The Healing Author: How One Mom Turned ADHD, Lyme & Leadership into 14 Children’s Stories

Sara Hartley is a neurodivergent mom, healthcare executive, and certified ADHD & neurodiversity coach. She’s the author of Purposefully Me, a bold 14-book children’s series launching over 13 months that redefines how we teach emotional wellness, neurodiversity, and confidence at home. These books dive into tough subject that aren’t openly discussed with children like ADHD, Autism, Anxiety, Bullying, Divorce, Death and more. 

She’s not just writing books; she’s starting a movement for parents raising emotionally intense and neurodiverse kids. Her message resonates deeply with parents and educators:

Echo Parenting - the philosophy that our children’s needs and diagnoses mirror back opportunities for our own healing and growth.

The ALIGN Parenting Method™ - a simple, 5-step grounding tool (Awareness, Listen, Identify, Ground, Nurture) that helps parents not lose their sh*t in real-life dysregulated moments.

Why Sara is a podcast must-have:

Echo Parenting: A fresh framework to connect with thousands of overwhelmed parents realizing we need to put our oxygen mask on first before we can help our children

The ALIGN Parenting Method™: Other grounding tools stop at calming down. ALIGN not only calms you, but also helps you understand what’s happening, connect with your child, and repair the relationship in one framework - vetted and used by neurodiverse parents and children!

 14 SEL books in 13 months: From affirmations to calming strategies, the first of which will launch before the end of the year and once a month from there. 

 Real + professional insight: Nearly 20 years in healthcare, branding, and AI paired with lived experience as a mom with ADHD raising two neurodivergent kids

She can dive into high-impact topics like:

✅How Echo Parenting transforms the way we see ourselves through our kids

✅The ALIGN Parenting Method™: a 60-second tool for parents to regulate themselves and co-regulate with their kids in the hardest moments

✅Parenting through the ADHD lens, both as a mom and as a woman

✅Why she wrote 13 books in the middle of burnout and how storytelling became her survival and healing tool

✅Teaching confidence, emotional regulation, and affirmations through social and emotional learning stories

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hi, this is Pamela Worth with the Hello Health Podcast. And today I am Sarah Hartley. She is a not only a neurodivergent mom, healthcare executive, and certified ADHD neurodiversity coach, but she has published 14 books. And she has philosophies and parenting methods and so many things that she is here to share. So thank you, Sarah.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Thank you for having me, Pamela.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

So tell us how you got in from healthcare executive to writing books and then everything in the between.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Yes, it's been it's been quite the journey. I really I'm still in the healthcare world and in the healthcare executive world. Uh, but from my children, that is really where my journey with all of the understanding of neurodiversity and what led me to write the books of where that started. My oldest actually just turned nine on Friday. So he is nine, and my my little one last week also turned seven, uh, or excuse me, six. So I have six and nine-year-old, and they are really the reason behind all of this. I was diagnosed with ADHD at 25 years old, but at that time, you're really just given medication and told, you know, hey, or go on your way. Come see me once a month to get your prescription. And otherwise, we're not given any sort of strategies or anything to help us through that process. And so it really wasn't until my oldest was diagnosed and started having a lot of struggles, even early as preschool, where we needed to get him into early intervention. And when that started, when it's your child, you take a totally different perspective. You know, you kind of put your own health needs aside and you do anything and everything for them to figure out what exactly is going on. And I think you you've been down that road before with your own child and trying to figure out what is this? You know, is this the right diagnosis? And you know, that it still might be that there's some additional things underlying because I do have Lyme disease. And so there's an element of where both of my children have actually had a histamine reaction and had a bullseye rash. And so I imagine that there is an element of neurolime that they're both dealing with. Um, but at first glance, it appeared as sensory processing disorder, as ADHD, and uh as being highly gifted. And so going down that path and trying to find a solution for them is really what has brought me to where I am today and kind of going on this simultaneous path with my career, but also trying to figure out how do I help my own mental health? How do I help both of my children and their mental health, you know, and how how can I do all of these things? Because there's a lot to juggle, but making sure that they are successful in their own lives and and just can be normal kids and have fun.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Yes, it's a lot. So tell us, so and and and you're right, like you know, I'm when you get first diagnosed, they're like, here, you know, take this and you'll feel great. And you know, that medication may or may not be the right fit for everyone. Um one of my kids, I've got two, one of them um was diagnosed with ADD and um being highly gifted at the age of like four or five. And it just uh it was this horrendous path that we went down in terms of like different schools and different ways of treating, and like, you know, we try the diet, and then we try a certain medication, and it was just one thing after another. And it's um it's really, really hard to know what to do. So tell us from your standpoint, you know, with with your aligned parenting method, with hyper parenting, kind of some of the things that you feel like you can start to evaluate like where are we? Is this really something I need to take action on, or can I take action in different steps at different stages? Um sort of your journey.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

