In this week’s episode of The ADHD Women’s Wellbeing Podcast, we’re exploring the complexities of parenting as a neurodivergent individual and how our own lived experiences can shape the way we support our neurodivergent children, helping to foster more resilience, compassion, and understanding.

I’m joined by Holly Blanc Moses, a therapist and parent coach with over 23 years of experience supporting neurodivergent families. Holly shares her personal and professional insights into emotional regulation, reparenting, and how self-advocacy can transform both our parenting and our wellbeing. Together, we unpack how breaking generational patterns and modelling self-compassion can foster resilience in both parents and children.

My new book, The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit, is now available. Grab your copy here!

What You’ll Learn:

• How understanding our own ADHD helps our children
• The challenges neurodivergent parents face when raising neurodivergent children
• How emotional regulation helps both parents and children navigate stress
• What reparenting involves and how it can break harmful generational cycles
• How to release the “shoulds” of parenthood and define parenting on your terms
• Ways to nurture grit, resilience, and self-advocacy in your children
• The importance of modelling self-advocacy and asking for support

Timestamps:

• 02:33 – Holly’s lived experience of having neurodivergent children
• 05:16 – Challenges and insights to parenting neurodivergent children
• 08:55 – Recovering from generational trauma and undiagnosed neurodivergence
• 10:34 – Parental pressure and emotional regulation
• 16:14 – Reparenting and developing self-compassion
• 24:10 – Modelling resilience and fostering independence
• 25:00 – Encouraging self-advocacy in children as a parent

This episode is about giving yourself permission to slow down and parent in a way that honours both your needs and your child’s. If anything, let it be a reminder that if what you are doing works for your family, that is enough, no matter what anyone else says.

Join the More Yourself Community - the doors are now open!

More Yourself is a compassionate space for late-diagnosed ADHD women to connect, reflect, and come home to who they really are. Sign up here!

Inside the More Yourself Membership, you’ll be able to:

• Connect with like-minded women who understand you
• Learn from guest experts and practical tools
• Receive compassionate prompts & gentle reminders
• Enjoy voice-note encouragement from Kate
• Join flexible meet-ups and mentoring sessions
• Access on-demand workshops and quarterly guest expert sessions

To join for £26 a month, click here. To join for £286 for a year (a whole month free!), click here.

We’ll also be walking through The ADHD Women’s Wellbeing Toolkit together, exploring nervous system regulation, burnout recovery, RSD, joy, hormones, and self-trust, so the book comes alive in a supportive community setting.

Links and Resources:

• Find my popular ADHD workshops and resources on my website [here].
• Follow the podcast on Instagram: @adhd_womenswellbeing_pod
• Visit Holly's website or connect with her on Instagram @hollyblancmoses

Kate Moryoussef is a women's ADHD lifestyle and wellbeing coach and EFT practitioner who helps overwhelmed and unfulfilled newly diagnosed ADHD women find more calm, balance, hope, health, compassion, creativity and clarity. 

Welcome to the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast.

I'm Kate Moore Youssef and I'm a wellbeing and lifestyle coach, EFT practitioner, mum to four kids, and passionate about helping more women to understand and accept their amazing ADHD brains.

After speaking to many women just like me and probably you, I know there is a need for more health and lifestyle support for women newly diagnosed with adhd.

In these conversations, you'll learn from insightful guests, hear new findings, and discover powerful perspectives and lifestyle tools to enable you to live your most fulfilled, calm and purposeful life wherever you are on your ADHD journey.

Here's today's episode.

Welcome back to another episode of the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast.

And today I have Holly Long Moses.

Now, she has supported over the last 27 years hundreds of neurodivergent children, teens and adults to live happier and more peaceful lives.

And Holly is passionate about collaborating with her clients and their family members in key areas such as executive functioning, identifying and communicating thoughts, feelings and needs, social interaction, anxiety, depression, depression, emotional regulation, school success, independent skills and self advocacy, and lots more.

She works in Raleigh, North Carolina, where neurodivergent individuals can be supported with her individual therapy, testing and parenting intensives.

And all her support really does include so much of this neurodiversity guidance and help and support.

She's also the host of the very popular podcast, the Autism and ADHD Podcast, which provides practical neuroaffirming approaches to start using today.

