Reflecting on how sobriety, menopause and understanding my neurodivergent brain helped me build a more authentic life
I’ve been thinking recently about how strange life can be sometimes. If someone had told me ten years ago that choosing sobriety, navigating menopause and discovering that I am both ADHD and autistic would eventually lead me towards a greater sense of peace and purpose, I don’t think I would have believed them.
At the time, none of those experiences felt particularly positive.
For a long time, alcohol genuinely felt helpful. It quietened the relentless mental chatter, softened my anxiety and helped me manage feelings of overwhelm that I didn’t yet understand. Looking back now, I can see that I had unknowingly been using alcohol to cope with an ADHD and autistic brain that had gone unrecognised for decades.
But over time, the relationship I had with alcohol began to change. What had initially felt helpful gradually stopped working in the same way. Instead, I found myself becoming increasingly reliant on it whilst experiencing growing levels of anxiety and distress. The very thing I had turned to for relief was beginning to exacerbate the problems I had been trying to escape from.
Eventually, alcohol wasn’t simply something I wanted to stop drinking. It had become something I needed to stop drinking because it was beginning to take over my life. I had developed a dependence on it, and I knew that if things continued as they were, the consequences could be serious.
Choosing sobriety wasn’t easy, but it became necessary. Whilst I couldn’t have known it at the time, that decision would become one of the first steps towards understanding myself more deeply and building a life that felt more authentic.
Then came menopause.
Many of the strategies I had unknowingly relied upon throughout my life simply stopped working. I felt exhausted, overwhelmed and increasingly disconnected from the version of myself I thought I was supposed to be. Looking back now, I can see that menopause wasn’t creating entirely new challenges. Instead, it was amplifying difficulties that had always been there and making them impossible to ignore.
And then came late discovery.
Learning that I am both ADHD and autistic didn’t change who I was, but it fundamentally changed how I understood myself. Suddenly, decades of experiences that had felt confusing or isolating began to make sense.
Looking back now, it feels as though each of these experiences was gently nudging me towards a deeper understanding of myself, although I certainly couldn’t see it at the time.
For much of my life, I had been trying to fit into expectations that never felt entirely comfortable. I had become very good at masking, adapting and pushing through, often at the expense of my own wellbeing.
I suspect many women can relate to this. We learn to carry on. We look after everyone else. We keep all the plates spinning. And somewhere along the way, we can lose sight of ourselves.
- Sobriety invited me to become more honest with myself.
- Menopause made it increasingly difficult to ignore the fact that something wasn’t working.
- Late discovery helped me understand why.
It wasn’t an overnight transformation, and I don’t think journeys like these ever are. There was grief, relief, anger and compassion. There was a gradual unravelling of beliefs I had held about myself for decades.
Perhaps the biggest shift has been moving away from trying to become the person I thought I should be and instead learning to appreciate the person I have been all along. That doesn’t mean life is suddenly easy. I still experience challenges and difficult days. I still find myself falling back into old patterns of self-criticism from time to time.
But I also experience something that felt much harder to access in earlier chapters of my life.
Peace.
Not all the time, of course. I don’t think that’s realistic. But enough to notice the difference. Enough to recognise that constantly fighting against myself was exhausting. Enough to understand that authenticity feels much gentler than striving.
And purpose.
Not because I have all the answers, but because my experiences have shaped the work I now do supporting other women navigating menopause and late-discovered neurodivergence. The things that once caused me confusion have become some of my greatest sources of understanding and connection.
I sometimes wonder whether purpose isn’t necessarily something we find. Perhaps it’s something we slowly uncover as we begin understanding ourselves more fully.
If you’re currently in the middle of your own period of chaos or confusion, I know how difficult it can feel. I also know that whilst we rarely get to choose the challenges life presents us with, we can sometimes discover unexpected gifts within them.
Sometimes the experiences that unravel us also help us rebuild. Perhaps not into who we thought we should be, but into who we have been all along.