October is ADHD awareness month. This year ADHD New Zealand wants to share the stories of New Zealanders with ADHD, who have found careers and passions that work for them. It’s not an easy road when your neurons spark in a different way, and we hope these stories can inspire those with ADHD, and show others the amazing things we can do. 

ADHD New Zealand recieves no government funding for our operations - we exist thanks to the support of our incredible community. If you are able, please consider donating to help us continue our mahi (work.) 

Finding the lost generations of women

Before Chelsea Rowlands had her second child, she was a busy organisational development practitioner, but when she returned to work something had changed.

“It was a high demand, full-on job, which I loved, but when I went back after my son turned one, my capacity just wasn’t there anymore. I couldn’t think, I was a bare minimum mum when I got home each day. I felt like I was just losing the plot completely.”

There were so many things 

Alongside a new baby, Chelsea had a three-year-old daughter, who was having struggles of her own.

“We knew something was a bit different with our girl from about the age of two. She’s always felt the world differently, in ways other kids her age didn’t. We had a lot going on with her, there was a big demand there, and then our second came along and the demand obviously grew.”

Chelsea was also experiencing health challenges, including endometriosis, and complications from a traumatic birth. “We couldn’t pin down what exactly was going on with me, because there were so many things.”

Something had to give 

Both Chelsea and her husband worked long hours, so there was little in the tank for either of them. In the end, something had to give, and she made the decision to resign from her job.

“Basically, nothing was working, either at home or at work. I was at burnout point and leaving my job was the clearest solution,” she said. 

Finding roots Rotorua 

Chelsea left the workforce for nearly four years, focusing on being a stay-at-home mum and finding support for her daughter. The family moved to Rotorua from Auckland in 2022 for the lifestyle, and to be closer to family. 

The move also gave Chelsea the breathing space to think about a career change that would work for her, which lead to retraining as a health coach. You can read about Chelsea’s mahi in this space here: From battling burnout to supporting neurodivergent wāhine

Answers and more questions

Moving towns made a big difference for Chelsea and her family, but when their daughter started school, her struggles came to the fore. “We really saw her challenges playing out for her, so decided to look into the assessment process for autism or ADHD.”

This was the beginning of a complex journey many families undertake when seeking a neurodivergence diagnosis for their child. 

“She was a six-year-old girl, presenting with many symptoms, but not consistently enough at both home and school, to qualify for a diagnosis, which is not uncommon unfortunately.” 

Alarm bells started ringing in my brain

During the diagnosis process, other issues came to light, which gave some helpful insights into what else could be going on, Chelsea said. She began her own research into what they needed to do as parents to support their daughter.

“Because I have a psychology background, I love to dive deep into how the brain works, different ways of thinking and processing, it’s one of my specialist interest areas.”

As she began investigating neurodivergence in girls, and in particular ADHD, the penny began to drop. 

“No doctors had mentioned ADHD to me when I had appointments for various unexplainable issues, my parents had never considered it when I was having challenges as a teenager and young adult,” she said. 

“All of these alarm bells started ringing in my brain. I was thinking ‘I relate to a lot of this stuff on a very deep level’.

I was a prefect, I did a gap year 

Realising she might be neurodivergent herself was a shock to Chelsea, because she had subconsciously hidden that part of her so well. 

“I was a high performer at school and in my career, I was a prefect, I did a gap year, I got a master’s degree. I was doing all the things, so there couldn’t have been anything ‘wrong’ with me.” 

Cut and dry 

Chelsea was diagnosed with combined ADHD in May this year (2025), an experience is which still fresh. Like many people approaching ADHD diagnosis, she worried she had been finding the answers she wanted to hear, or that she wouldn’t be believed. 

The psychiatrist assessing her put those fears to bed early on. “She said ‘I know, because of your psychology background, you are probably second guessing yourself, that you’re just trying to fit into a box.’ Then she showed me the data from my assessment results.

