What I Planned For and What Actually Happened

What if the hardest part of a big life change isn't the logistics, it's everything that happens while you're in the middle of it?

On this episode of Organizing an ADHD Brain, ADHD coach Megs walks through what it really looks like when a carefully made plan meets real life; grief, fear, and all. Whether you're looking for ADHD coaching, a supportive ADHD community, or practical ways to get organized, this episode meets you where you are.

By the end, you'll have a new way to think about the messy middle, not as failure, but as temporary data pointing you toward what matters most.

Megs gets real about her fourth move of the year, relocating from Colorado to Massachusetts after selling their home in July 2025. She came prepared: early packing, labeled boxes, a full week off to settle in. Then the plan met life. What followed was a week of grief, anxiety, and move-related chaos that no amount of planning could have prevented.

She explores why change is uncomfortable even when it's good, how clutter and unfinished logistics amplify emotional overwhelm for ADHD brains, and why regulation in those moments comes down to something simple, reminding yourself that you are safe. She shares the choice she kept making that week: putting down the unfinished tasks to be present with her kids, even when everything around her felt undone.

The good news? The messy middle isn't a sign that something went wrong. It's information. And choosing presence over perfection, even once, even imperfectly, is always the right move.

This episode is for anyone with ADHD who is navigating a season of change and needs permission to put down the to-do list and just be okay for a minute.

TIME MARKERS 

2:45 — How Megs planned the move: early packing, labeled boxes, a week to settle in 

4:39 — When life hits: a friend's death, a community crisis, and Charlotte's hospital visit 

7:22 — Finding home again in the middle of grief and chaos 

10:23 — How clutter and unfinished logistics amplify ADHD overwhelm, and what regulation actually looks like 

14:45 — Choosing presence over productivity, putting down the tasks to be with her kids 

18:14 — Lessons from the week: what the messy middle was actually teaching her 

22:17 — Permission to pause, why stopping is sometimes the most regulated choice 

Would you like to learn more about hiring Megs as your ADHD coach? Start here> The Perfect Place to Start