I'm delighted to have you here, Holly.

Thank you so much.

I know it's pretty early for you now in the morning, but I'm really delighted to have you here so we can hopefully help the listeners.

Yes, thank you so much for having me.

So, Holly, tell me a little bit.

You've obviously been working in this space for, I think it said, 26 years.

Is that with neurodivergent people or is that evolved from maybe understanding yourself?

I know you've got a neurodivergent family as well.

And yeah, how has your story evolved into helping in this niche now?

It's actually been working with neurodivergent people for that long.

And of course, I mean, I'm 50 now, so I've been nerdivergent the whole time.

So that's happened, that kind of lived Experience.

Experience.

I was already working in the space prior to adopting our kids who are also neurodivergent.

So that was interesting because I thought, oh, I got this.

You know, this is what I do For a living.

I'm the perfect person to be their mom.

But thinking about being a parent and being a parent are two very different things.

And parenting kids with, you know, neurodivergence and kids that are neurotypical are also two very different things.

So I'm glad we're talking about it today.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

I mean, do you mind me asking about how old your kids were when you adopted them?

And I guess, did you know they're neurodivergent?

Or was that.

Were they much younger at the time?

Right.

Our oldest son came into foster care almost when he was 4.

So it was, like, two weeks before his fourth birthday, and we were finally able to adopt him at 6.

And it was clear in, I don't know, half of a second of seeing him for the first time that he had very severe ADHD right from the start.

We got to see that.

And then our youngest son, we got to have kind of this baby experience, which was cool, too.

And we were able to adopt him when he was one.

Wow.

So inspiring.

And, you know, I know that it comes with all sorts of wonderful, miraculous moments, but also lots of challenges, you know, whether they've been adopted or you've given birth yourself.

I mean, understanding our neurodivergent kids, as well as navigating it for ourselves, is a whole.

Is a whole new situation.

And so many people that listen to this podcast are late diagnosed women who perhaps came through this route of understanding who they are because of their children.

It was the sort of the children that gave them the key to unlock themselves, going to get that assessment.

Maybe it was picked up at school, maybe it was picked up in therapy.

Who knows?

And then we are starting to be able to look at ourselves, but no one gives us this guidebook.

No one gives us the map.

It's literally, I always say this to people.

It's just we uncover something.

We have to figure it out.

We may get a little bit of support.

I know my podcast, and probably your podcast, has been very helpful for people, but.

But when we're on the ground on those days where there's emotional dysregulation, there's meltdowns, there's pda, there's all sorts of things going on.

It's really hard, as someone who is neurodivergent themselves, to then parent in that situation as well.

Do you work with people in how to help themselves, like, in those moments where there's just so many emotions flying around?

I do.

And again, parenting this way is not the same.

And so I Feel like everyone needs to hear that because oftentimes our, even our nerdivergence, we know that as women is minimized.

Right.

Like our experience is minimized and our kids experience is also minimized.

And we have to always remember that.

Of course, when I was an undergraduate, my honors thesis was in parenting stress of parents of neurodivergent kids and parents of ADHD kids.

Their stress levels are much higher than parents of neurotypical kids.

Right.

So the stress is higher.

And then we have to look at, like, what that is.

And not only that, there are all these pressures.

Kate, what I was thinking of when you were talking about it was this conversation I had to have with my youngest son's teacher years back.

And he was written up, whatever that means, for being late to school again.

And so I had to go in there and say, you can give me the slip because I have time blindness and he's rarely going to be here on time because of me.

So we don't want to punish him.

So I think it's standing back and looking and not blaming ourselves like we usually do, like we've been taught in society, like, it's your fault.

You should be right.

The should be that come up.

You should be able to do this.

You should be able to stay calm all the time and help your kids when they're falling apart.

Is we're also humans, and I don't think we tell ourselves that enough, that just being is hard sometimes in a world that doesn't fit you.

So anytime I'm talking about child regulation and parent regulation, I always like to step back and get the picture, identify the shoulds, get some emotional space from the situation, which allows you to get more of a view of what's actually happening and then think about what your own body is doing.

Because a lot of times our kids don't understand that all this is coming up.

