem, you know, they are, they’re arguing with you.
[00:17:31] Like for instance, I remember that my ex-husband used to, she used to get really mad at me for taking too long. I said that I was, we hadn’t, we didn’t even have city water. Okay. We didn’t have a water bill, but he said, I took too long showers, and it was going to make, you know, make the well, need to be serviced sooner.
[00:17:49] And we didn’t have the money for that. So, I needed to stop taking such long showers. Mind you. I never took like more than like a 10, 15-minute shower. Okay. It’s pretty standard. I’m a woman and shave my legs, whatever, but all those kinds of things, you know, he wanted to poke at me and poke at me and poke him.
[00:18:04] You’ve taken on too long, a shower year, you’re eating too many eggs was another one. Um, I put too much butter on my mashed potatoes. Like just all of these silly, small things in it. First of all, it makes you second guess every decision you make, because you’re constantly worried about, is this going to make him mad?
[00:18:21] Is this gonna make mad? Is this gonna make him mad? And the other thing too is even if you retort, even if I say, you know, why only took a seven-minute shower, this time is still too long, it doesn’t matter. You know, or, well, I. But I didn’t put any butter in the mashed potatoes yet. It doesn’t matter. You don’t have, you don’t need that much.
[00:18:39] Like there is no logical response because they don’t listen to that. They don’t listen to that. They have no respect for you. They don’t value you. They don’t value your opinion. And so, everything is just about controlling you and they have this very warped perception of, you know, if they control you, that that means that they.
[00:19:03] And it’s not, that’s not how it’s supposed to go, but I was ashamed. I was ashamed that I had gone back to him after so many years, I was ashamed that everybody told me that I was ashamed, that everything had turned out exactly how everybody said it would. I was, I was ashamed. And you know, I’m being told over and over again by somebody who says, they love me that I’m wrong or that I don’t get it.
[00:19:26] Right. Or that I’m stupid. Or that I’m lazy, even though I feel like I’m doing everything I can to not be those. So, we go to counseling one day and we’re fighting already. Cause we were, and we got in there and I had started doing something where I just, I just would get quiet. You know, he fights with me. He yells at me.
[00:19:44] He’d want to get mad at me and I just be quiet, and I would just take it and I would just make it so that every response I had was just because I, like I said, I had realized at some point it didn’t matter when. So, we went in there and he’s yelling at me and he’s angry with me. And I just told the counselor, I said, I’m just, I just don’t understand his position.
[00:20:06] I’m not understanding what he’s wanting from me. And, um, I know my ex-husband got mad or got angry with me and he said, you know what, screw this. And he got up and he stormed out and this was all because the counselor was trying to. Mediate. And he was trying to figure out and he was prodding, but like I said, like I said, the problem with people like this is that the problem is never the problem.
[00:20:31] You know, I don’t remember what he was mad at me about that day. It could have been anything. It might’ve been the way I was driving. Who knows the problem is them is, is this is how they go through their life? This is how they they’ve sustained validation for themselves is by controlling the people around them.
[00:20:48] And. So, he got up and he stormed out and my, my counselor looked at me. He said, oh, Lacy, I’m so sorry. I can’t help you. And I said, what why? And he said, he’s abusing you. And I was like, what? No, this isn’t, this is an abuse. He doesn’t hit me. You know, he doesn’t, he’s just angry. Like I don’t, you know, this that’s not.
[00:21:16] That was, it was exactly what was happening to me. And women will stay in these relationships for longer than they should, because they will reason with themselves that the person doesn’t hit them. They don’t hurt them. It doesn’t mean that I didn’t have a physical response to everything happening in my household.
[00:21:33] So this happens around that time. And I had gotten to a point where I just, I just was shutting down. I remember I was thinking about my now husband. Um, I was thinking about him. And just kind of wondering how he, how he was. And then my birthday came and, you know, like I said, everything was pretty, pretty bad.
[00:21:56] Like it was, it was bad. I remember I was getting up. I was going to church that morning and, um, I was going to meet my parents. My parents had my kids, and I left the house and my ex-husband, you know, he only ever went to church with me when he. Uh, wanted to get, you know, get me to do what he wanted me to do.
