Any Version of Me

Book: So Eun-seong, To My Friends in the A-Club (Korean essay) (English title rendered descriptively; no published English edition)

As I write this I am on a clinical attachment at a state university-hospital ADHD clinic in the United States, observing the care of adults with ADHD. One day left me aching.

It was an emotional day; two women wept. The first was in her mid-thirties, three months postpartum, who had only now come to this specialist clinic and received her diagnosis at last. Telling the story of that long road, she said her past confusion and frustration finally made sense — tears of relief, of self-acceptance. The second was a young nurse who worked terribly hard, on shifts that began at three in the morning, worn thin by anxiety from overarousal, severe insomnia, and too little food. Her history held trauma we could scarcely imagine, and as she spoke, tears streamed from her hollow eyes. That she found it hard to concentrate was the most natural symptom in the world.

This clinic sees only adults with ADHD, and the accounts and symptoms of the women in particular were far from the ADHD we think we know.

To My Friends in the A-Club is a candid, singular essay of one woman’s inner exploration of adult female ADHD. Its author was an ordinary “eldest daughter,” a top student, and by conventional measures a success — a journalist and writing instructor — yet only when she was diagnosed with adult ADHD did she come to understand where her years of confusion and frustration had come from.

ADHD in women remains a field beset by difficulty in diagnosis and recognition. Within social norms and expectations placed on women, the way ADHD shows up in women differs from men: at school they may appear quiet, even model students, while inside they struggle with attention, emotional regulation, and a heavy listlessness. These features delay diagnosis for years, and many women are diagnosed late. ADHD carries many comorbidities, and they appear more often in women than in men — because women are frequently diagnosed with mood and anxiety disorders or eating disorders before ADHD is ever recognized.

The author, too, spent her life thinking of herself as a “hopeless dimwit,” burdened with low self-worth, until the diagnosis let her understand herself anew. The book carries the complexity and psychological weight of that process vividly to the reader.

ADHD is bound up with hormones as well; in women especially, symptoms can intensify or fluctuate with the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, and menopause. The book names how little society and medicine understand women’s ADHD, and centers the particular difficulties women face and what lies beneath them. The author’s confusion and emotional swings are not written off as mere personality; through them, we gain a new way of seeing.

At the heart of the book is a distinctive idea — the “A-Club,” a community. Through diagnosis the author finds others like herself, shares fellow-feeling with them, and comes to understand herself in a new way. It is not information delivery but a genuine journey of self-acceptance. Her daily letters to her A-Club friends offer a kind of emotional support, and carry a single message: I can’t help but like any version of me.

ADHD comes with many strengths, and the book lets the author’s own strengths show, tracing a journey of self-discovery and recovery in female adult ADHD that is bright, honest, and moving. Reading it felt like watching a free dance carried on the wind — confused at times, sunk at times in a heavy listlessness, yet rising again, a strong life force sending a light breeze out to others.

In a reality where awareness of women’s ADHD is still so thin, and where prejudice and delayed diagnosis leave so many struggling together, an essay like this — like sweet rain after drought — brings hope and the strength of solidarity to its friends in the A-Club.