Showcasing 31 Super Heumans for ADHD Awareness Month

It seems like every year there’s another dozen or so ‘National Day of …’ or ‘Wear this colour to raise awareness for…’.

Working in advertising and marketing for a lot of my career, I can’t count the number of times we received a brief that basically said ‘We’d like you to turn our cause into an international movement just like Movember’. (Because it’s just that easy, right!?)

And yet, a full year after being diagnosed with ADHD at age 40, I’m still shocked at just how unaware I truly was.

• Pervasive myths

• Dismissive teachers

• Poorly trained practitioners, misdiagnosis many times

• Young parents, doing the best they could with limited information or agency

It’s the same sad story, repeated several hundred million times for decades.

So do I really think the world needs another awareness month? No.

Do any of us really believe that nominating October 2024 as the best time for hundreds of disparate organisations to coordinate their marketing efforts will make a huge impact on how society views neurodiversity? Probably not.

But one thing I’m 100% certain of: No matter how painful it was to mourn for the lives I ‘coulda / woulda / shoulda’ had, every single day since learning the truth about ADHD has felt like a gift.

Not because everything is suddenly easier (it’s not).

And not because I’m so proud to wield this awesome superpower (I’m not, because it’s not).

Finding out I have ADHD feels like a gift, because for the first time in my entire life, I don’t feel so alone.

So with that in mind, I’ve decided to use some of my actual super powers to design a series of trading cards, celebrating 31 Super Heumans with ADHD.

You can follow along on our new Threads account, otherwise check back to see a new ADHDVIP every day in October.