Hi everyone, I'm Joanna.

And I'm Jenny.

And welcome to hyphenated, the podcast about living in the hyphen.

This week, we're going to talk about mental health.

A lot of you have been asking about this topic, and it is an important topic to discuss,

especially within our community.

Joanna and I have been very open about our mental

health. And also, Joanna and I seem to have had very different experiences growing up with mental

illness. So I'm looking forward to hearing your side of things. Well, you know, Jenny, I think

it's interesting because for so long, I thought that speaking about my mental health, about my ADHD, about my anxiety was like revealing too much about myself, like opening up a Narnia closet of my brain to the public.

And then the moment I started doing it, I started feeling

better about it and like less like it was a deep dark secret, but more just like, oh, I have

blue eyes. See, like it's just another part of you. Yeah. And there's nothing to be ashamed of.

But, you know, I was really surprised because a couple

weeks ago, or I guess more than a couple weeks ago, you called me to ask a bit about ADD because

I've, I was diagnosed with ADD as a kid. I think I was like nine or something like that.

And you recently were diagnosed. And that is

mind-blowing to me that you've spent your whole life not really understanding why you forgot to

close the cabinets or you lose your homework or you couldn't remember phone numbers.

Like, you know, so much of the reason I understand why my brain works the way it works is because

I understood it. But it took you so many years to get to this point.

I'm so sorry. I just realized, speaking of ADHD, that I don't have headphones on.

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