It's such a difficult decision to figure out where do you even start? And you have input from various medical doctors, but then you may have, you know, other specialists that you're talking to as well. And do I get them into OT or play therapy? Or um is there something else out there? Um, to you know, give you an example, even today, my my oldest has been going to more of a cognitive behavioral therapy. And she said, you know, he's had some things along the way during this journey that have led him to not trust certain adults. He's had uh he had a broken clavicle last April from a aftercare counselor who tackled him playing football. So he he's had these elements of trust that have been taken away, and he's not ready to really have that kind of talk therapy. And so we started talking about what are other solutions. Um there are some you know neuropathic kind of brain mapping things. Is it chiropractic care or acupuncture or just something different out there? So it's really hard to understand and know where do you even start. At the beginning, for us, because my oldest had such outward aggressive behavior in preschool, you know, we were getting the incident reports of something happening on a daily basis. You know, his cognitive skills were so high and his social emotional skills were so low that the explosions in between were just mass destruction. And so he was one that really needed that medication to calm his body down, but he needed the additional support of some of those therapies to go along with it. Where my younger one, now that he's in kindergarten, I'm starting to see a lot of the ADHD signs, but he is actually really tiny. He just in general, my older one's very tall, 99th percentile in height. And so it was fine for him to have that medication because he was of a substantial weight, because it can cause you not to eat as much. But my little one, that's absolutely not the route that we want to go. We have to try to figure out what's a different path for him because while he most likely also has ADHD, it's in a totally different way and he's not disruptive and he's he's not really aggressive, but he does have a lot of impulsivities and he does go from zero to a hundred very quickly. So it's trying to figure out what's right for that child. But through this journey, the number one thing that I figured out is when you do have ADHD or any kind of really neurodiversity, a lot of times that child or that person will mimic the other people around them in their environment, especially if it's later in the day when they have decision fatigue because they've been making decisions all day long and they just don't have the capacity to do it any longer. So they start to mirror the those around them and they mirror your personality, meaning my personality, my husband's personality, and that's what they default to. And so if I am not calm, my child is not going to be calm. If I can't regulate my nervous system, they are not going to regulate their nervous system. And so I had to figure out what works for me. I never knew I was going to be triggered by my children until in the moment and things are starting to happen, things that come up that I don't even know why it might bother me. I never really had any issues with sound sensitivities historically. I used to go to I loved live music, go to concerts all the time. And now it's like the littlest thing kind of throws off my own central nervous system, especially when it's one of my children screaming. And so I'm learning what are these things that are triggering me and how can I calm and regulate myself so that they can mirror me. And that's how I ultimately um developed the aligned parenting method. But it's all built around the philosophy of echo parenting, which is we're on this same parallel journey with our children at the same time because we didn't learn that support or we didn't learn those strategies. And we're trying to break that general generational type of parenting that's happening to make sure that we're parenting in a different way, but we're having to heal ourselves along the way.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

No, super interesting. And a friend of mine and I used to joke about it there was nothing more irritating in the entire world as you're driving as this crunching water bottle. Like kind of back to what you're saying about sounds, like I've never had a problem with sounds, but to this day, like it just is that constant just noise that you know the kids are trying to get attention or you know, something as you're trying to um do something such as as simple as driving, um, it just really would set me off. Um I mean, not set me off, but it just really would get under my skin and I'd have to like just calm down. This is just a water bottle.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

