An Open Letter to Liberty University and David Nasser

So out of the 20+ speakers who are scheduled for the upcoming Fall 2015 Liberty University convocation this year, only 5 of these are women, and one of them has a man scheduled to speak the same day.

First of all, I would like to take a moment to write specifically to David Nasser. Pastor Nasser, I applaud you and your work here at Liberty University. I do. I am in full support of you and everything you have done for this school even in the single year you have been here. I could not be happier with a campus pastor. I know you faced a lot of opposition from a lot of different people here since you joined the LU family. And on behalf of the student body and those who agree with me, I sincerely apologize. You do not deserve, nor have you done anything to deserve, the criticism and the terrible words you received. You are a blessing to this school and I am excited and expectant to see what positivity you bring to us in the years to come.

But, to whom it may concern, and to you as well, Pastor, I want to extend a suggestion: You need to bring on more women convocation speakers. Approximately 56.5% of both the residential and online population or Liberty University is female. That is your demographic. These young women are the majority. Young women don’t need middle age, married men with 2.5 children telling them how to live out their faith. They need older women who have successfully navigated the world both as a Christian and as a woman, as well as everything else that comes along with those titles. If any of the young women (or any of the women for that matter), who sit on campus or who watch live streams of convocation come from a similar background I do, they didn’t have a lot of women leaders. They didn’t have good, godly, Christian examples to look up to. They had mothers and grandmothers, yes, but they almost certainly did not have other women they were taught about or they heard about who were successful in their fields and lives and who were also Christians. I know I did not. Now, we are in college or we are continuing our education, and in this time we have to expand our horizons and see farther beyond our homes and our childhoods, we still do not have strong, Christian women to look up to and to sit under. We are still listening to men. And yes, men are the ones who God ordained to be pastors. I understand that and agree with that. It is biblically-based and sound.

 But, Liberty University, you do not invite just pastors onto your stage. You invite all kinds of people into Vines Center. You invite politicians and journalists and authors and comedians and missionaries and performers into our Liberty Bubble. So why can’t any of these people be women? There are women politicians and journalists and authors and comedians and missionaries and performers who are all successful and who are very good examples to bring in. Women have just as much experience in their lifetimes as their male counterparts do, and sometimes, they even have more experience. Yet we do not see them, and we do not know how to find these women. Liberty, you have an incredible opportunity to pour into the lives of these women. Because women are the doer’s of the world. Women do not sit and talk as men do. Women stand up, and women wake up before dawn, and women get things done. And this generation of women are so eager to get up and to move and to get things done. But when we do not see any other generations in front of us encouraging us on, we become disheartened and discontent.

This generation of Christian women do not need an older generation of men telling them the same thing 20 different ways. We NEED to see more successful women. We NEED to see Christian women who have overcome the stigma of being a woman. We do not need men telling us how they think we should succeed. We need women showing use how they themselves succeeded.

You have one TBA spot open in the Fall semester. I ask and I pray that you all deeply consider bringing in a woman to speak.

Frustrated and discouraged, 

Emily E. 

My Brain is not a Joke

   

               

"Q: How many people with ADHD does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: Wanna go ride a bike?"

Why is my disorder a joke? Why are the drugs that can genuinely help the people like me so widely abused and are also the punchlines of so many jokes?  I have felt like this for a very long time. ADHD is very hard to live with. And ADHD is not a joke. But yet, that's how the world sees it. I've talked about my struggle to cope with being neuroatypical before, and I feel like it still needs to be addressed. Because everyone sees it as a joke. And I'm emotionally tired of having to show a half-hearted smile when people try to make those jokes about it. MY BRAIN IS NOT A JOKE!

And it hurts me. It hurts my self-esteem, it hurts my countenance, it hurts my heart when people, even those close to me, joke about it. Because even after being diagnosed for over a decade, every single day is a struggle. Every single day is hard to get through. And for so many of us, ADHD is just the beginning. There are seven different kinds of ADHD, and all of them can lead to other mental disorders. I have anxiety, and from that combination comes a Body-Focused Repetitive Behavior (BFRB) called Dermatillomania, which involves a hyper-focus on picking at the skin. I am most likely going to develop depression at some point in my life. ADHD affects every part of my life, and it will until the day I die. And yet people still think jokes are appropriate. 

