On Saturday the 9th on November 2024, Women’s Health and Wellbeing Services hosted our second annual ADHD and Women seminar. I have spoken about this often but when HP Officer, Romney suggested this as an idea early last year I honestly didn’t think we would get the numbers. I was wrong! I thought we would get about 15 people attend but if we could go hard with the marketing maybe we might get 30 people. Well we didn’t go hard on the marketing and we had to change venues to a larger venue to accommodate the 113 people who bought tickets. With what we had learned from that event and the demand for our other services, our ADHD information session and therapeutic groups we were better prepared and booked the Leederville Function Centre to accommodate the 197 people who had given up their Saturday to attend.
Again we were incredibly lucky to have some amazing presenters donate their time to attend. Serena Nathan who is our WHWS resident ADHD champion spoke about ADHD and social media, Matt Miller returned for the second year to speak about ADHD, communication and relationships, Dr Theresa Kidd, Dr Miriam Kirby and Melanie Turner spoke about the ADHD and Autism overlap while also touching on perimenopause and identity, Dr Claire Milligan flew over from Melbourne (oh my goodness we had an interstate presenter!) to speak about parenting with ADHD and Jata (Kate) Elliot and Sarah Harrower spoke about navigating ADHD in motherhood and the perinatal space. We then closed the event with a panel of question and answers that were a curated selection submitted by attendees during the day.
It’s hard to evaluate a day when you are so personally connected to it and so very invested in it’s success, but from a personal perspective; WOW! There was so much information, so many useful strategies and so many aha moments. There was laughter and tears, shaking of heads, nodding of heads and an overwhelming sense of shared experiences. Some of the most powerful moments for me came not directly from the presenters but from hearing the response to those presenters. The ‘oh my god, that’s me!’ comments, seeing friends elbow each other ‘that’s so us’ ‘ohhhhh that’s YOU!’ More than one attendee told me that she had cried (multiple times) because the information resonated so strongly and they felt seen. One attendee asked me ‘so does this mean I can let go of the shame now?’ Oh my goodness YES! Let go of that shame!
The power of having 197 people in a room on reducing that feeling of isolation and ‘it’s me, I’m broken’ ‘I’m the only one who experiences this’ or ‘you mean EVERYONE doesn’t think like that?’ can not be underestimated. It was also great to see that people felt they could be themselves in the room. There were fidget toys, people sitting in ways that made them comfortable, people standing and moving around, people in the quiet room when things got a bit too much, and one attendee brought their knitting! We wanted to create a space where people could put their load down for the day and just hang out, be themselves, learn something and realise that this shared experience can be celebrated and looking around the room it felt like we maybe did that.
Obviously I can’t end the post without also acknowledging the sponsors; Partners in psychology, Rotary Southern Districts (who not only had so many members volunteer to support the day but also sponsored and organised Inner Wheel to cater our morning and afternoon teas and speaker lunches, you are all amazing!), Sarah Harrower Psychology, The Kidd clinic, Outside the Box Coaching, Susan Hughes ADHD Parent Coach, and ADHD Australia. Thanks also to our raffle sponsors: Gosnells Golf Club, Clay Make Studio, Sista fitness, and On the Mend Health.
We learned a lot from last years seminar and implemented it to improve this years seminar and we have learned a lot from this year and intend to make changes based on those learnings and the feedback from attendees to make next years event even better.
Thank you to all who made the seminar a success and thank you to everyone who came and celebrated neurodivergence.