[00:22:17] He didn’t actually care and I’m not even so sure that he’s, uh, you know, truly, I know he accepted Christ. He said the prayer of salvation, you know, I guess only God knows his heart truly. Um, but you know, he would, he wouldn’t go to church. He would just stay home, stay in bed. So, I left to go to church and to meet up with my parents, pick up my kids.
[00:22:37] They would take them to church as well, and we’d meet up there. And this was may, so I had just had a birthday and I believe. 26 because yeah, it was 2016. Um, and, uh, I was leaving church and I was walking out to my car, and I get a call and I look at my phone and it was my, my then brother-in-law and I was like, what?
[00:23:02] He never calls me. Um, and he at the time was living next door to us. And so. This has gotta be either my husband calling me, um, from his, my brother-in-law’s phone or something bad had to happen. So, I answered the phone and I’m like, hello. And he says, and I’m putting my kids into the, into the car this time and it’s my husband.
[00:23:24] And he says, Lacy. And I said, what? He said our house is on fire. I said, what?! He said, “Our house is on fire. I’m looking at it right now. I’m over at, [he said his brother’s name] and our house is on fire.” I said, are you serious right now? And he said, yeah, I wish I was kidding.
[00:23:45] And he said, what? It’s on fire. And I was like, my body immediately went into shock. I started shaking. I started crying. I started yelling for my mom. I was like, you know, cause they were walking away from me, I’m in the parking lot. And I said, you got to come back. You got to take the kids. Um, cause I needed them to take the kids because obviously I was going to go home, but I didn’t want, I didn’t want my kids to see that.
[00:24:08] I didn’t, if, if our house was all up in flames and everything that they owned is gone, I was like, I don’t want them to have to see that I wanted to, to protect them from that kind of devastation. And so, I started yelling at them to come back at the kids. They grabbed the kids and I drove home, and they ended up coming there.
[00:24:27] Uh, shortly after that. Just once the firefighters had put the fire out and talked to my ex-husband about what was going on and what happened. And yeah, we had a house fire, of course, that just compounded all of the stress we already had. You know, our relationship was bad. It wasn’t healthy at all.
[00:24:49] There was a huge dynamic of control and. You know, control and control and abuse. And even though no, he never, he never left bruises on me, but I will tell you that he left bruises emotionally, um, that I’m still to this day healing from. So, what ends up happening is, you know, all of the inter the entrance agencies and people start coming.
[00:25:15] And I had one person who I knew of that had been through house fire before, and they told me, they said, you know, either. Uh, house fire will strengthen your marriage, or it will break it basically. There’s so much to sort through when you have a house fire, it’s it doesn’t end just because a fire gets put out.
[00:25:34] You have, you have to give itemized list of everything you had in your house. What all did you lose? You have to decide who you’re going to have either rebuild it. Are you going to rebuild it? Um, you know, what kind of insurance money are you going to have or are you going to be able to get a different.
[00:25:53] Get a different house, get something finished, whatever. And it’s very, very stressful. Our, our relationship, if it was bad before it was like 10 times. And we were living, we were staying with family and living with, um, living with his family on and off. And we also were, we had purchased a camper. It was summertime.
[00:26:18] So we had told ourselves we would just kind of stay in our camper on our property. So, we didn’t have to leave our property fully. Um, and his family lived really, really close. So, we, um, we went back and forth and, um, you know, just, just, there was just a day where it was a typical day for him. My new, when you have a house fire, there are things that you don’t even realize you’ve lost until like the day after.
[00:26:41] And I remember we woke up and a lot of people had said, you need anything. Do you need anything? And we’re like, no, it’s fine. And then we will have the next morning. And we realized that we didn’t even have clean underwear for our kids to wear, you know, if they needed a shower, we didn’t have clothes to put on them.
[00:27:00] After they showered. And once that fire was put out, and then we were able to actually go back into the house, it was mainly a complete loss. There were a few things in our main bedroom that we didn’t lose. And then there was a few things in the basement, but everything else was covered under an inch of sweat.
[00:27:17] And that’s just, it is it that people will say, oh, well, no, you didn’t lose that in the house. Cause it didn’t burn. That’s so not true. The smell of smoke, especially from a house fire, it’s a different sort of smell. Then you can get, you know, if you have cigarette smoke or if you have, um, campfire smoke, it’s one source.