Would you make a joke about Autism or Asperger's? Would you make a joke about cancer or an autoimmune disease? No, you wouldn't. So why do people make jokes about ADHD? ADHD is a mental disorder. Mental disorders affect the brain. The brain is an organ. THERE IS AN ORGAN IN A PERSON'S BODY THAT IS NOT FUNCTIONING AS A TYPICAL ORGAN SHOULD. So how is that a joke? How are peoples' daily struggles a joke to the world? Is it because it is a relatively new disorder? Is it that there has been an over-diagnosis among young children? 

Every single day is a struggle for me. It takes every ounce of energy I have to get out of bed at a decent hour, and even more concentration to get myself ready. As soon as I wake up, I am aware of everything that is in my room and the bathroom next door. I can hear every person in my house, and I can feel every living thing's presence in my house. I can hear the machines and computers that are on. Every single sound that is background noise to most people bombards my thoughts. 

I have become so strict and so meticulous about how everything in my personal spaces should be organized that it is almost a nightmare and is overwhelming if something is not in place. Everything has a specific place, and if it doesn't, every single second is spent trying to figure out where it's home is. I have to set five alarms every single day or I won't get up on time in order to do all the things I need to do.

I have an incredibly creative brain, but there is so much tossing around in it that I don't know how to bring it all out. My creativity output is nowhere near the amount of creative thought that happens at every single second of every single day. There would be no way I could ever get it all out. And quite often, if I don't make a note of an idea, I won't be able to remember it later. I am also incredibly smart, but it doesn't come across sometimes because I am notoriously reckless. Actions are not always thought out all the way through and consequences are not foreseen. That makes me seem really, really stupid sometimes. And I'm not stupid. Not at all. I talk because sometimes my brain is going to fast for my tongue or my fingers so when I say something I'll stutter on a single word for a while until I catch up with the rest of the thought, or sometimes when I'm typing or texting in an informal situation, I will type too quickly to realize that I skipped entire sentences or I misspelled words.

My brain is not a joke. I don't if it's a family member or a stranger, or even someone who has ADHD as well who says it. Mental illness is not a joke. It never has been and it never will be.

Emily E.

Midnight Thinking

So, I have had a really crumby day, and I can’t sleep because my brain is a real jerk sometimes. I just haven’t been feeling very motivated to do anything lately, and even though I’ve been trying to get in shape and get healthy and feel good about myself, the past week or so has just made me feel really insecure about my body, and today it all built upon itself and I feel terrible. I don’t like my body. It’s springtime and that means that there are a lot of people who are wearing short sleeves and shorts and dresses and all that happy fun stuff, and I have (stupidly) started comparing myself to all of the skinny, petite girls I see on campus. And that’s not healthy and I know it, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t do it or that I find it easy to ignore it.

Let’s face it. I am a girl who has grown up in a western 1^st world country, in which the female ideal fed to society is that of being skinny, blonde, long-haired, and clear-skinned. I am none of those (well, at the moment. I am a natural blonde and I do not enjoy my natural color, and long hair looks weird on me.) I am chubby, I gained more weight than I care to admit in the past year I’ve been away at school, my face has been breaking out lately, and compared to every other girl I see I do not feel beautiful.

And that is the key, I do not feel beautiful. I know that I am, but lately, it’s been incredibly hard to believe. And while I am sitting here watching Daredevil and looking at workouts and feeling sorry for myself and lying in bed covered in self-hatred, I decided to write. Because writing, in all its magic and mystery and power, is the most cathartic tool in my self-care arsenal. And I don’t know what I am writing, I don’t know why I want to write, after all this time of trying to write a number of different posts and coming up blanker than a painting of a rabbit in a snowstorm. I don’t know why I want to write about my body.

Truth be told, I hate my body. I hate my hair, how straight it is. I hate my hair, how it doesn’t hold a curl or hold any sort of shape whatsoever. I hate that my hair doesn’t do what I want it to do. I hate how I hold so much of my self-worth and my self-esteem in my hair. I hate how I don’t trust anyone but my hairdresser to touch it. I hate my face, I hate the shape of it, and I hate that I have gained weight on it. I hate how I have too small features, and how my forehead always breaks out first. I hate that my eyebrows don’t arch naturally and that they look like straight lines running toward either ear. I hate my eyes and how they are so boringly brown. I hate that I can count the number of people who have ever complimented the color of my eyes on one hand. I hate my nose, how one side sticks out a bit from where I ran into a telephone pole in middle school. I hate that it is constantly covered in irremovable blackheads that will not go away for anything. I hate that I still have dark inner corners under my eyes, and how they will probably never going to go away. I hate how my cheeks get terribly red when I get nervous, when I get embarrassed, when I work out, and how they don’t go back to normal until it is two hours later and I look like a flushed, drunken girl. I hate my lips, that they are too small, and how I will never be able to project my voice loud enough to take a lead in a song because I cannot open my mouth any wider. I hate that my jawline has disappeared, and how nice and tight and clean and straight it used to be. I hate that I tilt my head down slightly and I make a double (heck, sometimes even triple) chin.

