The ADHD Hook Blog

Look, I’ve got trauma. Not the cute kind either — the kind that comes with emotional whiplash, a suspicious amount of dark humour, and an alphabet’s worth of diagnoses. ADHD? PMDD? CPTSD? Throw in some OCD tendencies and a side of anxiety and we’re basically playing trauma bingo. But that’s not all I am. Because — SURPRISE — it turns out I’m also bloody brilliant.   Plot Twist: I’m Not Stupid For years, I thought I was just slow. Struggled with reading. Letters jumped. Teachers gave up. Spoiler: I’m dyslexic. Didn’t really learn to read properly until later in life. But guess what? That didn’t stop me. I read, I write, I create, I sell. I thrive. I’m not stupid. I’m neurospicy. The kind of smart that builds businesses from breakdowns and reinvents myself weekly — sometimes daily, depending on the caffeine level.   Hair Was My First Magic Before crochet hooks and chaos branding, I had scissors. I was a hairdresser for over 20 years — holding more than just hair. People brought ...

What happens when you grow up in a big family, spend years twisting yourself to be loved, and still get left behind? You walk away. You heal. You cry to your favourite lyrics. And eventually—you build your own damn village. This is what healing really looks like: ADHD, chaos, dark humour, and finally, freedom. I’m a Little Bit Hurt, But a Lot More Free (A chaotic survival guide to walking away from family and finding the version of you they tried to bury)  I grew up in a massive family. My dad had six siblings. My mum had two. They all had kids. Cousins everywhere. Loud dinners. Bigger arguments. Constant competition. You’d think that kind of family would feel like a safety net. But honestly? It felt more like a reality show where the prize was “who can fake it the hardest.” I was the only child in the middle of it. On my mum’s side, I was the oldest grandchild—expected to be the example. On my dad’s side, I was one of the babies—forgotten, brushed aside, not quite wort...

The Unfiltered Truth Here’s the thing they don’t tell you when you’re a mum with ADHD: You don’t get the neurotypical parenting manual. You get a cursed bingo card that reads things like: Forgot PE kit (again) Lost your own phone in the fridge Emotionally spiraled because your child’s sock was inside-out and suddenly life is unbearable We don’t get gentle mornings and tidy planners. We get chaos breakfasts and a brain that acts like 42 browser tabs are open, 17 are frozen, one’s playing music, and no one knows where it’s coming from. And into that storm enters... crochet. A literal thread keeping us together. Crochet: Not a Hobby, a Lifeline It’s not just a craft. It’s crisis management with pretty colours. It’s the one thing stopping me from screaming into the void when three kids are arguing, my executive function has peaced out, and I’m trying to remember if I took my meds or just thought really hard about taking them. Crochet isn’t a luxury. It’s a survival tool. One that doesn’t j...

  They don’t make movies about love like ours. There’s no neat montage. No perfectly-timed kisses in the rain. Just two imperfect people, navigating life with ADHD, trauma, healing, a mountain of laundry, and a house full of emotional plot twists, three gremlins we’re raising, and one beautiful young adult who’s finding her own way in the world. It’s not always pretty—but it’s ours. And it’s bloody incredible. At first, I didn’t think he knew how to love. Not because he was cruel—but because he wasn’t angry. He wasn’t loud. He didn’t throw words like knives or slam doors for attention. He was just... calm. Quiet. A simple man who found joy in the little things. And that confused the hell out of me. I thought love was supposed to be intense. Explosive. Painful, even. That’s what I grew up around. So when he showed up with his kind eyes and steady presence, I genuinely thought, “Where’s the catch?” But then I saw him with his daughter. The way he looked at her like she was the sun. T...

There are some stories that don’t have a clean beginning, middle, or end. They just sit there—unfinished, unresolved, like a crap Netflix series that gets cancelled right before it all makes sense. This is one of those stories. I haven’t spoken to my dad in seven years. Not because I hate him. Not because of some massive Jeremy Kyle-style showdown. But because I got twisted, tangled, and turned into something I never wanted to be—my mum’s personal attack hamster. A full-grown woman used like a tool in a bitter custody battle that technically ended in the ‘90s but emotionally? Still going strong. We lived in a two-bedroom flat tucked underneath the guest house. And somehow, in that tiny space beneath the dreams, disasters, and forced smiles, an entire world of secrets and manipulation grew like emotional black mould. I wasn’t a child when the real damage happened—I was in my early twenties. Just old enough to legally drink, but still young enough to believe saying “sorry” fi...

Some people inherit family heirlooms. I inherited generational trauma and a talent for spotting manipulation from a mile off. Growing up in a narcissistic household while unknowingly neurodivergent is a bit like trying to build IKEA furniture without instructions—while someone stands over you insisting the problem is you, not the fact you were handed a bag of bolts and chaos. As a kid, I was always “too much.” Too loud. Too emotional. Too distracted. Too sensitive. If I asked questions, I was being rude. If I cried, I was “just trying to get attention.” If I said I was struggling, it was a personal attack. And when I tried to explain how things felt inside my brain—well, apparently that made me manipulative. Spoiler alert: I wasn’t manipulative. I was a child. A neurodivergent child. But back then? ADHD in girls basically didn’t exist. Not in school, not in parenting books, and definitely not in the world I grew up in. If you weren’t bouncing off the walls or disrupting the classroom l...