[00:27:36] The fire is one source. And I remember the fire department explaining to me that smoke from house fires is different because all of the things that are getting burned are all being burned at the same time in the particles are way, way smaller based on, um, what is being burned. And so, because of that, when any, any of the smoke touched any of our stuff, it was like infiltrated into the item. It would ruin it, it ruined clothing. It ruined blankets. I mean, we had the boys, his upstairs bedroom. I remember just going up to their room, but we had, it was a, like a Cape Cod style house where upstairs was just one long loft. Um, cause it was an older farmhouse, and we went up there and um, and I just remember looking around and thinking like I cried, I cried because I was just so grateful.
[00:28:28] To God that my children weren’t in the home, had they been in the home, had they been upstairs playing or doing something along those lines, sleeping even, um, the smoke inhalation alone would have, they would have made them pass out. And then who knows if they would have ever got out of the house, it was so scary to see everything that you have just covered.
[00:28:50] So we started dealing with all of that, and I know if you’re following along and you’re like, oh, Goodness. What’s next. Trust me. I’ve had, I retell my story and I’m like, oh my gosh, I don’t even know. I don’t, I don’t know. So, I was 26 at this time and I left, we got in a really, really big fight. I couldn’t deal with it anymore.
[00:29:13] To me. I had already lost everything. So, what was I staying for, because if I was staying because my marriage was, I had any glimmer of hope that my marriage could ever be good? That was, that had vanished. That was in the fire. It was gone. And so, I, I laughed, and I just told myself, well, I’ve got nothing anyways.
[00:29:32] Cause I had lost everything and I just, I was just gone. I, I left, I went back to. And around this time, I started struggling massively with my faith. As I navigated my divorce, I started questioning all the things that had made me get married. And since such a large part of me had thought that if I got married, that it would fix all of my problems.
[00:29:50] I, which obviously is just an immaturity thing. But at the same time, there’s so many Christians that I know of that have walked away from their faith because they felt like, well, I did all the right things, or I was trying to do the right things, or maybe they, they didn’t do the right things. And they think that God’s punishing that.
[00:30:06] First of all, the consequences of your own choices, your own poor choices, um, will be punishment enough. And even though I do think God tests us and he will allow for certain things to happen because he knows how it will mold us, looking at it as a direct, you know, punishment or not. Punishment is. I believe is a false belief, but in, in all of that, I started questioning everything.
[00:30:30] You know, why had my marriage failed again? I was leaving no room for personal accountability. I wasn’t looking at it as, oh, well, my marriage failed because you know, one person in my marriage was, you know, insistent on controlling the other person in the marriage. And so, you know, I didn’t look at that. I just looked at it as well.
[00:30:47] I was trying to do the right thing God, and you know, you didn’t, you didn’t make anything better. So, what what’s up with that? Well, or was I getting married because I thought that that would give me blessings. Do you get that dynamic and how that was impulsive and kind of selfish? And so, I, my faith just totally deconstructed.
[00:31:08] I fell apart. I basically, I started to, you know, question everything and everything that our society was based on. And I. Total feminist total prochoice, all these things that I had always based on my understanding of my faith and my understanding of what was right and what was wrong. And I just, you know, just said, you know, I just, I don’t want to deal with that anymore because that’s the kind of stuff that made me trapped in my marriage.
[00:31:33] And I don’t, I don’t, I don’t believe that. And then I met a guy, and he was the exact opposite of Mac’s husband. And that is what I was looking for. I didn’t want somebody who’s going to try to control me all the time anymore. And he was fun, and we had fun together and he was not controlling, and he was not mean, and life became all about Lacey, all about me and my fun and what I wanted.
[00:32:02] And for the next two years, that’s what I spent my time doing. I just going to do whatever I want to do. And I’m going to be accountable to no one really, except for, you know, I guess my kids. I still want to be a good mom, but on the weekends, I didn’t have my kids. I was like, I’m just going to go do whatever I want to do.
[00:32:18] And around this time I started my blog and I started writing about, you know, encouragement and just taking the wheels and taking the reins and all that kind of stuff. And, um, I totally thought I was the next Rachel. And, um, I’m not going to lie to you. I don’t even follow Rachel anymore. I’m not even so sure that me and her would agree on much of anything, but that’s where I was with my life.