I hate my neck, how at the back of it there’s a lump above my spine that sticks out horribly. I hate that a muscle in the left side is always hurting. I hate my shoulders, how one doesn’t fit in place properly, and how one fits a little too properly. I hate that all I have to do is move it and it pops. I hate my back, for being so crooked and bent and broken that it hurts. I hate that my back causes every part of my body to be crooked, and how nothing is even anymore. I hate my collarbones, how I can’t see them anymore, and how nice they looked when I was smaller. I hate my chest, how it breaks out in acne for no reason at all. I hate my lungs because they can’t hold all the breath I need them to and how they are the first to act out when I have an anxiety attack. I hate my stomach for not being able to eat before 9 am. I hate that my stomach isn’t flat anymore, how it’s bloated and clinging to the fat and the sugar and the other foods I have tried to stop eating. I hate my uterus, for extracting revenge on me every month because surprise, surprise, no baby has been made. (Woman’s body want baby, woman doesn’t want baby, woman’s body takes revenge) I hate that it puts me in pain.

I hate my thighs, how they are so big and covered in stretch marks. How they run into things constantly. I hate my knees for bending the wrong ways, and for popping when I stand up, and for hurting for no good reason at all. I hate my calves and my muscles for tightening up when I walk and for cramping up when I’m lying in bed. I hate how I have to constantly shave to keep them looking decent. I hate my ankles for being dry and flaky and gross. I hate my feet for being too big, for being calloused and discolored. I hate my toes for bending funny and pointing in weird directions. 

 So, I have had a really crumby day, and I can’t sleep because my brain is a real jerk sometimes. I just haven’t been feeling very motivated to do anything lately, and even though I’ve been trying to get in shape and get healthy and feel good about myself, the past week or so has just made me feel really insecure about my body, and today it all built upon itself and I feel terrible. I don’t like my body. It’s springtime and that means that there are a lot of people who are wearing short sleeves and shorts and dresses and all that happy fun stuff, and I have (stupidly) started comparing myself to all of the skinny, petite girls I see on campus. And that’s not healthy and I know it, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t do it or that I find it easy to ignore it.

Let’s face it. I am a girl who has grown up in a western 1st world country, in which the female ideal fed to society is that of being skinny, blonde, long-haired, and clear-skinned. I am none of those (well, at the moment. I am a natural blonde and I do not enjoy my natural color, and long hair looks weird on me.) I am chubby, I gained more weight than I care to admit in the past year I’ve been away at school, my face has been breaking out lately, and compared to every other girl I see I do not feel beautiful.

And that is the key, I do not feel beautiful. I know that I am, but lately, it’s been incredibly hard to believe. And while I am sitting here watching Daredevil and looking at workouts and feeling sorry for myself and lying in bed covered in self-hatred, I decided to write. Because writing, in all its magic and mystery and power, is the most cathartic tool in my self-care arsenal. And I don’t know what I am writing, I don’t know why I want to write, after all this time of trying to write a number of different posts and coming up blanker than a painting of a rabbit in a snowstorm. I don’t know why I want to write about my body.

Truth be told, I love my body. I love my hair, how I can easily experiment on it. I love my hair, how I can use it to express myself and my creativity. I love that I hold my self-esteem in the state of my hair, and how a good hair day equals a good day sometimes. I love that I value and respect this part of my body so much that I only trust one person to take care of it. I love my face, how it makes a wonderfully blank canvas to apply makeup and create art on. I love the shape of it, that it is versatile and has a captivity about it.  I love my forehead, how it is neither too small or too big. I love my eyebrows, how they do not fit the status quo or the fashion of the time, but rather how they fit perfectly within the proportions of my face and sit strongly above my eyes. I love my eyes and how they are so deeply brown. I love that they are beautiful but often overlooked, only noticed by those who make an effort to see them. I love my nose, how it fits perfectly with the rest of my silhouette when I turn to look at it in profile. I love the vein you can barely see against the skin under my right eye and how it will always be there. I love that my cheeks tend to give away my feelings, and how they show me that I have worked hard to keep the color in them after a workout. I love my lips, how they are perfectly set on my face and how they are perfectly shaped, not too full and not too flat for me. I love that my jawline is still visible and that in some moments it is still strong and tight and beautiful. I love that I can entertain myself and love myself, even with two or three chins.