“She said, ‘you’ve got the knowledge, so this will make sense to you. Look, you’re in the 99th percentile. We can’t get any clearer than that.’” 

Validation and grief 

While the outcome of Chelsea’s diagnosis was positive, she is still processing a lot. “There’s definitely this period of grieving in a way. I don’t want to look backwards and dwell on the negatives, but it’s like there’s an amalgamation of past you with the future you.

"Yes, all those things I experienced could have been different, or easier, but also – I did so well, despite dealing with undiagnosed ADHD, and that’s promising for future me.” 

Chelsea sees this as important validation that her struggles were real. “I was finding things harder than those around me for a reason. I hear this from other undiagnosed women, this constant inner dialogue of ‘everyone else is doing life fine. Why are you struggling? Sort yourself out.'"

I feel like you’re two different people

Many neurodivergent people, especially those who are undiagnosed, learn to suppress their natural traits and behaviours to fit in. This concept is known as ‘masking’, and it can be exhausting. Understanding this was another piece of the puzzle for Chelsea and her daughter. 

“My husband used to comment on it all the time. He’d say, ‘I feel like you are two different people. We’ll go out to a social event, and you are ‘on’, and you are sparkly and shiny, this incredible version of yourself. Then we get home and you crash, and you’re a nightmare to be around for a while.’”

That’s one of the tragic things about unmanaged neurodivergence, Chelsea says. The people we care about the most, who we feel safest around, get the worst version of us.

You’ve just got to give her an hour

Chelsea recognises these masking patterns in her daughter as well. “She’ll walk through the front door, and it’s like you can literally see the mask coming off. You’ve just got to give her an hour to decompress and recentre.”

Learning what’s going on behind the mood changes has been a positive step for them both. “We’ve talked about the big moods a lot and she gets it. She’s an amazing kid, she’s incredibly bright and empathetic, but she does find life hard. She will always come back and apologise. She gets so upset that she’s taken it out on us, but she’s got no control over it, the brain is offline.” 

You’re passionate about life again

When Chelsea was diagnosed, her ADHD was so debilitating she wasn’t achieving in any aspect of her life. “Everything was just too hard, I felt like I was slipping backwards,” she said.

This was the point she decided to trial medication. Her psychiatrist also suggested it would be a foolproof way to know for herself that she really did have ADHD. For Chelsea it was “an absolute game-changer.”

 “Everyone close to me has noticed, which is really validating because you kind of think, ‘is it just me that’s feeling the difference?’”

Her husband noticed especially. “He was hesitant about the medication initially, because of the stigma about it altering personality, and the misinformation it can be addictive. But a few months in he said, ‘I’ve got my wife back. You’re a functioning human, you’re an engaged mum, you’re passionate about life again.’

”I dumbed down every aspect of myself" 

Chelsea now recognises how much work she’s put in to make life easier for others. “I unconsciously dumbed down a lot of who I was to fit in, to make things work, to not be an inconvenience."

“I shrank to accommodate everyone else, but this meant nobody accommodated me. I’m not sure I even knew what my needs were with all the masking.

"So that meant, at 31, when I had two babies and a demanding career, the sh*t hit the fan in a huge way, because I could no longer accommodate all the things and all the people anymore."

The chameleon version of ADHD 

Through her life and practice, Chelsea has seen two masking versions with ADHD. Those who mask through being bold, unapologetic and ‘out there,’ and “the chameleon version.”

“That’s very much me,” she says. “You tailor yourself to every situation because you’ve got that awareness, you can see the patterns. You can see people, you can see the expectations, you do all that math and then the skin goes on. This is the version I need to be in this environment. That was my protective mechanism.”

“Then you get to the point when it’s just you by yourself, with nobody to perform to, and you don't really know who you are on your own. There's a lot of self-discovery work to be done once you learn what you've been doing to manage most of your life,” she said. 

