“Why I Started This Blog: Parenting, ADHD, and Real Life”

Hey there! So this is my very first blog post — cue the nervous excitement and overthinking.

If you’re new here (which you definitely are, because… first post!), I’m Dez. I’m a neurodivergent mom to a high-functioning autistic daughter who also has multiple severe food allergies. I’ve been married for over a decade, spent almost 10 years as a stay-at-home mom, and recently tried rejoining the workforce — which didn’t exactly go as planned.

Here’s the thing: I’ve always felt like my brain worked a little differently, but it wasn’t until my adult ADHD diagnosis that so many things finally made sense. I had returned to work, hopeful and ready — but I struggled. Hard. Concentration? Gone. Anxiety? Sky-high. Mistakes? Constant. I eventually had to quit before I got fired. It was one of the most humbling and scary moments of my adult life.

While trying to understand what was going on with me, I started reflecting on how I’ve been parenting, too. When my daughter has a sensory overload or a meltdown, I don’t just witness it — I feel it. If she’s overwhelmed, I’m immediately overwhelmed. We feed off each other’s energy, and it’s a lot. Thankfully, my husband is our steady hand and voice of reason when things get intense. He helps us both come back to calm.

But the more I looked for parenting blogs or resources that talked about this — this chaotic, emotional, messy middle of parenting while being neurodivergent yourself — the more I came up empty.

And that’s why I’m here.

That’s why I started this blog.

Our Journey So Far

Our daughter was diagnosed with food allergies when she was just three months old. One night, I noticed blood in her stool, and we rushed to the ER. We ended up staying for a week. At one point, they thought it was meningitis and gave her a spinal tap — one of the scariest moments of our lives. After that was ruled out, they started me on an elimination diet while I was still breastfeeding. We found out she was allergic to dairy, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, gluten — basically all the usual suspects (and then some). It felt like a crash course in survival, grocery labels, and late-night Googling.

Later, she was diagnosed with a sensory processing disorder during COVID, which helped us understand a lot — but something still felt missing. In 5th grade, her personality shifted. She became more withdrawn, frustrated, and anxious. That led us to seek more testing, and we finally got the autism diagnosis.

Life with ADHD, Autism, and Allergies

Parenting is already a wild ride. Parenting a neurodivergent child while being neurodivergent yourself, all while managing multiple food allergies? It’s a whole different level. It’s chaotic, beautiful, frustrating, hilarious, and sometimes incredibly isolating.

But it doesn’t have to be lonely.

So that’s what I want this space to be:

A safe place to share the messy, honest, sometimes ugly, sometimes joyful reality of life as a neurodivergent mom raising a neurodivergent child.

I’ll be talking about everything from:

• Autism parenting tips (the real-life, not-Pinterest kind)
• Living with food allergies and how we make it work
• Marriage and navigating big emotions as a family
• My ADHD journey and how it affects my parenting
• Wins, fails, lessons, and all the in-betweens

If you’re still reading this — thank you.

Let’s do this together.

-Dez