I love my neck, how it helps me keep my chin up and my head held high. I love my shoulders, how they are strong and broad and able to carry the weight of more than I will ever be able to imagine. I love my back, for keeping me standing tall even when I do not feel like I can stand with confidence. I love my collarbones, for sticking out ever so slightly, and for helping me look healthy. I love my chest, how it keeps my lungs and heart inside and safe. I love my lungs, how, after all this time, they still do not stop working. I love that my stomach doesn’t hurt when I eat anymore. I love my stomach because it is not flat, it is not concave, and it is healthy. I love my uterus because one day it is going help me bring a beautiful life into the world. I love that it works just like it should.

I love my thighs, for how strong and sturdy they are. I love that they keep me standing and they do not let me fall. I love my knees for helping me walk and run and jump. I love my calves and muscles because they just look so. dang.good. I love my ankles for working and bending and twisting properly. I love my feet for keeping me grounded and for helping me feel the earth beneath me. I love my toes for helping me keep balanced and to help me go on adventures.

Because at the end of the day, it’s good to write down what you don’t like, but it’s good to counteract that with what you do. Because even loving yourself is something that I figured out a while ago, it is still a constant process and something I still have to learn every single day. 

Learning to love the body God gave me, 

Emily E. 

The Desire for Community and the Joy It Brings.

It's amazing the way things you knew before are reinforced throughout your life. As a child, I was taught that community is important, first with your family, second with your church, and third with your friends. And I feel as though the past couple of weeks I have been seeing this exemplified.

Spring Break has come and gone, my online classes are over, and I got a job (YAY!) I work 8:30-4:30 the days I go in, and that leaves me with a considerable amount of time to do stuff after I get off, and I get done with classes around the same time on those days. And it gives me the opportunity not only to take care of and focus on myself when I need to, but to also engage in the lives around me. I love to encourage and uplift people. It brings me joy to see other people happy and healthy. Seeing others praise God fills me with a desire to praise God. The community you surround yourself in will definitely influence the way you see life and the way you feel from day to day. But you also have the same ability to influence those around you.

My first day of work, I decided I was going to start working out. What??? If you know me, I would rather do anything else than workout most of the time. But this idea that I have an adult job in an office now and I have more adult responsibilities have given me a push to get into better shape I guess? I think a part of it is that I turned 20 over break and that was a hard thing to handle. I'm the second person in my close group of friends back home to age out of the teen years and that's a hard thing to deal with. But I decided to step up and go ahead and take care of myself now when I am already moderately healthy then try to tackle a bigger problem later. And one of the biggest reasons I've stuck with it for almost two weeks now without quitting is that I have a giant support group encouraging me to keep going and not give up and I want to keep up the work to prove to them that I can do it. Not in a prideful way, but in a "You encouraged me and I don't want to let you down" way. Having that community of people who will hold me accountable has helped me to keep going.

Within all relationships and communities, you must first uplift and take care of others, and they in return will uplift and take care of you. And throughout all of this mutual encouragement, God is constantly being praised and uplifted. And through community we become strong enough to handle tragedy, big or small. Community is the most important aspect of life for the Christian and is something the church of Acts understood very well.  They gathered together on the day of Pentecost (2:1) and were constantly meeting every day (2:46-47).

Gather together under the banner of Christ, rejoice with praise, bow in prayer, and love one another in community. Because at the end of our lives, all we have is Jesus and the community of Heaven.

In Christ, and In Love,
Emily E. 

Breaking a Paralyzed Heart

This week has been absolutely amazing so far. For those who do not know, Christine Caine, the founder of the A21 Campaign, one of the largest anti- trafficking organizations in the world, is launching her new project, Propel Women, this week and has chosen to kick it off here at Liberty. I will be writing a post on Saturday summing up the entire week, but I want to talk to you all specifically about tonight.

Tonight Christine spoke at Campus Community (previously named Campus Church), and it was a message straight from God. I feel like there is a lot I don't know how to get out in a way that makes sense, but I'm going to at least try. First I want to share some points I got from her sermon, and then what God revealed to me tonight.