The curse of high achievement 

One struggle Chelsea recognises in herself, and the wāhine she works with, is the double-edged sword of being high achieving and bright. People often don’t understand, or accept, that you’re struggling, if you are doing well in a technical capacity. 

“Everyone’s prepared to ignore the other stuff if you can get the things they need from you done. That’s what happened to me at school, across my career, and it’s what ’s happening for my clients in their careers, and at home too,” she said. 

When certain behaviour boxes aren’t ticked 

Chelsea is seeing this play out again with her daughter in the classroom. “She’s achieving, she’s above average in her academics, she’s not causing major problems in class. She’ll have the occasional meltdown, but the teachers aren’t bothered by that in the grand scheme of things,” she said. 

Chelsea has explained to teachers their perception of her daughter not struggling is not how she actually feels. “She’s a girl who masks to fit in, but it doesn’t mean the signs aren’t there.  I know it's hard as a teacher to see every kid clearly, but it would help so much to look a little deeper,” she said. 

“It’s awful to be told your child isn't seen having a hard time because certain behaviour boxes aren't ticked. We know our kid, we see the fallout of that ‘non-struggle’ every day at 3pm,” she said. 

The lost generations of women 

Chelsea feels a lot of sadness for our parents and grandparents, who never had the chance to learn about their own neurodivergence, and never discovered how to cope. “It’s that lost generation of women. It’s really heartbreaking,” she said.

Those of us in our 30s to 50s have even earned a nickname in research. “They’re calling us the generations of ‘lost girls’. We were the ones who should have been caught at primary school, but ADHD didn’t exist back then, and it certainly didn’t for girls.”

Hidden in the school reports

But if you lined up all our school reports, the themes would stand out a mile, Chelsea says. 

“For me, primary school and intermediate reports were all along the lines of ‘she would excel if she could focus more, apply herself to subjects she doesn’t like, and talk less in class.’ In my earlier primary years, I remember being sat in the corner because I would finish my work early and start distracting others.”

When Chelsea summarised these themes during her ADHD assessment, the psychiatrist was not surprised.

“She said, ‘it’s heartbreaking that there’s this whole group of you who went through the exact same system and situations, and now it’s clear as day you all had ADHD or autism, or both. It’s heartbreaking that you had to struggle for so many years and you’re only now able to get on top of it.’”

But you’ve always managed

When Chelsea began talking about finding ways to accommodate her neurodivergence, there were people who challenged the idea. “It was this whole dialogue of ‘but you’ve always managed, you’ve always achieved, why does that have to change now?’

"My response to that now I have my diagnosis is, ‘yeah, I did manage, and I was miserable,” she said. “I was exhausted all the time. No matter how much I slept, I never got back to baseline. I didn’t socialise on weekends, I was missing my kids’ sports and not seeing my friends because I just couldn’t function. That’s not normal, and I don’t want that for my life.’

"I’ve always done things by the book, for the system I was in, and the people I was with, but when I tried to accommodate myself, people saw that as inconvenient,” she said.    

Chelsea is now figuring out how to accommodate herself, and learning what her capacity looks like.

“I know now that my energy levels and capacity change often, they’re just not consistent with ADHD, which can frustrate people. But I’m sorry, I’m now going to work with that, and maybe be a bit inconvenient for a change.” 

You can read about how Chelsea has managed to work within her capacity, while supporting other neurodivergent wāhine here:
From battling burnout to supporting neurodivergent wāhine

For more stories about ADHD Aotearoa, visit: This is ADHD

Supporting ADHD New Zealand 

ADHD New Zealand is a non-profit organisation, committed to supporting those living with ADHD and their whānau, through practical information and support. We are made up of, and are here because of, members of the neurodivergent community. We get no government funding for our operations. Every course, every support group, and every piece of advocacy is made possible by the generosity of our donors, and we are so grateful.

If you would like to contribute to our ADHD Awareness Month appeal (or on any month of the year) visit our donation page.