They just know it's uncomfortable and they want it to stop or they're confused and they're not getting information they need, whatever that is.

But people with ADHD do struggle with emotional regulation, and that's also in ourselves.

We just happen to not have meltdowns like they do out in public as much.

Yeah, I mean, you say that in not in public, but you know, when you talk about parental stress, if we look through the history of so many people's families and so many people relate to the chaos and the dysfunction and the rages and the shouting, and obviously there was no awareness at all of what was going on, you would just know that Your, one of your parents had a short fuse, or one of your parents had a bad temper, or, or one of your parents drank alcohol every evening, just regulate and calm themselves.

Or we just know how perhaps it showed up now through this new lens of awareness.

And many of us are trying to like, heal from that generational trauma of being parented by parents who had no idea about their neurodivergence.

I do always say this in the podcast.

I do think that our generation, you know, whether you want to say sort of from 40s to maybe 60s, are part of that generation, of understanding this for the first time, being able to look back in our childhood and see how it showed up and hopefully break those cycles and change the dynamics of the family moving forwards.

And there is a lot of pressure, maybe I'm going to speak for myself here, that I feel there's a huge amount of pressure with what I know, what I talk about, what I speak about on the podcast, what I talk about in my workshops and in all of that, and how I am on the ground with my own kids.

And sometimes I feel like such a hypocrite because sometimes it is so hard to be that regulated parent, especially when your kid is winding you up or having that meltdown in the worst moment, or when you're hungry, hot, tired, hormonal, dysregulated.

Maybe you're having a sensory overload, maybe there's overwhelm there.

And we feel this pressure as adults that we have to hold that space, don't we, for the child?

I mean, I'll give you an example.

Yesterday I went new school shoe shopping with my youngest daughter who's 10.

And we went through all these different shoes because every shoe felt weird.

Like she's very sensory orientated.

And one rubbed her, one felt too big, one didn't fit her, you know, and we finally found the right shoe, but she thought it was ugly.

And I said to her, we have to.

I was like, already done with the shoe shopping.

I was like, I'm in a shop for 10 minutes, I'm done.

We're in the shop for about 45 minutes until we find the right shoe for her.

Thank God.

We had this very patient shop assistant.

We bought, I bought the shoes, even though she didn't like them, but they were the only ones that fitted her.

And then there was an explosion afterwards.

I hate the shoes.

I'm not wearing the shoes.

You made me buy the shoes.

And I could feel in my body, I was hungry, I was thirsty, I had enough, but I had to hold that space for her.

And my.

The reason for all of this is to say that with all the knowledge and all the awareness, it can still be really hard.

And that's okay.

Well, you just brought up so many good points that we can unpack.

But I do love that.

I love the idea of visualizing this stacking of blocks, right?

Some of them are awkward, some of them are heavier than others, and they do just stack.

And I think for neurodivergent women, we're so used to pushing through constantly that we don't even notice those things.

And that's what's so beautiful about the awareness that's coming out now.

Like the autism ADHD podcast.

Your podcast is.

We can actually talk about these things a lot of time for the first time in our lives, like, learn.

No wonder why this is so hard.

It's maybe not true, what we learned when we were younger.

We have to re parent ourselves in a lot of ways.

You know, when I think about, like, I'm bad, I'm lazy, I don't try hard enough.

Why can't I be like other, other kids?

Why can't I remember everything?

If my head wasn't attached to my body, I would lose it.

I mean, just constant, constant hearing that.

And a lot of us did growing up, right?

We were told we weren't good enough.

Like, why can't we be like other kids?

And that sinks in and it starts to build your foundation of yourself.

And so as we step back, we realize what a massive impact that's had on our mental health.

Of course it would.

When you don't think you're good enough and now you're parenting a kid that is struggling, and then we don't feel like we're good enough parents either.

You mentioned earlier, like a hypocrite.

And I'll make jokes, I'll be like, oh, I'm a poser, right?

I just became dysregulated all over the place.

As an adult, we're allowed to still have those feelings because the thing is, we are now almost understanding it and giving ourselves permission to not be okay, to not be fine, to not have the mask on constantly because we're going to get in trouble, we're going to be told we're bad or not enough.

So I think that I'm not good enough or I'm not doing enough.