• So many Christians live far beneath the freedom Christ died for.
• God needs and is looking for a generation that not only sings songs that say "no going back" but who believe it and is willing to act upon it.
• God is looking for and going to use unlikely people in unlikely places using an unlikely plan to gain an unlikely result.
• You don't know what God is going to do with you and where He is going to do it.
• We treat God like He doesn't know what we don't have, as if God doesn't know who He called. 
• The thing that makes you feel unqualified is the same thing God is going to use to bring Him the greatest glory. 
• Do not limit God's supernatural ability in and through your life.
• I do not have it all together, but God does have it all together.
• Would you just trust God?
• Begin the walk into freedom.

Tonight was, to quote Mrs. Caine, "awesome". But there was a lot to take in and a lot of realizations to wade through.

First, my heart has become paralyzed with fear and anxiety and doubt and worry. And all of these things have caused my heart and my spirit to become hardened and overwhelmed and this has caused me to push God away to a point. I have lost sight of the God and the heart of Jesus that I saw two years ago. The one that loves me no matter what.

Secondly, I've been trying to fix myself and my problems on my own again. Again. I've been trying to solve everything on my own. Take these oils, do these exercises, eat this not that, read these books. And while none of those are inherently bad, none of them are God. But when did I stop and pray? Where in that did I sit down and open my Bible? Why did I let my independent spirit push away the biggest Helper I have available to me?

I have lost sight of my long term vision. I have become so caught up in school that I've forgotten why I came here in the first place. I have forgotten my heart's true passion to help people. That is all my heart wants to do when fueled by the Holy Spirit. I want to help people, no matter what or in what way. And I can't help people when I have forgotten who it is who fuels that passion. I have gotten caught up in the waves of busyness and learning and discovery.

And I will call upon Your name

And keep my eyes above the waves

My eyes aren't above the ways. I can't even see the sun. How blind and ignorant I have become to my own pain and confusion.

That being said, I have come to the point where I cannot handle this on my own. I am not able to manage this by myself, but I don't know where to start in being able to get back on track. I will be looking into the school's counseling services. I've heard excellent things from other students who have benefited from their services and I believe this is what I need. I do not know how to handle myself anymore. 

I have lost sight of the me that Jesus sees. I have missed the passion that I had even a few months ago. I have lost sight of my Christ identity. It is going to be a journey to find it again, and it is going to be a struggle to repair my relationship with Christ again. But for me, I know that it will be much better to ask for help from the right people now than the wrong people then. 

So. Pray for me. Pray for the rest of this week on campus, and for the beginning of the Propel Women movement. 

I do not have it all together, but God does.

I do not have it all together, but God does.

I do not have it all together, but God does.

I DO NOT HAVE IT ALL TOGETHER, BUT GOD DOES.

Emily E.

My ADHD Story

My name is Emily.
I am 19 years old, and I was diagnosed with ADHD in 1st grade. After meeting with a child psychologist for six weeks, my mother did extensive research on how to best raise a child with ADHD and how to best equip me to live my daily life. Lately, I have been feeling the need to share my personal experiences of living with ADHD.

First of all, what is it? What do all the letters stand for?
Attention Deficit
Hyperactivity
Disorder

I put the first two together because it is meant to read like that. (Really, it's supposed to read AD/HD) ADD is a lack or concentration and attention. ADHD has the added behavior of hyperactivity within the brain and nervous system. The Amen (Ah-men, not Ay-men) Brain Clinics have done extensive research on the brains of ADHD patients and have reconstructed the way it is studied, diagnosed, and treated. They have wonderful resources, including an online comprehensive test to help point out which type of ADHD someone has, as well as, the option of going through a 30 day plan that will guide someone through learning to cope with their personal type of ADD. I recently took the test, and I have a combination of Over Focused, Temporal Lobe, and Anxious ADHD.

"Over focused ADD is typified by cognitive inflexibility, trouble shifting attention, being stuck on negative thoughts or behaviors, worry, oppositional, argumentative, and a need for routines."
"Temporal lobe ADD is typified by a short fuse, misinterpretation of comments, periods of anxiety, headaches, and abdominal pain, as well as memory problems."
"Anxious ADD is typified by inattentiveness, distractibility, disorganization, anxiety, tension, nervousness, and a proneness to physical symptoms of stress, such as headaches and G.I. (Gastrointestinal) problems." All of these put together make a lot of sense now.

