I know what it feels like to move through life without really feeling it.

I was the sensitive kid who took everything in. The one who was told not to let things get to me. The one who was bullied in school and told to just let it go. The one whose family motto was a "Meincke never gives up".

So I didn't. For decades.

I was told I was too much my whole life. Too emotional. Too intense. Too sensitive.

So I learned to manage myself. To shrink. To present the version of me that was easier for everyone else to be around.

I got very good at it.

In 2019 my body sent me the first warning. I burned out completely and went on sick leave for the first time in my life.

I thought I'd learned my lesson.

Then I became a mum. My first son arrived in December 2020, my second in July 2023. The stakes got higher. The cracks got harder to hide.

In April 2025, I woke up at 4am with my heart going so fast I could feel it through my whole body. I ended up on the floor waiting for an ambulance, thinking I was never going to see my kids again.

My first ever AFib episode.

That same year, a doctor told me I probably have ADHD.

And for the first time in my life, I understood, it was never my fault. I wasn't too much.

I was an undiagnosed brain working overtime, in a body that had never been taught it was safe to stop.

That changed everything.