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Transcript

Moving Cross Country

Planning the Move

When Life Hits

Finding Home Again

Overwhelm and Regulation

Choosing Presence

Lessons from the Week

Permission to Pause

Audio Only - All Participants 0:39

Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Organizing an ADHD Brain. I'm your host, Megs, and today I have been thinking about What people typically say when they get to the end of their life. I think about it a lot because most often people say,"I wish I had spent more time with my family. I wish I had taken the time. It just wasn't worth working that much. I wish I had taken more vacations. I wish I had done the thing," blah, blah, blah, So I carry that with me And most recently, my husband and I have made our fourth move of the year. We sold our house last year in July of 2025, and we moved across the country from Colorado to Massachusetts. We sold most of our stuff. We had a little trailer. In fact, we still have it. It's for sale, if you're interested. And we put our two girls and four animals in the back of our car and carried what we could across the country with us. It was an adventure. It taught us a lot and we are now moving into a place that we know we will be renting for the next 15 months or so. We feel so grateful that we are here. At move number four, I was very optimistic. I teach this, right? I teach, let's get prepared for some stuff, right? ADHD or not, I am going to do this differently than I have before. In fact, every single move we've done, we have learned so much along the way, not only about ourselves, but about the stuff that we need or want, about how to get prepared, about what our needs are gonna be in the new house, so on and so forth. while I didn't have a full plan, I knew we needed to change our address, and I got that done. I knew we needed to pack things up, but I also knew we had about six or seven days, and we were only moving a mile down the road. So there were some things that I was slightly concerned about, but certainly not to the extent that we had been in the past. So when I was preparing in April- I started making small moves. I even talked about this in a podcast episode where every time I would go down to do the laundry, I would put stuff away in boxes. That was so cool because by the time it was time to leave, the boxes that were down in the basement, actually some of them were already brought up and ready to go in a loading zone, and we had some things that were just fully ready to go from downstairs. We were looking up the things that we might wanna buy. We knew that we wanted to have sheets clean. In fact, the day that we moved in, my intention for that day was to simply have clean sheets on every single bed so that that evening we could all go to sleep. I decided that no matter what happened that day, that was going to be my intention. I decided that this move would be different because I had planned for time off. I took the week off that we would be moving in so that I would have space to take care of getting things in places and putting things in a place where we'd go to look for them again, really starting to establish our home. That felt really good. I also had labeled some of the boxes that we had packed, so it'd be really easy to unload them in the different rooms that they would be in. The coach version of me was very, very proud, and then of course, the human version of me had not a full plan. There were definitely things I didn't think of, and I also know that with ADHD, I can sometimes get really excited about making a full plan, but what actually happens is none of the things that I predict that will happen. And so now I've spent time trying to think of all of the things and find solutions for them when I actually don't need them. So I decided that whatever happened the week of the move was simply going to be our learning experience in this adventure. And then the plan met life. Life happened It was Tuesday morning, and I remember sitting, getting ready for the day at work, and I was so excited because I felt like this was gonna be my day. I was going to have a really good productivity day today. And my husband came downstairs, and since I'm not really on social media, he shared news with me that my friend had passed away. A good friend, a friend that I have known for a long time and I haven't been connected to for quite a few months, but a really kind human being, and that was hard. And I still found a way to show up that day. I cried, and I allowed myself just the resolve to know that I could continue through this, and I will continue to grieve as the days go on. And the next day, I was reading in the news that a local gentleman had been hit by a car on his bike. And when I was coaching one of my clients that morning, I found out that they knew each other and that he was struggling for his life at a local hospital. And later that morning, pretty shortly after that conversation, my daughter had an episode at school where we had to take her to the doctor and then to the hospital to get some tests run. It was a really weird situation. Long story short, she is okay, and we're still following up to figure out what's truly going on. In addition to this, we're still navigating a move, But with all of this going on, I've been practicing,"I can handle this. This is something that I can navigate. This version of me can handle anything that is thrown my way." As they wheeled my daughter into the MRI machine, they asked if I wanted to sit in there with her, and I was like,"No, but absolutely yes, because she's probably going to be petrified." And I sat in the chair, I realized,"Oh, this is such a great time to let it out. I can allow myself to cry in this moment." And Then the, the techs in the MRI machine was like,"Ma'am, are you okay?" And I also realized there were no tissues around me, and so I decided that this was not gonna be the time. But as I looked at Charlotte and decided she must be so incredibly scared in this big, loud, ridiculous machine, she gets out with the biggest smile on her face and told me that this is her new happy place because it played music, it allowed her to close her eyes and truly just be in the moment. This girl is amazing. Sometimes there's so much information that is being thrown our way that the only way to get back out of it, I guess, is to find a comfortable place, is to find a space where you feel like you're at home again. And what I've found over the last year or so is that home isn't necessarily a place, but it's a feeling