[00:32:43] Okay. I was I’m 26, 27 and I’m like, this is just fun. I just want to have fun. And now I had goals and I knew that I wanted to eventually buy a house. And I knew that I wanted to invest money. And I knew that I wanted to do all these things. Right. And I started writing my blog, thinking I was going to someday become an author.
[00:32:59] And I still think, and I still hope that someday. But, you know, I, it was just, it was about me and then I got pregnant and, uh, I, I was at a very low part of my life. Again, I think that pregnancy, my selfish behaviors, all of that is ADHD, running rampant. I’m impulsive. I’m not thinking my choices through. I got pregnant at a time where it was not good for me, and it was not good for my partner.
[00:33:30] We were. In a limbo period of our lives financially. And because he was the exact opposite of my ex-husband, there was things there was red flags that our relationship probably wouldn’t work out that I had just not really seen from the beginning. I was losing track of my real goals. And so, what I ended up doing during my pregnancy was I had to really self-examine.
[00:33:57] And this isn’t the same as selfish. Because you do that a lot. When you have ADHD, you, you self-examine, and you just shame yourself and you feel guilty. But I had to actually really examine my life. And around this time was when I finally reached out and got a diagnosis and I got a full workup done and a diagnosis of, you know, what was going on.
[00:34:17] And I found out that I definitely have ADHD anxiety, and it’s likely I have PTSD. And I was like, okay, I, now I know this now, what do I do? As our relationship as a relationship with my child’s father started to wane. And I realized we weren’t going to work out. I by, by self-examining my own life, I had to ask myself, okay.
[00:34:43] So if I say I want to be a good mom or I am a good mother, how does anybody else know that about me? Do they know it because of what they see me? Do they know it because how I treat my children, do they know, you know, what is the evidence? Okay. And, and in Christian life, we would actually call this what’s the fruit, what is the fruit of that desire?
[00:35:10] And instead, I’d say I had to work backwards and say, okay, I’m pregnant. I still haven’t fully rebuilt my life since my divorce. I’m still, you know, living my life, very reliant on family members to help me get. My relationship is not in a position to move towards being very responsible. What does all that mean about me?
[00:35:30] You know, what, who does that make me, like, I had a lot of people telling me, oh, you’re so nice. And you’re so kind, but at the root of things, I felt selfish, and I was, I had been very selfish. The things I had done hadn’t necessarily directly affected my children. Yeah. You know, when I really looked at it, I was like, I was, I was stealing from their future because of the fact that I was, I wasn’t really saving money.
[00:36:00] I wasn’t really thinking long-term. I mean, I, I was, I told myself I was, but I wasn’t actually doing things that would help me long-term. And when I did that, it also made me examine my partner’s behavior. And once I examined his behavior, we had a talk and I said, I don’t, I don’t think you love me the way that I love you.
[00:36:21] And he said that he thought he did that, that we were just kind of lost. And I said, well, you know, if I’m looking at everything and I’m looking at our choices, you know, I’d say that we’re, we’re not right for each other. I don’t think we have the same goals. I don’t think we have the same moral obligation.
[00:36:41] I feel like I have this obligation to you, but you don’t, you feel like you have this obligation to me, but I don’t, you know, we had lost a lot of respect for each other and no matter how hard we tried, we just could not gain it back. So, we decided sometime during my pregnancy that we weren’t, we weren’t going to keep trying, we were going to just call it what it was and try to try to navigate by co-parenting together.
[00:37:00] Once the baby was born, that was devastating. I think you’re, you know, throughout the end of the pregnancy, I was so angry about it, that I was just being mean. Um, and it wasn’t until after the pregnancy and my, my youngest son was born that I actually went through the heartache of it. And so, they say, there’s these posters that I used to read, they would hang them up in schools and stuff.
[00:37:23] They say, watch your thoughts. They become your words, watch your words. They become your actions, watch your actions, they become your character. And I do believe that that’s really, really true. When you have ADHD, you can’t talk yourself out of being impulsive. You can’t reason, your way to making better choices and you especially can’t do it over.