Story sort of carries us through our roles.

You know, it may start as, as children and now as parents.

Am I giving them enough support?

What if they don't have all the, therapies they need.

What if they don't have all the tutoring they need?

What if they get kicked out?

What it, you know, all of these things.

And then we hear advice, you should do this and should do this and should do this and then it just, just feeds.

That should be story that we have too that visual with the blocks.

I love that you said that because I have a guide that shows that stacking and if you stack up blocks and name them and become more self aware and model that for your child then that's a beautiful gift to not only yourself but to them as well.

Not saying, well, I'm upset because you, you know, we're not blaming them like you said, I'm feeling really tired.

I'm noticing that I'm starting to get irritated more quickly than maybe I want to.

And it's not about you, it's about these blocks that I've got that are stacking that I'm just noticing right now, you know, and they're getting heavier.

And when you put a visual like that you can see that your child probably has a similar blocks stacked up too.

They just don't know how to name them and communicate that because it just comes up so quickly for them and it, it feels like it came out of nowhere but really it's not.

Yeah, 100%.

I mean I, I knew that I was hungry and thirsty and I knew that I'd had enough of being in this shop.

There was lots of people, there was music, there was just a lot going on.

I guess I'm sort of self aware enough now through so much of the work that I've done I, that I could literally I could name those blocks.

And I was thinking if I'm feeling like this, I'm waiting for this to come out.

And she held it together until we left the shop.

Then we were going to go and have some lunch together and the meltdown happened in the cafe and it was, I was like, right, just hold it together until she has some water.

Hold it together.

I'm going to give her some protein.

I was like putting the chicken in her mouth.

Just eat the chicken and then we'll have the conversation.

And I had to really be that parent.

I had to step into that sort of adult role.

But when you talk about re parenting that's so fascinating because so many of us have to do that because we may have had that parent that would have gone crazy with us and shouted at us and stormed off and you're not having anything to eat.

I'm taking you Home, like, made it, you know, so much worse.

Yeah, you're punished, you're rude, you're this.

And it goes into all of that criticism.

And I know that this, the shame come.

You know, the blame comes, the shame, the guilt.

I know what happens.

And so I. I do think that's so much for us as the parents, that is that reparenting.

And I'd love to be able to speak about that a little bit more, because when we reparent ourselves, it's almost like we're kind of wiping the slate clean a little bit.

So we can parent how we want, not how we think we should be parenting.

Do you help people to learn how to repair in themselves or just do you have to go through a process of that in therapy?

Right.

And I do, and that's a very exciting thing.

And it brings up a lot of emotions for us because many of us, especially, I think ADHD women, we have, have that thick mask on.

And when you go underneath of it, you can see so much more sometimes, Kate, what I'll do is use even a starter sentence.

A short starter sentence can be so incredibly powerful If.

If I hear a mom say, I should be getting, you know, more for them, and I'll say, I should be because, and just wait.

And it's.

It's beautiful what the becauses fill in.

Of course, that's just an example.

Another thing is starting a sentence with I am.

And what is the first thing that comes in?

A lot of times it's stupid, not good, lazy.

All these things that were underneath the whole time are now there, and then we replace that.

So if we're feeling, I'm not good enough, I'm not doing enough, I am parenting wrong, I don't know what I'm doing.

Do we then say, right, how do I notice what is going on in the self talk, the self criticism?

And then we learn to replace that with more compassionate words or more sort of like growth mindset.

Words of, I'm learning, I'm working, I'm doing the best that I can with what I've got right now?

I'm doing the best that I can with the support that I have right now.

Would you say that's a start to acknowledging that life can be really hard, but we're also trying to.

To see through a new lens, I guess.

Right.

And I think you're right.

The first thing is to notice and to understand how big.

I know I've said this a few times, but it's no wonder, no wonder you're saying These things to yourself.

This is what happened to you.

You didn't have what you needed.

You were told you were wrong.

You learned that you were broken before you even realized it.

You already had that thought of I'm not good enough, and that became your story.

And now you're just not a good enough parent either.

And when we step back and think about what did you need?

What would you say to you when you think about your little self, how would you interact?

What would you say now?

What did you need to hear?