After I was diagnosed, my mother and my pediatrician decided to try flax seed oil pills to see if that had an effect on anything. I took those for about a year while my mother tried a new drug called Straterra to see how it worked and if there were any negative side effects associated with this new class of drugs. After a year of being on it and having great success with it, mom asked the pediatrician if we could try Straterra for me. I did very well on it, and I stayed on it for nearly 10 years. Last August, I stopped taking it (not because I wanted to, but because I kept forgetting, imagine that), however, I felt it was doing more harm than good on the days I did remember to take it.

After a few weeks, I had a really hard time breathing one night. We couldn't figure out what it was, and we thought maybe my asthma had resurfaced. I went to the doctor a few days later and she said everything sounded fine.Turns out I had my first anxiety attack. So on top of learning how to cope with no medication, I now had to learn how to cope with anxiety issues. It's been a...hard year and a half, but I think learning this all now in college is better than in the workforce where there is no sympathy for mental illness. I think this year and a half is just the beginning of my journey with this, and I already know so much more than I did.

I've learned how to describe ADHD to people without it. Think about your brain as a standard door. It opens one way to let things from the outside in, and the other way to let things from the inside out. For most people, this door closes appropriately; not so for people with ADHD. For people like me, the door never closes. There is a constant wave of stimuli flowing into our mind, and our mind is desperately trying to read it and react to it all while trying to focus on our own thoughts as well. Yes, this means our brain is working in what could be considered overdrive.

All the time.

Always. Forever.

And we can not make it stop.

ADHD is like have a Ferrari motor and bicycle brakes. Stopping just is not a thing.

This often leads to our brains working overtime while we are ready to go to sleep and be done for the day. Which means insomnia is quite normal. It could also mean that since the day has calmed down, our own personal, creative thoughts are able to thrive and we feel the need to work them out. I spent many nights awake writing, reading, and painting in high school. I did not have a regular sleep schedule until this semester, and even then there were some nights I didn't get to sleep until 3 am. And you know what? I was an absolute disaster those days. My inattentiveness was at an all time high on the days I didn't get much sleep. I am moody and much more susceptible to anxiety attacks when I am not rested.

People with ADHD also tend to jump from one project to the to the next without finishing the first project. Which means our work and living spaces may be a bit...cluttered. Or messy. Or it might just look like a disaster area. But please, please don't ever, and I mean EVER move something without telling us you are and where you are putting it. We remember where we put everything. Except our keys and ID's. We never remember where those go. If you find them, please tell us. And yes, we have every intention of completing every single project.

However, we also tend to hyper-focus on a single task. So while we may not work on just one project at a time, we will obsessively focus on one until we burn out and hit a wall with it. Then we will drift around trying to figure out what thing to do next. We might possibly get depressed at this point because we don't know why we can't make any more progress, and now we don't know what to do next. We start to feel a little lost. And that's okay. When I hit a wall, I get really tired and I become very lost and whiney. This is also where the anxious part comes in. If I am not doing something I see as productive, I get very, very anxious and worried that I have forgotten to do something. Which leads to an anxiety attack. This is not a problem for the majority of the people with ADHD, though.

Because our brain is constantly going, we will forget about a lot of things. And I mean, I will forget you answered my question literally three seconds after you answer me and I will ask you again. My poor roommate has reminded me to not forget the tea I made more times than I care to admit. My friends will remind me of what time we are meeting at least three times in a conversation so I only ask them again once.  My mother reminds me of things I need to do  a half dozen times and sometimes I still forget. I'll go to respond and my words will come out nonsense after I jumble up my actual response and my other thoughts. I get stuck on a word and stutter it until my words catch up and my mind slows down a hair. Sometimes I completely forget what our conversation is about...in the middle of the conversation.

I know this is not a comprehensive list of things ADHD people deal with, but it is what I have dealt with from day to day, and what I have seen in my various family members. (Also, all of us that have been diagnosed have very large, outgoing personalities, it makes family get-togethers very interesting). ADHD is a very personal, moldable thing, while the main symptoms are the same in most diagnoses, the things people struggle with vary greatly and can be incredibly personal. How someone copes with ADHD is also very personalized and what helps one person could further mess up another.