[00:37:41] So until you’re willing to really look at how you’re making decisions, you know, how is your brain working? Are you, you know, if you have ADHD and your brain tells you, you don’t want to do the dishes, is that seem like a logical response, or should you fight against it? And so, for me, you not during this pregnancy, and now I have this diagnosis, but then all of a sudden, my relationship is imploding.
[00:38:04] I had to look at myself, I had to look, you know, w how did I come to making this decision to be with this person? That again, is not going to choose, choose our relationship, choose our future. And then, and then my sweet little he’s two and a half now, little boy was born and all over again. I was like, this is awful, but I.
[00:38:27] I have to do something different. I knew that I was, I knew that I had postpartum depression. I sought a diagnosis for that and got on medication fairly quickly. I was breastfeeding. Um, I breastfed all my kids, so I couldn’t get on a simulant for my ADHD, but they did put me on a non-stimulant and that did help drastically.
[00:38:47] And then I forced myself to do what I had never done before. And I, I went through the harp. I went through the, you know, days and nights of crying and being devastated and feeling like nobody would want me and who was going to want me when I had three kids and two different children’s fathers, and I was unmarried and I had no house.
[00:39:12] This is wallowing in self-pity. And around that time, um, I started to re-examine my faith. And I told myself that if the Jesus story was. And if that really all happened, that I should, I should find out for myself, I should read the Bible or I should, you know, research how the Bible can be. And I should have an understanding because I didn’t want to stand on a straw box.
[00:39:39] You know, I didn’t, if I was going to stand on the pedestal of the pro-choice and all those things, then I wanted to make sure that I was standing up. And I, so I did. And when I examined everything, um, all of the things that I’d ever learned about my faith and then, you know, I’d always heard the resurrection story.
[00:39:58] I’d always known that, yeah, we celebrate Easter because Jesus died and he came back, um, to life and all that stuff. But I think as a child, you know, I heard those stories in the same way that I also heard fairytales in Cinderella and all those things. You know, I just was like, yeah, it happened. I didn’t realize the overwhelming evidence that is there for that portion of the faith being that that is the axis of the Christian faith and the beginning of all of it, it was upon, it was, uh, there was a documentary I watched talked about how so many people saw Christ after he had the.
[00:40:43] And saw him alive and it wasn’t just the, the disciples or the apostles were. That’s what I think, I thought I thought in my head that, you know, just like a handful of people closest to him saw him again. No, no, no. I was like over 500 people, and it wasn’t like he just was on the earth for like a couple of days after he died.
[00:41:00] No, no, no. He was on the earth for 40 days and he preached again to crowds of people. And I think at that point, All of the research that I had been doing, um, in reading and reading my Bible, I think I just kind of had, I had a moment where God revealed himself to me in my heart and I bawled like a baby and I got down on my knees and I cried and I told God how sorry I was for not trusting him before and for not.
[00:41:41] Not realizing that he had, he had never left me, even though I had tried to leave him. And then after something like that happens to you, you reread things like the crucifixion story and you, you see yourself in the Roman soldiers who spit on him and you see yourself in Peter, you know, people ask you aren’t you a Jesus follower, don’t you, don’t you follow Jesus now?
[00:42:04] I don’t know him. You know, you realize that you’ve been. The first mistake that every Christian ever has made, and that is questioning and doubting. And thank the Lord that he never gave up on you. So, I come back to my faith, and I dig deep into it, and I start reading everything and learning everything that it can.
[00:42:33] And I just have this zest for, for Christ and lo and behold. My now husband sends me a message or actually it might’ve been the other way around. I may have sent him a message. I think I asked him a specific question and he didn’t know that I was single, and I wasn’t really telling anybody because I just didn’t want to date.
[00:42:55] I wanted to get through it on my own. I wanted to feel better. And mind you, my husband. Okay. When we first dated didn’t want to get married, he, I, he didn’t know if he wanted more kids. He, he never said, he always said he didn’t mind other people’s kids, but you know, some part of me, I think here was this. I mean, listen, I’m not trying to brag, but my husband is super handsome, and he has this smile that just makes you want to melt.
[00:43:24] And here’s this guy that he’s been mostly single because he just worked. And he’s got a daughter and he co-parents with his ex-wife just phenomenally well, even though their marriage ended. And he’s kind, and he is a man of his word and he, you know, at the time, um, he had, he was working a good job. He’d been there for years and years and he’s financially stable and she’s got it.
