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Nowhere Girl

byCarla Ciccone

Life as a Member of ADHD’s Lost Generation

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For Carla Ciccone, the feeling of not quite knowing how to perform adult life was all too familiar.

After a lifetime of muddling through shame and self-blame, Carla was finally diagnosed with ADHD at thirty-nine years old. With this late diagnosis came the realisation that her most troubling traits weren’t deep personality flaws, but symptoms.

The knowledge that her ADHD had gone unnoticed all her life felt like a missing puzzle piece. It prompted Carla to explore the cohort of women and girls (the ‘nowhere girls’) that science had ignored. Through scientific research, interviews with experts, and the warmth and wit of her own lived experience, Carla explores how the gendered approach to ADHD left girls just like her to struggle in silence for years.

A powerful and deeply personal account Nowhere Girl is a source of explanation and solace for women who are embarking on their own journey of discovery of life with ADHD.

Nowhere Girl is at once lucid, captivating, poignant, terrifying, and ultimately uplifting. Once I opened it, I literally could not put it down. In captivating prose, Ciccone conveys four-decades of non-diagnosed ADHD, replete with unanswered questions, shame, trauma, dashed efforts at coping, and periods of despair, deftly interweaving current science into the story. This lifespan account surges with pain but also with hope, given that an accurate diagnosis after becoming a mother has forged a hard-won sense of peace and acceptance, along with finding optimal supports. Five stars, highest recommendation.

Stephen P. Hinshaw, Ph,D., Distinguished Professor of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley; author, Straight Talk about ADHD in Girls: How to Help Your Daughter Thrive

About Carla Ciccone

Carla Ciccone is a freelance writer who has written essays, reported features and humor pieces for Harper's Bazaar, The New Yorker, The Cut, Catapult, Bon Appétit, Romper, Chatelaine, Elle Canada, The Walrus and more. Originally from Toronto, Carla grew up near the Rocky Mountains in Alberta, and now lives in Toronto with her partner and daughter.
Details
  • Imprint: Michael Joseph
  • ISBN: 9780241647332
  • Length: 320 pages
  • Price: £18.99
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