And I think connecting all of those pieces, you can really learn about yourself and understand and recognize when the should be and when the what ifs, when all the anxiety comes up, where did that come from?

Instead of putting it on yourself, how maybe your parents put on you, so then it's almost not getting rid of it because you can't.

You can't run away from your thoughts.

You can't run away from your brain.

You can't decide, I'm just not going to think that anymore.

That doesn't work.

Right.

So we think about the thought, maybe I should be, or I'm not good enough, mom, or whatever that story is, and think of it almost as a tangible thing, like an object.

Okay, so we're going to name it.

Sometimes I even write down the story on a piece of paper, and it can go from covering your face, taking up all the room, to laying that piece of paper on your lap like you notice it.

You see the words.

It's not that you can erase them, but you're not going to run from them anymore.

You don't have to cover it up.

We're going to acknowledge it for what it is.

It depends on how you look at it and how you hold it.

And then when you give that room, then you can bring in the other things.

You can notice those things.

You can take care of yourself.

You can regulate even better.

You can help your child regulate even better.

Yeah.

And I think it's also modeling.

Isn't it modeling that we're not here for perfect and we're here for learning and trying and there's going to be errors and there's going to be failures and there's going to be things that we have to grow from and lessons and all of that.

And something that's helped me reframe, say, how I was parented.

And I do believe that my parents did the best that they could with what they knew and how they were sort of brought up in the world as well.

And that's.

There's a Lot of compassion and forgiveness there.

But what they've also gifted me through maybe parenting me in a way that I don't want to parent my children is using those moments where I felt not supported, not listened to, not cared for, or whatever that was during those times, and using that as like an ammunition to kind of parent in the way that I want to.

And I'm not doing anything perfectly, but I use those pockets, those moments, those memories, and go, right, I can either carry that on and just carry that on, you know, with no awareness and just parent how my parents did, or I can use that and say, right that moment, I remember feeling hurt, I remember feeling not listened to.

How can I change that moment for my own children?

Children and.

And use it?

And so sometimes I'm actually really grateful for the awareness of their parenting that's given me.

So I can then change things.

And I guess hopefully my kids will look at me and go, right, that's not how I want to parent my kids.

And we learn because we can't change the past.

But it is helpful to not get stuck, isn't it, in that mindset of, like, being a victim and wanting to change the past.

And they did this to me, and they did that, and it should have been like this and saying, right, I'm going to make this decision, this choice now that I have more, I have better language, I have new awareness, I have new understanding.

And it might not be done perfectly, but at least I can use what I went through for hopefully a better experience for my own kids.

Right?

I agree with that.

As painful as it was, like you said, because it was growing up and not getting what you need, you know how bad that hurts when that comes up for me?

I notice it because that self awareness we've had to work on, right?

I notice it and I give it space, right?

If I need to complain about it for a minute, I'll give myself a minute.

You know, that's okay, too.

And I think we have to acknowledge that those are real, those are big.

Those were your developmental years where your self was formed.

And we're essentially working on healing from those things.

And like you said, we don't want our kids to grow up and say, I should be.

I'm not good enough.

I never do anything right.

I'm always in trouble.

We don't want that for them because we know how that feels.

So interesting.

I love all of that.

And yes, I agree with you.

To give ourselves that space to kind of.

For the validation and the acknowledgement of, yes, it Wasn't easy and how it can still infiltrate into our life as, you know, as, as women in their 40s and 50s.

I always think, and again, this is coming from like a parent and nothing else is.

How do I still give them that grit and that resilience without over parenting or over.

You don't want to soften it too much for them.

So they do have that resilience because unfortunately we do live in this mostly neurotypical world where they are going to come across people, situations, moments where no one really cares if they've got ADHD or autism, you know, mostly.

And you want them to be able to advocate for themselves and you want them to be able to get through that situation without being too limited.

What would you say about that?

Perhaps I've not phrased it as politically correct as possible, but I'm trying to think of a way that I want my kids to feel that they have the resilience to get through certain things if I'm not around there to advocate for them.

So when it comes to grit and resilience, that's another modeling opportunity for us because there are those daily things there.

There's stuff going on in the bus.

What, are you gonna have a meltdown again?

Why have adhd?

