Post # 24: Masks
The Inner World
“Masks” by Shel Silverstein has always hit me hard.
I’ve always found this poem heartbreaking, especially thinking about adults with ADHD. It’s so poignant, and it captures something I’ve watched play out for decades: people hiding who they are, searching for “their people,” and walking right past each other because everyone is masked.
Recently, in a group I led for women with ADHD, something happened that stopped me in my tracks.
If this had occurred when I started working in this field in the late 1980s, it would have been unheard of.
Now, especially among women under fifty, I’m seeing a very different relationship with ADHD. They still struggle, still compare, still mask—but the distance they have to travel to speak openly is much shorter. The emotional leap is not as terrifying as it once was.
Here’s what happened.
This mom with ADHD, let’s call her Stacy, was standing in the school pickup line. Like many of the women I work with, she felt different from the “neurotypical” moms around her—those same moms so many describe as intimidating in the car line, at drop-off, at PTA meetings.
She noticed herself starting to do what so many of us do: pulling back. Saying no to mom coffee get-togethers, avoiding committees. Withdrawing from activities she found difficult, draining, or simply not interesting.
In my book Journeys Through Adulthood, I describe what I call the connection/protection continuum:
that constant balancing act between:
Protecting your own needs so you can function and feel well vs. Connecting with others, sometimes at the expense of those needs
Some of us become overprotected and isolated. Others become over-connected and exhausted.
Stacy, who grew up in a very different world than those of us diagnosed during the infancy of the field, managed to find that balance, right there in the pickup line.
Another mom asked her to volunteer for a committee she had no interest in. In the past, the script might have been: say yes, people-please, overcommit, then drown in resentment and burnout. Or say no, disappear, and feel lonely and “less than.”
Instead, she did something beautifully simple and, to me, revolutionary.
She said:
“You know, I don’t really enjoy those kinds of activities.
But I would like to get together. Here’s the kind of thing I do like to do: ______.
Would you want to do that instead?”
That’s it.
But that’s everything.
This was the purest example of protect and connect I could imagine—an idea I first wrote about in 2002 and have been teaching ever since.
She didn’t mask.
She didn’t pretend to like something she didn’t.
She didn’t withdraw or disappear, either.
She put her real self on the table:
“This is who I am.”
“This is what I actually like.”
“Here’s how I can connect—do you want to join me?”
In doing that, she gave herself:
The relief and exhilaration of being honest
A real chance to connect with someone over something she genuinely enjoys
A place of her own, instead of trying to squeeze into someone else’s mold
And she gave the other mom something too:
Permission.
Permission to say, “I don’t like that either, but I do like this.”
Permission to drop a bit of her own mask.
Maybe that mom doesn’t have ADHD—but maybe she has something else she’s hiding, something that makes her feel different or ashamed or alone.
By being honest, this woman opened a door for everyone around her to be a little more real.
What Stacy did was claim a space of her own instead of just trying to fit into the “dominant culture” of school moms. She wasn’t measuring her worth by how well she matched their preferences. She was essentially saying:
“This is me.
This is how I’m wired.
This is where I feel alive.
If you want to join me here, I’d love that.”
That’s what masks prevent.
That’s what “blue skin” people searching for each other can miss for a lifetime.
So: bravo to Stacy, and to this generation of women with ADHD who are taking more risks to say who they are, and inviting people to their party, instead of constantly asking, “How do I fit in?” or “Do I fit in well enough to be worthy?”
Back to Masks:
There may be another mom in that pickup line who is far more like Stacy on the inside than she looks on the outside. Without Stacy’s honesty, they could stand five feet apart for years and never know it.
Because Stacy spoke up—
“I don’t like this, but I do like that. Want to join me?”—
she doesn’t have to pass everyone by, day after day, never knowing who she might be missing, or who might be missing her.
So I’ll leave you with this:
Who might you want to open up to, just a little more?
Where might you be able to protect your needs and stay open to someone else at the same time?
Who are you searching for—and where might you be silently walking past someone more like you than you can imagine?
If you try this—one small, honest statement, one small invitation in your own direction—I’d love to hear what you notice.
"Sometimes saying no to others is saying yes to ourselves." - Mattering, by Jennifer Breheny Wallace. The inner work that comes with an adult diagnosis is so layered and complicated. It requires deeply knowing yourself and your triggers, desires, and values. Also, understanding that change is inevitable and messy, I give myself full permission to be honest with myself and others!
When I first recognized my ADHD as an older adult, I remember asking for some help at the library to print a document. I said that my ADHD was kicking in and I could use an assist. She gave me all the help I needed and I felt great that I had just come out with a request. It was liberating! We have to stop hiding and normalize how we feel..ask for help and find like-minded people. I recently hired a trainer at my gym and mentioned that I had ADHD and often couldn’t remember directions. She said, “I have ADHD, too”