I am still learning how to cope without medication even after a year and a half, but I have figured out some things that personally help me. First of all, before anything else, you have to have the mindset that ADHD is not a disorder or a learning disability, it is an abnormal wiring of neurons in your brain. You have to believe that there is nothing wrong with you, you aren't broken or messed up; you have a different way of viewing the world. You have to not think of ADHD negatively, and think of it positively. I think that is the number one most important thing you can do when you decide to start positively coping with it.

Secondly, put yourself on a consistent schedule. Your brain needs routine more than a non-ADHD person. This has been my biggest help this semester. The first half, I really struggled with keeping a clear schedule and it affected my ability to get everything done and my ability to get everything done and my ability to focus on my work.(*Editor's note: do you see what she means? I purposely left that error in her writing.) This cost me some serious grades in my classes. But once I started writing out everything I need to do for the week, the day, the morning, night, my grades went up, my anxiety levels went down, and my sleep improved.

Third, change your diet. This is something that I've known, but haven't done, and I really need to start focusing on it. It is (or at least should be) commonly known that the food you put into your body affects how your  brain and body performs. With ADHD, it is imperative that you treat your body and brain right. Cut out refined and processed foods, sugary foods, up protein intakes, especially plant proteins. Also, I have heard that exercising daily helps as well. This sounds as it should be done in the morning before you start your day to get rid of any excess energy. Like I said, I absolutely need to start working on that aspect myself. Many times, the healthier your physical body is, the more likely your mind will be healthier.

Some of these things I have figured out on my own, some things my mother has shared with me, and others I have discovered through research. The past year and a half been all about discovery, and I have no doubt I still have much to learn. New research comes out all the time, and I am not in a constant state of being. But hopefully I've helped at least one person understand ADHD better, and maybe even understand themselves.

Constantly learning,
Emily E.

As a child, I was selfish, I was greedy, I was mad when things didn't go the way I wanted them to. That is my heart. That is my humanity, it is my nature to want everyone to work their lives around mine, because I am the most important, I am the most valuable person on the planet. I think everyone else is inferior. And that is how I normally think. That is how I normally live. That is my human nature. My sinful, twisted human nature. I don't inherently like people. I think people are ignorant and ugly and rude and annoying. People irritate me to no end. I defined love as people waiting hand and foot on me and appealing to my desires and then leaving me alone. I walk around with a perpetual face of murder. This is how I have been for a very long time.

But then I fell in love with Jesus, because Jesus fell in love with me, and then, not only did He fall in love with me, He showed me. He wooed me, and He pursued me. He ran after my cold, dead, twisted, sinful, hateful heart. And He won it. I accepted the gift of Salvation when I was six, but until a year ago, I played a game, I treated Him like I treated everyone else. I used Him when I needed Him. And He let it happen for so long. But when I saw, when I truly saw, not with my mind and my eyes, but with my heart and my soul, that Jesus loved me so incredibly, selflessly, and completely, it changed my entire life. Now, I see myself as nothing but equal to everyone else on the planet. I have lowered myself and to some point, I have elevated everyone else above me to a degree. I find other people enthrallingly intelligent, beautiful, kind, and pleasurable to be around. I have come to love people (because let's face it, some people are really hard to like). People are a minefield of knowledge and experiences and it's beautiful. I now define love as me giving and pouring out to people, and seeing others do the same in return. I pull out of myself and I give what I can. I learn, I research, and I give my knowledge as much as I can. Granted, I still walk around with a face of murder, but some habits are hard to break. And I am still learning how to live like this.

Love pursued me, loved wooed me. Love saved me. And I can't hold in this love I have. Because this love I feel, I can't not let other people have a chance at feeling it and being saved by it as well. The entire world deserves to know that Jesus loves them. All of them. All the Atheists, the pagans, the Muslims, the Hindus, the Buddhists. All of them do not worship Christ, because they do not know the truth about Him. The downtrodden, the needy, the weak, they do not know the power and strength and hope that love and Jesus has given me. It is by the hope and peace of God that I do not go insane, that my life is not worse than it is, that I do not torture myself because of all that goes on within me. It is that same peace that I wish to give to people.

That is the biggest difference in my life now. I want to give to others, instead of having others give to me. I want to invest in the lives of individuals, instead of ignoring them or meet them in passing. I want to reach out and minister to those who need it the most. I want to give my life as an investment into theirs. And I don't think I want anything in return. The joy of knowing that I have tried to help someone else, and maybe even succeeding in helping is all the payment I need.

Growing constantly, Giving continuously,
Emily E.