Well, we, we do too, but we don't act like you or you don't look autistic.

You should be able to do this.

You know, all these things that our experience is minimized are our kids are going through these things as well that we can model that we can be there as someone who cares and listens and show shows, problem solving and how to collaborate and how to be self aware and how to self advocate.

And I love showing those things there.

I have a lot of health issues and I often have to self advocate.

That my kids see too, is okay, I'm not going to remember to check my blood because I'm on a blood thinner every so and so days and then change the scheduling of the medication all the time.

So I need you, the nurse to email me and call me on those days we go to the veterinarian.

Well, you have to do this on this day.

And then.

Okay, I need you to write that down or I need you to type it and print it.

So it's these, these things that we can come together if we go and meet the principal.

Believe me, I've been in the principal's office many, many times as a kid and as a parent where we come in together and our kids can see us advocate for them, but also collaborate with other people.

And that's just a great way to model.

Yeah, 100%.

And I think I always wish for my kids that they feel, you know, whatever they do in the world and whatever they do in their life, that they feel that they have got that confidence to.

To self advocate, ask for what they need, feel empowered to step into, you know, however they want to show up in the world and not feel that, and not feel that I have to be around for them.

That's like my biggest fear is that they rely on me.

And it's.

I want them to be independent, obviously.

I want to nurture them and love them and care for them and all of that, but I want them to feel that they can look after themselves and they can.

And Kate, that's a value.

I can see that's a passion for you.

Right?

You want that for them.

Yeah.

I also feel like it's a beautiful opportunity when you model that self advocacy to then start stepping back.

Okay, this is our plan.

This is how we're going to approach it.

Which part do you want?

And so then we start fading that back.

But we can do it in a way where we're not yanking, you know, that from under their feet, kind of like we had to deal with.

But it's this beautiful strategic part.

I went to a meeting with one of my clients where she requested the meeting with the principal and wanted me to be there.

I'm like, go, girl.

We're doing this.

We're gonna have a plan.

We wrote it down, bullet points, everything before the meeting.

That's amazing.

How old was she?

Oh, my goodness.

10.

Oh, that's amazing.

So that's my daughter's age, and I love that that she had that confidence to do that.

And she.

She felt empowered for a bit, but.

But how beautiful is that?

Because our kids don't have to be in the same position we were.

So be the parent you needed when you were young, but also know that you're going to make mistakes because you're human.

And that's important to show them that they can too, because you are a safe person for them.

You can make mistakes and they can.

That doesn't mean you're bad.

It means you're a human being.

So now what do we do to help ourselves get through this mistake?

And what does this look like for us?

Yeah, that's so beautiful.

There's so many of us doing this, working out for ourselves right now, like navigating our own self advocacy, understanding what our adhd, autism has meant to us throughout our lives, how it's shown up, what we want to change.

But we are also navigating this for our kids as well.

And many of them are going through maybe academic difficulties.

Things are changing maybe from school to university, and it just feels like a lot.

We're holding a lot.

So I love what you said at the beginning of the conversation of naming.

Naming why we feel overwhelmed.

Like, so many people come to me and just say, I'm so overwhelmed, they can't even understand where the overwhelms come from.

But it is.

It's naming it, isn't it?

It's just essential, the chunking it down that so many of our, you know, many of us with ADHD need.

We say that, but we need it, too.

When you say, because I'm overwhelmed, because.

Oh, because I didn't get the house cleaned.

Okay, so what happens if you don't get the house clean?

Well, then I'll feel bad.

And I'll feel bad because I'm not doing what I should.

Right.

So there's.

That should.

And there's always.

There's always things underneath.

And if we see those and take a step back, it's beautiful.

And many of us, and me, in a lot of ways, Kate, are going through this journey for the first time creating boundaries with people.

You don't have to show up all the time when you're a negative drain.

As ADHD women, we don't.

We get drained so much faster than other people, yet we're telling ourselves we're supposed to be doing this and that and we should be doing more when we have nothing to give.

And that's okay.

To model that for a child, be like, you know, I just need to sit here because my battery is on zero, so I just need a minute.

And they need to see that.

That's okay, too.

Yeah.

100.

I always say it's.