[00:43:53] He’s just got a good head on his shoulders. And I was like, He’s so out of my league. So, I was just like, oh, and he would message me. We talk, I mean, we’d always been friends. We started just kind of being friends and, and he became the friend of mine that as a man, I was able to actually say, you know, say things to like, who’s going to want.
[00:44:17] ’cause that’s how I felt. And I, I had told myself that he was so out of my league, that I could talk to him about these things because he didn’t want me. And we started to develop our faith together. Actually, we started reading books together. One of the first books we read together was, uh, seeking Allah, finding Jesus by Nabeel Qureshi, loved that book.
[00:44:37] Still love that book. We’ve actually said we want to reread it, started talking about God and reading, reading things together and, and just being. And I was still going on dates. I finally decided to go on some dates, and they weren’t with him. I would tell him, I was like, okay, well I’m going on a date. And he was like, what?
[00:44:54] And I was like, yeah, well, in my new, my husband is very shy, and he was the type that he didn’t want to really just tell me, hey, I like you, he eventually made it pretty apparent. And I said, you know, okay, I have to have reassurance that you’re Christian, you know, there’s, there’s things that I need to check off because this is where my life is going.
[00:45:15] I’m living my life for Jesus. Now I’ve gotten it so wrong every other time that if I don’t live my life for Jesus, then I can’t. There’s no good in me. I will just become a selfish self-absorbed person and I make terrible mistakes that I don’t like to make. And even though I have ADHD, I’m still walking with Jesus and he, he will help me.
[00:45:35] And he was. Okay. And we, we became members of our church that we are members of. Now, we got engaged within like six months of dating and we got married three months after that. And life has been really, God is so good. And I say that every day, and, and even though this podcast is episode got way longer than I wanted it to.
[00:45:57] I wanted to be able to wrap up all of my twenties in this, because why did you to hear about, about the end of my twenties? I got married. Just after I turned 31 and you know, here I was looking back, I had all these check boxes. I’m going to do this by the time I’m 25, I’m going to do this by the time I’m 26, this by the time of 28.
[00:46:19] And I literally just married the man of my dreams, you know, year and a half ago, year ago. And now I’m here talking to you on this podcast, telling you about all my mistakes, telling you about all the things I did wrong. Why? Because I want you to know it’s okay to do things wrong. I want you to know that it’s okay to get things wrong.
[00:46:37] I want you to know that you don’t have to have it altogether because your twenties, when you have ADHD, specially, if it’s undiagnosed, especially if you’re a young mom or a young woman and you’re struggling in relationships, all those things, it is hard. It’s hard. And I don’t want you to feel alone.
[00:46:55] Because you’re not alone. As you can hear from everything. I just told you, I made a thousand mistakes. There’s only one thing that I think that I did correctly. And that was when I finally recommitted and surrendered my life to Christ in all of that. The most important thing for you to know is that the things that are good, the things that I have in my life now that are good, I could not have gotten them on.
[00:47:24] I wouldn’t have. I thought my husband was out of my league. I wouldn’t have, I wouldn’t have gone after him. I would’ve just assumed that we just, we just wouldn’t work. I wouldn’t think that I would be talking on a podcast and telling you all of the things that I I’m dead, all the things I did wrong. I wouldn’t tell you that.
[00:47:42] The reason I tell you that is because of Christ, because I want you to see what he did in my life. Yes. ADHD played a role in everything. And I think a large part of me looked at, you know, looked at my diagnosis and looked at God and said, why, why did you give me a brain like this? Why would you make me this way?
[00:48:00] This is awful. This is not fun. And I think it’s because he knows that I am somebody who’s willing to be vulnerable and he uses my vulnerability to reach people like you, because I’m willing to tell you all the mistakes I made. Hopefully when you hear my story, you’ll hear it. And you’ll hear the story of what he did in my life, regardless of all my mistakes.
[00:48:24] So that’s going to wrap up this episode. I have no idea what we’ll talk about next episode. And again, I’m so sorry that this became so long, but I just want you to know you’re not alone. I’m hoping that most of my mistakes are in my past. Yeah, I’ll be okay if I make a few more, you learn from all of them.
[00:48:44] Anyways. Talk to you soon.