Today's issue is brought to you by Proving Her Wrong

Hey, friend! If you've hit your 40s and suddenly feel like you can't hold it together the way you used to, there may be a reason nobody warned you about. This issue, we're getting into why so many women are discovering ADHD in midlife, why so many of them were missed as girls, and what perimenopause has to do with it. Let's get into it!

— Lacey Baier, Dustin Baier

Picture this, if you will: A woman who is organized and capable. She has a color-coded calendar and organized to-do lists. She never misses a beat, and she seems like she has everything under control. She's been running this way her whole life, and it works.

Then, she turns 40.

And slowly, quietly, the systems that always saved her stop being enough. The lists are still there. The calendar is still color-coded. But something underneath has shifted, and no amount of reorganizing seems to fix it. She feels broken and confused, unsure why she can’t get back to who she was.

I've been watching this happen to women all around me, and we’ve been calling it perimenopause. But there is more to it — a lot more to it — than many of us even realized. And the wild part is how many of us are landing on the same question at the same time.

New ADHD diagnoses in adult women nearly doubled between 2020 and 2022, according to Epic Research. As of 2023, close to 7 million women in the U.S. had been diagnosed with ADHD, per federal data reported by NPR. This isn't a trend, and it's not everyone suddenly "catching" something. It's a correction.

The picture most of us have is wrong

When you picture ADHD, like me, you probably picture a little boy who can't sit still. That's the version research was built on for decades, which means the version that shows up in women got missed, over and over.

In girls, it usually looks different. It’s less bouncing off the walls, and more daydreaming, more "she's so bright, but not working to her potential,” more needing mom to sit next to her just to get through homework. More stomach aches before school, more holding it together all day and falling apart the minute she gets home.

More being called sensitive. Anxious. A perfectionist. Dramatic.

Nobody calls it ADHD.

In women, this looks more like losing your keys and your train of thought and the reason you walked into the room. It looks like chronic disorganization, brain fog, overwhelm out of nowhere. It looks like a brain that won't quiet down even when the room is still.

Fortunately or unfortunately (I’m still unsure about this), girls learn early to cover it. We were the daydreamers, the disorganized-but-sweet ones, the good students who just tried really, really hard. So we flew under the radar and grew up convinced the exhaustion was a character flaw. Researchers even have a name for us: The lost girls.

Why it surfaces in midlife

So those girls learned to compensate for something that never had a name. Some got so good at it they looked like the opposite of what they are. Until they didn't.

Here's the part nobody warned us about: perimenopause pulls the mask off.

Estrogen helps regulate dopamine, the exact brain chemical ADHD runs short on (here's the science). For years it's been quietly helping you compensate. Then, sometime in your 40s, estrogen starts swinging and dropping, and the systems that held you together for two decades stop holding. Symptoms you'd white-knuckled your whole life get loud, right when kids and work and aging parents are all pulling at once, and there's no slack left to hide them in.

This doesn't mean (peri)menopause caused it. ADHD was always there. The hormones just stopped covering for it.

Why it keeps getting called anxiety or depression

This is the part I most want you to hear, because it's where so many women lose years.

Most women don't walk into the doctor saying "I think I have ADHD." They walk in saying they’re exhausted, unfocused, overwhelmed, forgetful, snapping at the people they love. And that list looks almost exactly like anxiety and depression, so that's often what gets treated. You leave with an antidepressant and a gentle "You've got a lot on your plate” or, my absolute non-favorite, “Welcome to your 40s.”

Sometimes, that helps a little. Sometimes, it doesn't touch the real thing, because the real thing was never anxiety.

Two reasons this happens. First, with masking, you've spent your whole life performing "fine," so you present well even while you're drowning. Second, the anxiety and depression are often real, but downstream. They're what happens after twenty years of fighting your own brain without knowing that's what you were doing. Treating the symptom misses the root, and the pattern just repeats.

If you've been handed one of those labels and it never quite fit, that mismatch may be worth looking into.

If this is sounding familiar

This isn't a diagnosis you get from a quiz or a scroll through TikTok. It's a starting point. Pay attention to when it began, then bring it to a professional who understands how this shows up in women, not the hyperactive-boy version. Say the quiet part out loud: "I've managed this my whole life and I can't anymore, and I want to know why."

Because here's the reframe I keep coming back to: you didn't fail at focus for 40 years. You pushed through a brain nobody handed you the manual for, while holding everything else up. That’s incredibly impressive. That's not a willpower problem. Sound familiar? It's the same thing I say about food. An approach that only works when you're perfect was never really working.