that you allow something to be. In fact, our last house, it took me months to be able to call it home just because it was so difficult to leave our house in Colorado. It hurt, actually, to call it home a little bit. It was very strange. But with all of the events of this week, I wanted a home so much. I wanted to feel at home. And coming home, it felt like there was more chaos because things were getting packed up and things just did not feel real anymore. This comes back to what I talk about so often with change, where good change feels uncomfortable and so does negative change. Change in our lives feels really uncomfortable no matter how good it is. So we have really been looking forward to this move, and yet with everything happening, it felt like one more thing on top of navigating all of these emotions. In fact, when they talk about something being hard, like building a business or navigating change the difficulty lies in the emotions. The difficulty lies in your fear response. The difficulty lies in the way that you react to the world around you. It is not necessarily in the thing itself. as we started to navigate the move on Friday, we felt like we had things in place again. We felt like, yep, we're, we're navigating what life has handed us this week, and let's continue to move because this is what we're doing. And when chaos is happening like this, it's almost hard to pause and even experience emotions. It's hard to even think that this is something that we're allowed to do. But you're not even conscious long enough to say, Maybe I need to deal with some of this right now." There's no time, really, or at least that's what you're telling yourself. When you think about grief plus logistics plus ADHD, all of that in the body at once, there's no prioritization, right? It's all happening, but there is almost this experience of something's not existing. It's easy to block things out. When we think about our clutter, we think about all of the stuff going on in our lives, it can be really easy to block out the noise and to continue to move on with your life because that's part of our comfort, at least for now. But that's what it felt like in these moments. my ADHD doesn't go anywhere, but it does get easier with regulation and pausing and noticing and understanding things from a different perspective. I believe it was Saturday night, this was our second night in the new house, and Charlotte, who had gone to the ER earlier that week, had a panic attack. So it was in that moment that I was reminded to pause and to help my daughter through the situation by helping her remember to breathe and helping her to know that she is safe, and that mommy and daddy have her back, and that she's going to get through this, and that I'm gonna be there for her. And as I'm talking about it, because I often need to talk about things to understand them myself, it helped me to start to realize how I needed to take care of myself as well. I don't know about you, but when things ramp up and things get chaotic, the first thing to often go is the way that I take care of myself. I get put on the back burner each time because it feels like I don't actually have time to do all of those things. The overwhelm with the stuff started to hit by Saturday at least. There's this overwhelming sense of needing to have things in control, and I felt like it was my job to get things in a place that made sense so that my family could live again. It, it's like this need to get back to a place where we can thrive, where we can have that comfort, where it can be a home. I had the perspective of,"Oh, this is that feeling." It was like I was welcoming in an old unwanted friend, the overwhelm of stuff, because when there's just a regular mess, I can look at it now and say,"I trust myself to clean that up." I trust myself to get things back to where they go. But when things don't have a place yet, and there's a pile of it, and you're already exhausted, and the emotions are sitting somewhere in your body yet to be expressed, and your kids have emotions, and your spouse has emotions, and you've simply been going until you can't go any longer, it feels a little hopeless in those moments. And it doesn't last, but in those moments it feels really awful. And this is part of the messy middle. I know this, right? And I'm like so aware of it, but that's because I talk about it all the time. When you're not in this on a regular basis or seeing people live this, sometimes that can be really hard to recognize as progress. It simply just looks like you don't have it together. I do love how Jenna mentioned last week that getting things in order around you is simply just a physical regulation thing. It's external regulation. It makes you feel better because you are creating order around you. But regulation that works really comes from an internal place, from reminding yourself, I'm safe despite this mess." Not because I tolerate it, not because this is what I wanna live in, but because this is my reality for a moment. and as myself, an amazing client of mine say all the time,"This is temporary, and I am supported." It's different knowing what this lesson looks like as a coach, because this is what I do, this is what I've lived, I know what those experiences are, and living it and going through those emotions as a person. Because when you're experiencing emotions like that, the emotions themselves can be overwhelming. And I don't have myself as a coach in those moments when I'm overwhelmed with emotion to come back and be like,"Megan-"You got this. This is just temporary, and you are supported." No, those emotions are clouding every judgment I have ever had. I am a different person when I am experiencing this myself versus when I am a coach. That's why coaches need coaches, right? And, and people need others to point out the gaps in things that we don't necessarily see ourselves. And a moment came up where I wanted to abandon everything I ever say on this podcast. And I'll reference back to what I talked about in the beginning, how people talk so much about how they don't wanna miss the moments with their kids. they regret missing the moments with their kids. They regret not spending more time watching them grow up or enjoying time with their spouse. And yet, as I moved through the house, I decided that I needed to just get everything done. That once I got everything done, then it would feel better, and then I could relax, and then I could go enjoy my family. Meanwhile, Cora had come and talked to me at least three times and asked me to come and watch