Discovering a childhood diagnosis later in life often brings a response similar to grief. It’s a common and natural process. It's taken decades. I’m still trying to understand what I feel now, knowing what I know. There’s anger – but also disbelief, and numbness that this was my life.

What’s hardest isn’t just that something was missed, it shouldn't have happened. That’s where the anger comes from – the people, the systems, the places that were meant to see me clearly, and didn’t.

This went beyond simple oversight.

Identity was something I largely set aside, because there was no explanation – nothing to anchor understanding. At school, I struggled to make headway. Teachers would say, “Ilana’s a lovely girl, but...” my father when confronted by the school told the head teacher, my difficulties were down to a memory problem. What I discovered decades later was that they already knew, but never acted on it.

They didn't leave me with a choice, my life was always going to come to this, for me to begin the process of writing, of talking about my experiences – revisiting memories with a new understanding, and slowly releasing responsibility for experiences that were never mine to carry. I was a child.

Failing exams, falling behind in course work, continually being misunderstood and judged, teachers trying but failing to convince my parents, that intervention was necessary, also struggling with milestones and cues – these weren’t my personal shortcomings, but the result of being unsupported with what I later learned was a disability and neurological differences.

I’m doing this to make sense of my past, so after decades I don’t carry it in a way that makes me unwell.

This re-framing is painful, but it is gradually becoming liberating. It has been a lot for me to carry. 

A helpful shift for me has been:

I didn’t fail. I was navigating life without the map others were given. I was born different.

Over time, I internalised blame, particularly around my learning. And yet, part of me must have known it didn't belong to me, because I didn’t carry any expectation of myself in school. I was also, in some ways, being protected because my twin went first, and I followed. 

There was no choice. The expectation was that my twin would lead.

Learning and speaking the truth now is helping me to separate my character from my challenges.

I’ve spent a lifetime trying to do that – so that I’m seen and judged fairly.

Even now, there are times when I’m not fully understood, and I am judged.

This isn’t mine to carry. What others make of it is theirs.

I didn't fail – but I also didn’t win.