Always learning, always hoping, always trusting
I have, yet again, taken a very unintentionally long break from posting on the blog but that is just life as a wife, mummy, part time Civil Engineer and small business owner; some plates have to stop spinning sometimes and that's ok.
It’s been a very slow start to 2026 for me. I had my busiest Christmas market season ever in 2025 and I still am not over it, so taking a little break from markets for a wee while seems like a wise idea for me!
A big development / update for me this January has been that I got diagnosed with combined ADHD a few weeks ago and I am not going to lie it's like someone has opened a window into my brain to show me what I’m like and it makes so much sense!
For most of my teen life through to my 30s, I thought my brain was just a wee bit much sometimes and I wondered why don’t other people think the way I think. Too fast, too slow, too scattered, too intense, too irrational, genuinely the best way I can describe my brain is that it is like a pinball machine ALL THE TIME!! Thoughts come and go so frequently I can't keep up and at times it can be so totally overwhelming I just sit doing nothing, completely and utterly incapable of doing anything, even something as simple as reply to a text or an email.
When I got my diagnosis of combined ADHD, it wasn’t a dramatic lightbulb moment so much as just simply relief (and I also burst out laughing when the Consultant Psychiatrist told me)! Suddenly, so many of my traits, particularly the ones I have quietly beat myself up about FOR YEARS had a name.
For example, my relationship with time has always been a real battle for me. I’d go between being incredibly ahead of schedule and planned out / on time to annoyingly late constantly. Learning about time blindness has been a game changer for me, honestly! I wasn’t lazy or careless, my brain simply experiences time differently. That knowledge alone has been so good for me even in my day job over the last week. I have started using a visual timer on my screen while working and it has made me soooooo much more productive! It is the simplest thing but has made such a positive impact. Just goes to show knowledge is power, once you know, you know!
The biggest shift the last few weeks has been in how I see myself. Traits I previously labelled as laziness, oversharing, restlessness, impulsivity, are now just information for me about the ebbs and flows of how my brain operates. I now know to give myself a bit more grace when I hit a wall and will try, going forward, to build in flexibility to my tasks and timeframes instead of frustration and disappointment with myself when things don’t go to plan.
Discovering I have ADHD hasn’t changed who I am, but it’s given me context to start to better understand myself instead. And in that understanding, I’ve found so much clarity even in the last fortnight. Not just about how I work, but about why I’ve always been this way. My personality didn’t suddenly make sense because it changed; it makes sense because I now know how/why it works the way it does. I'm not gonna lie it's been so freeing (albeit totally overwhelming at times too)!!! I am so incredibly thankful and looking forward to continuing to learn how to manage myself better so I can try to be the best wife and mummy I can for my boys!
Isn’t it so cool how God makes us all so incredibly different, and we never know the curveballs He has in His plan for us. We are always learning, always hoping and always trusting Him for positive outcomes when we have no clue what's ahead of us!
Romans 8:28 ‘And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.’
Emma xx