Work with the brain God gave you.

I went to college, got married, had three babies, built the house, and spent more than a decade working my way from data entry all the way to COO. I could handle a lot. I could solve problems, take care of people, figure things out, and keep moving.

Then I started researching ADHD for one of my sons and accidentally found myself.

The more I read, the more I kept thinking, wait… I do that. And that. Oh, definitely that. You mean to tell me there were other people doing the same weirdly specific, slightly chaotic things I had spent my entire life assuming were just unfortunate features of my personality?

I was diagnosed with ADHD at 29. Autism came later. And once I realized there might actually be a reason my brain worked the way it did, I started getting curious about everything else I had assumed was “just who I am.” Which, as it turns out, is a pretty big rabbit hole.

I started noticing how much of my life had been built around being good. A good student. A good daughter. A good employee. A good wife. A good mom. I knew how to achieve. How to be responsible. How to read a room. How to figure out what was expected of me and do it really, really well.

What I didn’t know was how often I had stopped to ask: Do I actually want this?

And then life gave me a very literal reminder that I might not have forever to figure that out.

I was stopped in traffic when an 18-wheeler came up behind me fast enough that I remember realizing there was nothing left for me to do. I genuinely thought I was about to die. I closed my eyes and braced for impact, which is apparently exactly what you’re not supposed to do, and at the last second, it swerved.

My car had so little damage afterward that sometimes the impact that moment had on my life feels almost dramatic. But I know what I experienced. And the only explanation I’ve ever been able to make sense of is Jesus.

That Lent, I started reading the daily Mass readings. I wish I had a less cliché way to tell you what happened next, but they changed me.

Not in the God handed me a five-year plan and suddenly everything made sense kind of way. Quite the opposite, actually. I started getting more comfortable with the possibility that maybe I wasn’t supposed to have everything figured out. That maybe uncertainty wasn’t always a problem to solve. That maybe I had spent a lot of my life asking everyone and everything around me for the right answer when I needed to get quieter and pay attention.

I’m not going to pretend I’ve read the Mass readings every single day since. I still have not found a cure for ADHD, unfortunately. 😂 But I know this now: When I feel restless, lost, anxious, or convinced I need to blow up my entire life because something feels off, God is the first place I’m learning to turn. Not the last.

None of this resulted in me waking up the next morning as a completely different person. I still had three kids. A marriage. Laundry. A career. A mortgage. And a brain that could help run a company while somehow forgetting to make its own dentist appointment.

So I started smaller. I started paying attention. Eventually, I disappeared from social media for almost a year.

And without realizing it at first, I gave myself something I hadn’t had in a very long time: a life without an audience. No posting it. No wondering what people would think about it. No turning it into something consumable.

Just me, my family, God, and a whole lot of uncomfortable questions about who I was when nobody was watching.

What did I actually like? What did I believe? What kind of wife did I want to be? What kind of mother did I want my kids to watch me become? What was I doing because it mattered to me? And what was I doing because somewhere along the way I had learned that this was simply how a good woman was supposed to do life?

I didn’t come out of that year with all the answers. I came out of it a lot less interested in needing them.

For the first time, I wanted to participate in my life instead of constantly trying to perform it correctly. And once I stopped looking for the “right” next step, I could finally pay attention to the direction I’d been feeling pulled for a long time.

I wanted more ordinary Tuesdays with my kids. School pickups. Summers. Dinner at home. All the little parts of motherhood I’d spent years squeezing in around a career.

And if I was going to build something of my own, I wanted it to come from the other thing I’ve always loved doing: helping people. So eventually, I left the career I’d spent more than a decade building and started over with very little idea what would come next. I just finally trusted that not knowing yet didn’t mean I was headed the wrong way.

I’m still learning how to work with the brain God gave me instead of forcing it into somebody else’s operating system. I’m still catching myself people-pleasing. Still overthinking. Still going down completely unnecessary rabbit holes. Still occasionally asking three people what they think before realizing I already knew what I thought.

The difference is that I’m noticing. And every time I notice, I get another chance to choose.

Alice in Adultland started as a little passion project somewhere in the middle of all of that. A place to share what I was learning about my brain, my faith, motherhood, self-trust, and all the weird parts of being a grown woman that nobody seemed to have handed us instructions for. And apparently, I wasn’t the only one looking for the manual.

I’m still figuring it out, too. I just figured we might as well go down the rabbit hole together. 🐇

Because knowing isn’t usually the problem.

Most of the women I want to work with are really freaking capable.

You’ve read the books. Saved the posts. Bought the planner. Made the list. Probably made a better list after that.

You don’t need someone standing over you telling you to try harder.

Sometimes you need another person to help you slow the whole thing down long enough to notice what’s actually happening, and figure out what works for your brain, your capacity, your season of life and the person you’re trying to become.

That’s the work I’m interested in doing with you.

1:1 coaching is exclusively available to members of the private Adultland community who have completed the Main Character Reboot.

And that’s intentional.

The Reboot gives us a shared starting point. Before we ever work together 1:1, you’ve already spent two weeks noticing your patterns, getting curious about how you operate, and practicing the language we’ll use together.

So if we decide to work together, we don’t have to start from scratch.

We get to start with you.

The fine print: this is coaching, not therapy or medical care. I don’t diagnose anything or treat mental health conditions. You don’t need a formal diagnosis to work with me.