I know you feel guilty. Even when you know better.

Hiya,

A couple of days ago was Mother's Day.

And I want to hold that gently for a moment. Because Mother's Day is not a simple day for everyone. For some of us it carries grief for mothers we've lost, for children we've lost, for the version of motherhood we imagined and didn't get. For me it is always both. My first son passed away from a heart condition as a baby. Mother's Day is happy and sad in equal measure. It always will be.

So if it was a complicated day for you, I see you. And I'm glad you're here.

For those who were celebrated, the flowers, the breakfast, the cards that said incredible and amazing and don't know what we'd do without you, every word was true.

But here's what didn't make it onto the card.

The invisible load. The mental load. The load that doesn't pause for hormones, or bad brain days, or the fact that you are running a business at the same time as running everything else. The load that was there before Mother's Day and will be there tomorrow and the day after that.

We got celebrated for one day. And then Monday arrived.

I was going to write to you today about the health tax. And then a request came in this morning and I felt drawn to write about this instead.

A mentoring session, which I was genuinely honoured to be asked for. Three possible days. All after 4pm.

And there it was. The knot.

If you know, you know. That specific tightening in the stomach when you're about to do something that feels uncomfortably close to putting yourself first. Not a dramatic feeling. Just a quiet, physical signal that your nervous system has registered something as unsafe.

Here's the science behind that knot

For neurodivergent brains, the gut and brain are in constant two-way conversation, what researchers call the gut-brain axis. When we experience guilt or boundary discomfort, our nervous system registers it as a genuine threat. For ADHD and AuDHD brains specifically, that threat response is amplified. Two major systematic reviews published in 2025 now place interoception, the awareness of what's happening inside our bodies, at the centre of both ADHD and autism. For AuDHD brains the overlap is where the real story lives. The knot is not anxiety being dramatic. It is your nervous system doing exactly what it is designed to do.

Knowing that doesn't make it go away. But it does make it make sense.

This was my reply.

“Unfortunately, I don't work after 4pm. I know that I have no energy left at that time of day. It's a boundary I've created to protect my AuDHDness that has to work fulltime, ish. Do you have any other times that work for you?”

I sent it. And then I sat with the knot for a little while longer.

Because even as someone who has been coaching for years, who talks about energy and boundaries constantly, who genuinely believes this stuff, I still felt it.

The guilt of not being available.

The worry about how it looked professionally.

And the specific, pointed discomfort of realising I had listed afternoons in my profile without being specific enough. I had accidentally set myself up for exactly this moment. Note to self. Update the profile.

But here's what I kept coming back to.

I said it anyway.

Not because it was easy. Because it was true.

After 4pm I have nothing left. Not for a client. Not for a mentoring session. Not for anything that requires me to show up as the version of myself that is actually useful to another person.

Saying yes would have been the polite thing. It would also have been a lie.

We just spent a day being celebrated for everything we give. And we give a lot. To our kids, our clients, our partners, our parents, our businesses. The list is long and it is real and it is relentless.

And most of us are still, quietly, last on it.

Not because we don't know better. We know better. Not because we don't believe in boundaries. We believe in them deeply, usually for everyone else first. But because the knot is real and the guilt is real and putting ourselves first still feels, even after all the work, like something that requires a small act of courage every single time.

The boundary I set is not remarkable. After 4pm doesn't work. That's it. But for a brain like mine, navigating a business and a household and a nervous system that is doing its absolute best, that boundary is infrastructure. It is what makes everything before 4pm possible.

You have your own version of this. The time of day that doesn't work. The type of work that costs too much. The request that sounds reasonable to everyone else and lands like a knot in your stomach because you already know what saying yes will cost you.

You don't have to explain it. You don't have to justify it. You just have to say it.

And then sit with the knot for a little while. It passes. It always does.

Mel x

For more information follow here.

PS: Speaking of the things we quietly carry until they become urgent — you may have already seen my separate emails about this — EOFY is coming. If your pile of financial chaos needs some company and a plan, I've got something for that.

ADHD Village - PO Box 475, Clifton Hill, 3068, Australia