Tea with my Mother: New Year, Old Rituals

The last year or so of my life has been about habits, routines, and creating structure. It's been about implementing systems, collecting information and insights, taking what works, and leaving what doesn’t. I committed my energy to working with my ADHD, and finding ways to make the biggest parts of my life run more smoothly so that I could care for the things and people who are important to me.

Truth be told, 2025 was an enormous success when I look at it from that standpoint. I streamlined my business, expanded my offerings, and had more opportunities than ever before to speak and share my passion. This success continued outside of work with the purchase of our first home, and subsequently, a commitment to better work-life balance with a more sustainable schedule. But as the year came to a close, I realized that something has been missing…and it’s been missing a long time. 

In late December, as I considered the task of holiday baking, I pulled out my mother’s recipe box, the one I only open at that time of year. Seeing her handwriting on the recipe cards, and making a childhood favourite, inspired another craving in me. 

I have blurry, yet warmly lit, memories in my childhood kitchen of baking cookies with my mom. Whatever the occasion, or cookie, there was almost always a pot of tea on the counter, steeping for us to enjoy as we baked.

My grandma, on my Mom’s side, came from two, very English parents, and she brought their traditions into her family and ultimately mine. Our house was always well stocked with Twinnings, Earl Grey Tea, and both my mom and grandma had collections of elegant teacups and saucers. Tea parties were a normal part of childhood, for many little girls, I assume, certainly for me. But somewhere along the way, after losing my mom, I lost track of these rituals as well.  

It’s not that I stopped drinking tea all together, but I stopped sharing in it. Tea became nothing more than a single bag soaking in a mug. I drank it because it was cold out, because I wasn’t feeling well, because I didn’t need another coffee. I drank it alone. So when I began my baking this year, my desire to brew up a pot of Earl Grey was not just a craving for tea, but a craving to share in this ritual once again. 

I was reminded of childhood lessons on how to pour from a hot tea-pot without spilling or dropping the lid, and being instructed to first add milk to the teacup to protect the china from the heat. I remembered the big, quilted, tea-cozy, hand made by my grandma, that kept our pot warm while we baked or when company joined us for tea. I remembered dunking oatmeal chip cookies in hot, milky tea, trying not to drop chunks into the delicate cups.

Tea holds an important place in cultures around the world. From traditional Japanese tea ceremonies, to Indian chai’s, to British high tea, these rituals are meant to be shared and enjoyed. Though I don’t recall any mention of how, or why we came to take part in tea-time traditions, I can’t help but feel the significance of its loss. 

Throughout this year, while so many things have come together to make my life easier, this ease of being also allowed me to feel the full weight of all that I have been missing. With success, growth, and even joy, comes new waves of grief, and new layers of understanding. I miss my mother, always, but I never quite realized how many other things were lost with her.

2025 has given me so much. Most notably, it has given me safety, security, and space in which I can finally recognize, and begin to reclaim and share that which had otherwise been forgotten. This year, instead of routines, I’m calling in rituals, both old and new-to-me. I’m calling in the rituals of my mother and hers, the rituals of women long lost, and the rituals of those who now fill my life with love. 

2026 is not a year for resolutions, but for reconnection, and I am so grateful for my community, my family, both blood and chosen, and the chance to share and create traditions with them. 

Whatever Comes

This time last year, I started writing about my experience getting an ADHD diagnosis, treatment, and all the emotions and realities that came with it. A full year later—and nearly two since my ADHD diagnosis adventure began—it’s hard to believe how much has happened.

It took far more time, effort, and frustration to get my prescription sorted out than I ever imagined. I’m not going to pretend I’m not still bothered by how convoluted the whole process felt. But eventually, with time, the help of my pharmacy, and finally speaking to my doctor, I decided to stick with my 30 mg dosage and have, for the most part, been able to get my prescription filled when needed.Between that and the many audiobooks, articles, therapy appointments, and support from the people who love me, I think I’ve settled into something that’s working.

This process has been hard, and it continues to be, but I’m navigating it the best I can, with as much support as I can gather. That’s really all I can ask of myself.

The most surprising part of coming to understand and accept my ADHD has been the immense grief and anger that surfaced once I finally had a diagnosis.I grieve for little Andrea, who worked so hard to be good, to excel, to be liked, to be “normal,” and whose struggles went unnoticed by the adults around her.I grieve for twenty-something Andrea, who fought to meet the demands of adult life, who felt left behind by her peers, who couldn’t understand why being a straight-A student hadn’t translated into feeling successful as an adult.

Despite the grief, I feel validated in my struggle. I’ve already built a lot of strategies that help me create more ease in my life, and my toolkit keeps growing with me. Since starting medication, I’m able to focus on my work and organize my thoughts and time a bit more effectively, and I’ve found ways to regulate my emotions and my nervous system when difficult circumstances come up.

Unfortunately, no strategy is foolproof, and shit still happens. I still glitch, forget, lose things. I still wrestle with anxiety and grief. But with a better understanding of myself and my ADHD, I can offer myself more compassion when I do, and ultimately, get myself “unstuck” sooner.

For so long, so many things in life felt out of reach because I didn’t feel capable or worthy of them. It’s hard to believe you deserve anything nice when you constantly lose or break things. It’s hard to trust yourself with big decisions when making any decision at all feels impossible.

But over the last year, I opened myself up to receiving things I never believed were meant for me, yet when I speak them out loud, they sound so simple.

I bought my first new car

My partner and I bought our first home.

I planned and hosted a nearly sold-out workshop.

I applied for—and was offered—new opportunities to speak and share my work.

My business is growing in new and exciting ways, and I continue to grow along with it.

I’m in a place where life feels safe and comfortable and still full of possibility. And for the first time I can remember, I believe those possibilities are meant for me.