If this hits home, please know you're not broken. You were just never given the whole picture.

Real talk on food, health, and feeling good in your body, no perfection required. Cut through the noise and support Cleanish.

The rain starts past the last gas station, where the road narrows, and the trees lean in overhead, like they’ve been waiting for us.

I take the first curve too fast. And the next one.

I know better. The road is slick, the forest close on both sides, the thick fog rolling down off the ridges in slow drifts of mist. But there’s something in me the rain has let loose, and I don’t want to rein it in.

The harder I press the gas, the harder it falls, like my foot and the sky are running on the same current, and I couldn’t slow one without slowing the other.

Somehow, I can see it. Every drop of rain. The trees are dark enough behind the rain that each one stands out, sharp and separate, caught for a moment. I have never seen rain like this. Or, maybe, I’ve never looked.

I want to feel the truck lean into the turn. I want the wipers going, the water coming down, the mountains gray-green and folding into each other. I don’t want it to end.

Home, something in me says. Not the house. This.

I left almost everything to get here.

I wasn’t always like this.

Read the rest for free here →

Nearly 2x

The number of women aged 23 to 49 diagnosed with ADHD nearly doubled in just two years, from 2020 to 2022.

55.9%

of adults with an ADHD diagnosis weren't diagnosed until adulthood. For most people, it was missed the first time around.

~70%

of women with ADHD say midlife made their symptoms dramatically worse, right as estrogen starts to drop.

If you're only putting this together now, in your 40s, you're not late. You're right on time, and you're not alone.

Sources: Epic Research; CDC rapid surveys; position paper via The ’Pause Life

Muscle gets harder to build and easier to lose after menopause, which changes how you train and what you eat. This video breaks down five practical ways to hold onto your strength.

Watch on YouTube →

🧠 ADHD in women is finally being recognized, especially in midlife

Clinicians are increasingly pointing to the same thing we cover above: falling estrogen can unmask ADHD that was quietly there all along, which is why so many women get diagnosed in their 40s.

💭 The Bottom Line → If your brain feels different lately, that's information, not a character flaw. It's worth a real conversation, not a shame spiral.

🧤 Popular childhood drinks may raise blood pressure decades later

A 25-year study tied regular soda, sports drinks, and juice starting in childhood to higher blood pressure in adulthood, and swapping just one daily drink for water helped.

🐟 Millions take fish oil for brain health, but a new study found no benefit

Omega-3 supplements did reach the brain, but over two years they showed no meaningful boost to memory or thinking, a good reminder that a supplement isn't automatically doing what the label implies.

🍫 Scientists tested 39 sweeteners and found unexpected gut effects

Many common sweeteners changed how gut bacteria grew, and often behaved differently when mixed with caffeine or medications, so “sugar-free” still deserves a second look.

🧘 The wellness world is finally admitting we've been over-optimizing

A growing 2026 trend called the “over-optimization backlash” reframes people as whole humans to be nourished, not data points to be perfected.

Proving Her Wrong is Lacey Baier's personal essay newsletter on identity, hiding, and finally showing up as yourself.

For years, men were far more likely than women to be diagnosed with ADHD. We are seeing now how this is not because women had it less often, but because the signs were quieter and kept getting missed. That gap is now closing fast, which mostly means women are finally being seen.

New ADHD diagnoses per year (2010 → 2022) → tripled

Women aged 23 to 49 diagnosed (2020 → 2022) → nearly 2×

U.S. adults who now report an ADHD diagnosis → ~6%

This is mostly a story about better recognition, not a sudden epidemic. More awareness, easier telehealth access, updated diagnostic guidelines, and the stress of the pandemic all pushed these numbers up together.

One honest note: these are trends in who gets diagnosed, not proof of how many people actually have ADHD. Rising numbers can mean we're finally catching what we used to overlook, but it doesn’t mean that’s certain.

Sources: Epic Research (3.4M patients, 2010–2022); CDC adult ADHD rapid surveys

Healthy eating rarely falls apart from one big failure. It falls apart from a hundred tiny decisions, which is really a decision-fatigue problem, not a willpower one. Read it →

This is Lacey’s comfort meal. It's her mom's stuffed peppers, remade a little lighter, and each one has 32g of protein. Make a batch on a Sunday, and they reheat all week. Get the recipe →

P.S. Know someone who'd like this, too? Share your link and unlock our Cheap & Healthy Grocery List after just 1 referral: {{rp_refer_url}}