My marriage ended after 22 years — and I now know this disorder was to blame
For the Daily Mail, Tracey wrote about the day her 22-year marriage was officially dissolved — and, by coincidence, the same day she was finally diagnosed with combined ADHD at 53. A raw account of the diagnostic gap women in midlife are only just starting to close.
Impulsive purchases, chaotic timekeeping, boundless energy, meltdowns dismissed for two decades as PMT or hormones. For the Daily Mail, Tracey unpacked how a friend's off-the-cuff suggestion — after she'd been threatened with court over a forgotten speeding ticket — led to a combined ADHD diagnosis at 53, delivered by Zoom on the same afternoon her divorce was finalised. She weaves in the numbers (ADHD diagnoses among women 30–49 nearly doubled between 2020 and 2022; 94% of women with ADHD say perimenopause makes it worse) and lands on a quieter thought: "I wasn't just a person who had failed. There was a real neurological reason for much of my behaviour." Her new mantra: I'm not too much, I am enough.