I don’t know for sure what’s next, and I’m sure it won’t be easy. In fact, it will probably have moments that are absolutely terrible. But I’m prepared to take the bad with the good, and I’m confident that I can handle whatever comes.

Glitch

If you exist in society today, you likely use a smartphone regularly. As a small business owner and personal trainer, my phone is one of the most important tools I have for managing my bookings, communicating with clients and accessing their personalized training programs. It’s also the easiest way for me to manage my calendar, set reminders and alarms, and use all of the other tools that help me manage my ADHD.

I have always been what you might consider clumsy. It’s not that I’m not agile or even graceful at times, but those moments of careful, calculated movement are punctuated by other moments of complete and utter chaos. In more recent years, after transitioning off the birth control I’d been on since I was 16 and beginning to track my cycle, I noticed a pattern: during the week leading up to my period, in addition to obvious symptoms like moodiness and being extremely self-critical, I am significantly more forgetful and accident-prone.

For example, one month during that week, I lost my earbuds and a favourite hoodie—and dropped my keys down the elevator shaft in my building. While the key-in-elevator-shaft issue took time and outside help to solve, by the second day of my period I had found the sweater hiding underneath another jacket on a hanger in my front closet, and my earbuds in the top drawer of my bathroom....a drawer that I open literally every fucking day, yet it still took me nearly a week to find them.

With this kind of track record, it probably doesn’t surprise you that I’m the kind of person who drops her phone a lot. I’ve dropped phones into bathtubs, toilets, snowbanks on the side of the road, down staircases, and just onto the floor over and over and over again. The only time I’ve ever purchased a new phone simply because I wanted one was back in the flip-phone era, when phone's were built like tiny bricks.

As phones got smarter (and way more expensive), I quickly learned that a sturdy case and screen protector were absolutely necessary for me. Even still, after enough drops, eventually the case would fail and I’d find myself scrambling to repair or replace my phone yet again.

When I broke my last phone in 2022 or so, I had already paid to repair the same damage twice and refused to do it again. So I bought a brand-new, nearly $1,000 phone, a sturdy case, and a device protection plan.

It had been nearly two weeks after running out of Vyvanse when I went into the bathroom at the gym where I work and discovered my period had started. “No big deal,” I thought. I knew it was coming and had come prepared—but my supplies were in my bag in the staff room. As I pulled up my pants in the bathroom stall, I fumbled and dropped my phone in what can only be described as my usual fashion.

While there have been many times when my drops were colossal, flailing embarrassments, most often it’s the small glitches that really screw me over. I call them glitches because I honestly have no better word. When the flailing disasters happen, I can practically see them in slow motion, but I still can’t react fast enough to stop them. But when I glitch, it’s more like I lose myself for just a moment—like when a video feed freezes briefly, or in millennial terms, when a CD skips. In that split-second interruption, I lose my place; I lose control. I’m gone—and then I’m back, and whatever happened has already happened without my knowledge or consent.

This glitch was no different from the hundreds I’ve had before. The drop wasn’t high, and my phone had survived far worse, so at first, I wasn’t worried. That changed when I saw the screen flash and noticed the phone had gently popped out of its case. Not surprisingly, this was the exact same issue that had happened to the phone I’d replaced with this one. And then, from the back of my mind, came the blame, the shame, and a whole slew of self-beratement I hadn’t spewed in years.

I had been procrastinating getting this phone repaired for well over a year. First it was the microphone that stopped working, then a crack started forming in the corner of the screen. I kept telling myself I’d take it in, but the issues didn’t affect me very often, so it was easy to put it off.

When I finally mustered the motivation to get it fixed, I took it to the store where I’d bought the plan—only to learn they actually couldn’t help me and that I needed to make an online claim. So I started the claim process and discovered that I needed to request a loaner phone, strip my phone of all my logins, and mail it away for repairs. It felt convoluted and inconvenient, so I put it off, telling myself, I'll do it later. It’s not urgent. I have the plan—I can send it in anytime.

As my screen flashed black with little sparks of indiscernible light and I walked out of the bathroom, a certainty boiled up from deep in my gut: this was all my fault.

Andrea, you are such a fucking mess. You should have fixed this before. You can’t afford a new phone. You’re unprofessional. What kind of business owner breaks her phone this often? How are clients supposed to reach you? You’re an embarrassment. You go through phones way too fast—it’s so wasteful. Get your shit together, Andrea.

If I’m being honest, even as I write this, it's hard not to judge myself, but I know that it's the same shame that kept me silent when I was young and struggling through far more difficult circumstances with far less support, and it does not serve me now.

Instead, I screamed in my car. I screamed, I cried, I slammed my hands into the steering wheel, and I let my anger and shame move through me. I spoke it out loud, and to my surprise, where I lacked compassion for myself, I received it from others. If only little me had known that was possible.

Ironically, the morning before the phone incident, I received a notification that my prescription was finally ready for pickup and had set a reminder in my calendar to stop on my way home from work. But with my phone broken—and no other way of receiving notifications—I completely forgot until my cat started begging for dinner.

My calendar reminder was actually set so that I'd pick up a few things: my prescription, cat food, and my cat’s prescription were all on the list. Thankfully for both of us, he started begging early, and I remembered just in time to pick everything up before the vet clinic closed.

By the next afternoon, I was back on 30 mg of Vyvanse, had been generously loaned a spare phone, and had been able to order a new one for next to nothing thanks to a Black Friday sale.

After this whole incident, things started to get better again, and I was left with a deep wondering… would I have dropped my phone if I’d been medicated? Truthfully, I don’t think there’s an answer. I’m certainly not immune to glitches now, especially around my period, but it’s something I’m watching for, and if nothing else, it has been a much needed lesson in self compassion.