her ride her bike. And every time I said,"No." I said,"Mommy is busy. I have a house to put together," right? Like all of these things. I don't have time. I don't have time. I don't have time. And I remember when my mom didn't have time because she had so much stuff to do. And yes, that can be true if I allow it to be. But the most powerful moment, and the thing that I remember the most about putting this house together so far, is when I was in the middle of cleaning and I had the mop out. I had things moved, and I realized, I came back to in that moment, I took a deep breath and I said,"I choose connection. I choose presence because I want to be there for my daughter, and it's okay that I pause in this moment even though this is not finished. And I trust myself to come back to finishing this because I know that that is a priority." And it was one of my favorite moments of the week of going outside and watching both of my girls ride their bikes and then get rollerblades on and go up and down the hill and really just enjoy this moment of being on A cul de sac street where the trees are shining bright and they're gigantic, and the light is shining through them. Like it was just such a beautiful moment of being able to pause, and I did that. I did that because I noticed that this is not the life I wanna live. I don't believe that I need to get everything done first. I do believe that the things need to get done, I just can't do it all right now. And that was one of the most powerful things that I was able to do over this last week. It's interesting to teach something and then to live it, and to continue to practice it, and that's really what it is, is practice. My good friend Mayor always says that although we say something, we're never excused of our human experience in these moments. And it really has gotten me thinking because I certainly was not excused of my own human experience in these moments, nor was my ADHD excused. And that's part of the beauty of the world that we're living through right now, is understanding what we're truly capable of and that we too are not excused of this human experience. In fact, it's not perfect even though that's what we desire. It's not even remotely perfect, but that's the beauty of it. As I look back on this week, I think about my friend Steph, who passed away. And I called her husband, and we talked for a long time about what she went through and what her experience was, and how women with ADHD are often affected by autoimmune diseases. And that is going to now be a future episode on the podcast. And I have grieved here and there, and will continue because she was such a light in this world, as so many of us are. And I will continue to support my daughter through every health concern she has, and we have, and help her navigate this world from a place where she has self-efficacy. And I will continue to learn how to show up for her so that she can be the best version of her in this world. And for my business, I learned that although I had planned the week off, there were certain things that I didn't think of and didn't understand would happen that has now given me more data collection for the future and helped me understand what I could do differently next time. Because perfection is not real. It's not a thing that you achieve, and honestly, perfection is gonna be different for anyone that's out there. My perfection is gonna be different from your perfection, so, if I'm achieving it, then how do you know, because it's not yours. I also was able to see that I can trust myself to come back to the things that I pause, to things that I don't finish, and part of that is through a lot of practice. In fact, sometimes I don't come back to the things that I don't finish, and that's because I make a decision not to, because it doesn't make sense in my life anymore, what I'm taking with me this time is that- I'm gonna keep showing up, practicing, and taking action because in all of this, nothing could have given me more clarity than continuing to take action on the things that I know to be true, on showing up for my family and showing up by putting things in places, just doing it one thing at a time. The messy middle is data, and when I'm talking about the messy middle, I'm not just talking about life because as most people on the podcast come on here and say,"Yeah, it is life, right?" Like you... It's the beginning, it's the end, and it's all, everything in between, except that there's also these little aspects of change that you're navigating, and you often don't realize when you've gotten to the other side. It's battling between the version of you that lived in this old house and the version of you that lives here. I bet in the next couple weeks, I'm likely going to nonchalantly drive to the other house because that was just my norm for so long, even though I very much know that that is not my house anymore and I now belong here. And that's okay because this messy middle of navigating this change, although good, is still uncomfortable, and it's still new, and it's still different. And trusting myself to come back to where I am now is part of the practice. Allowing myself to step into the version of me that I'm going to be in this home, of how I want to show up in this home, that's the practice. We're just in another messy middle, and the only thing that's going to get us to the other side, whatever that may be, is by taking action. And that will give us just more evidence of what's to come. what I do want to leave you with is just permission to pause, permission to not finish I know that all of the hacks and advice and all that crap out there is to say like,"This is how you finish projects," and blah, blah, blah. And yeah, that's a goal. Absolutely. I want you to be able to finish projects, and I just want you to know that it's okay to pause in the middle of it after you've done it for 15 minutes or maybe even 30 minutes. You're allowed to pause and enjoy these moments to be with your kids, and that is also uncomfortable. It truly is. But if that's the life you want to live, then you must practice being comfortable in that uncomfortable because that's where you can find comfort. If you want to find comfort in watching your kids ride their bikes, then practice. If you want to find comfort in pausing and being more peaceful and finding more ease in your life, practice. But it doesn't come easy. It takes practice. It takes noticing the uncomfortable so that you can get to where you want to be. I hope you all have a beautiful week, and I will see you next week