About

ADHD Liberation is run by a late-self-diagnosed queer ADHD woman who wants to change the world (and live her best life in the process).

About the Author

Photo of Emma

Hi, my name is Emma Love Arbogast. I am an inner-work artist who writes about healing, self-love, and self-liberation. I write a Substack newsletter at sparkly dark and a blog at Joy Ninja.

I realized I was ADHD at 42 when it dawned on me that all my favorite writers and most of my close friends were neurodivergent. (Also, perimenopause trashed my working memory even more, so it became more obvious. ?)

How This Got Started

ADHD Liberation arose from conversations with an ADHD friend of mine, LiLi K. Bright when I was first realizing I was ADHD. They revolved around how the diagnostic tests are unhelpful when you have spent a lifetime masking, and what living with adult ADHD really feels like.

What ADHDLib Is About

I want to help do for ADHD what is being done for autism: I want to reframe ADHD as a neurotype rather than a disorder.

I want to do this for you, and the world, but also for myself. Being a late-self-diagnosed ADHDer, I need to figure out what unmasking means to me, what accommodations are available, what self-accommodations I can give myself, and how to move forward as my integrated neurodivergent self. And I figure things out by making websites about them.

Realizing I am ADHD changed how I see myself, but also how I see the world. It reframed my entire life, from the bullying I experienced throughout my school years, to my difficulty participating consistently in capitalism.

ADHDLib is about liberating ourselves, and changing the world to make space for us. It’s about making our personal worlds, and the world at large, work better for us. Because the difficulties I have in life are not because there is something wrong with me; it’s because there is something wrong with the world, that needs to change.