The modeling is if I can just pull back from plans or go and have a rest or say we're getting a takeaway tonight because I've been really busy all day, and I just don't have anything left.

Like, they can see where many of us may have been parented again by women or parents that have pushed through and have just lived.

Lived in this constant cycle of burnout.

And that burnout was just normalized.

It was just normalized.

Well, not just normalized, but praised.

Right.

If you push through, then that's good.

Yeah, but then that is.

That's just deemed as normal.

So if you're not in that state, there's something wrong.

You're not doing enough.

Why aren't you doing more?

You know, and it is, it's breaking it down.

Like it's okay to rest and decompress and pull back and have boundaries, but no one's told us that.

And again, I think this, this generation is the first generation that are using these words and vocalizing this externally, whereas.

We'Ve never had a lovely psychologist that I know, Hayden, and he talks a lot about permission slips.

And I love that, like looking on, you know, putting a post it note.

I give myself permission to.

Because we are allowed.

Even if we were younger, you know, we're.

We didn't know it.

We weren't allowed then, but we're allowed now.

You're allowed to say, I'm tired.

You're allowed to say that I have four things to do, but I have only the energy to do one.

Which one am I going to prioritize?

That's not being lazy.

That's being a lovely problem solver and showing your child that that's okay, that they do that too.

That their value isn't just about producing constantly.

Yeah, producing or showing up or putting your own needs last and pushing through, you know, because you want to please people or you don't want to let people down, or you don't want people to think badly about you.

And, and again, it's.

When you go back to that modeling, it's articulating it.

I've got a 14 year old daughter and I'm constantly saying to her, why are you doing that?

Are you doing that just because you don't want people to not like you?

Are you doing that because you think that it's.

You'll be a bad friend if you don't do that.

And yeah, I can kind of see that I'm annoying her by saying it, but I can also see that there's something going on and she's kind of like, oh, so I have permission.

Like, it's okay.

I'm not a bad person for saying no to my friend.

I love all of this.

I love what you do.

Holly, tell people about how they can find you and I guess about your podcast as well and what you talk about in your podcast.

Yes.

Thank you.

So the Autism ADHD podcast is this beautiful place where parents and professionals, therapists, coaches, educators can show up and hear amazing information, real strategies, real ways of showing up and supporting the mental health of ADHD and autistic kids.

It's been an honor to host this podcast.

So I hope all of you listening want to come on over because I think you'll like it.

I hope that you'll like it then.

Also, I have my private practice in Raleigh, North Carolina, where we do mental health therapy and also evaluations and our specialty is neurodiversity.

So we typically see kids and a lot of things can fall under neur diversity, but we often see kids that would have a diagnosis of autism or ADHD because anxiety and depression occurs so much more with for them.

Right.

And adults as well.

They've been carrying this all their lives on the side of the podcast and the private practice.

I also do continuing education for mental health therapists.

I also do coaching and we have parenting master classes and free resources.

All kinds of goodness for you.

Brilliant.

Well, I'll make sure that all the details are on the show.

Notes I can see very typical adhd.

You have so much to give and so much passion and lots of hands and arms, whatever the word is in the fire.

I think what I can't.

I always say the wrong word, the wrong saying, but you know what I mean.

Lots of, I know lots of plates spinning.

I would say lots with marbles on them.

Exactly.

And I understand completely.

But I think when we work in this area, our enthusiasm is, it's there to see.

And we, we do want to help and we see how many different people need this information.

You know, like you say, it's the educators, it's the mental health professionals, it's the parents, it's the kids themselves so they can self advocate.

And I think, you know, we can't talk about this enough.

So I'm delighted I'm going to be on your podcast or I will have been on it by the time this comes out.

So I'm happy that we're sharing each other's platforms and directing each other to all these different new resources.

And I just want to thank you, Holly, as well for your time and all the insights you've given us today.

It's been a real pleasure.

It's been great to be here.

Thanks.

If this episode has been helpful for you and you're looking for more tools and more guidance, my brand new book, the ADHD Women's well Being Toolkit is out now.

You can find it wherever you buy your books from.

You can also check out the audiobook if you do prefer to listen to me.

I have narrated it all myself.

Thank you so much for being here and I will see you for the next episode.