Oh, no, it's so true. On the way home from basketball practice last night, my oldest was singing and just I think he was maybe even trying to annoy me, but he was singing at the top of his lungs. And on one hand, I found it very annoying. On the other hand, I had to think about how singing and listening to music is actually a calming technique, even humming. And so, as I'm preaching, these are certain calming strategies you can use. He's actually using one, so I can't get frustrated with him when he's in the moment and doing something you know, he should do to regulate his own body. You know, and we actually had a really pretty calm evening in comparison to some of our evenings, they are very difficult because that medication wears off. And now he's at home. Now he is not living by as strict of rules as is what he has at school. And you know, he's been listening and focusing all day. And so home is really the time to kind of let loose and let go. And sometimes, most of the time, let's say, um, evenings can be very difficult. And I did notice last night he had a great evening. I think I had to take a few deep breaths myself because that annoying singing was was really um, you know, getting under my skin because it was also, you know, 8 p.m. and I was exhausted. It's been a long day, it's a 30-minute drive to basketball, and so just ready to get home at that point. Where if he would have been singing on the way to school in the morning or midday, it probably wouldn't have bothered me at all.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

Yeah. Well, and you know, I think too, like, so what what sort of suggestions do you have for people? I mean, and and I love that he had a great night last night. And I used to have those too, and my husband and I would sit there and look at each other, like, so what changed today? And is tomorrow gonna be good? Like, you know, it's like an analyst and in just trying to figure out what what to do. Um, and I don't know that we ever came up with any great things, but what we did do was um start to understand more of what drove us crazy and where we would argue, and then bring in people to help. Like I as as our older son got into middle school and high school, homework was like this just horrific time for all of us. And so we would bring in um, and he didn't really care for the people that were super older to help him with a computer, so to speak. I basically just wanted somebody to sit there and watch him do his homework to make sure it got done and it wasn't me. Um, because then I would get just again annoyed that you know we got off track. So he preferred a girl in high school. So I would pay a girl in high school to come over and just literally sit there and be, you know, mostly on her phone and just kind of like pay attention to what he was doing and ask questions, and then he thought that was cool. But um tell us a little bit more about your your five-step process and and how you really are thinking about this. And then how in the world did you come up with 14 books? I mean, I have two, I don't know how I'd come up with another 12. So tell us a little bit about the book writing and what that's all about.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

Yeah, and I'll I'll start with the aligned parenting method. So this five-step grounding technique, it really is simple in the moment. Align is an acronym, and I'll start with just walking through what that acronym means and then give you an example of it. And so A is for awareness, L is for listen and label, I is for identify triggers, um, G is for grounding, and N is for nurture. And so becoming aware of your surroundings and your body and how you're feeling within your body is the first step. And what I mean by that is is your chest tight? Are your palms sweating? Is your jaw tight? You know, are you clenching your fists? What is the physical sensation that's happening in your body? Because that is the very beginning of where you might escalate and you're starting to feel overwhelmed or irritated within the moment. It could be that your child's triggering you, or this could just be, you know, maybe it's a colleague or maybe it's your spouse. And that's the first step of identifying the awareness piece. Um, the next piece of that is when you go from A into the L, you're listening to yourself, you're listening to your child. Most of the time, it's not coming out of nowhere. There's something that is causing this behavior. And so you want to be able to label that. Say, you know, I'm feeling really overwhelmed, or I see that you're feeling really overwhelmed. Um, next, it's identify the triggers because for me, you know, my child's the one triggering me. But then you can also look at your surroundings. We were at a um a baseball game over the summer and it was extremely hot. He was becoming very frustrated. And so I was able to say, you know, it's really hot, it's really crowded, it's loud, there are a lot of smells coming from the stadium. It's very sensory overload. I imagine that you're feeling really frustrated. And I get that because I am too. So I'm identifying what that trigger is. And I said, you know, let's do a quick grounding technique. So we moved into the G. And um, water is a very easy tool. A sip of water can help reset your central nervous system. Um, but we did a I I love 54321 where it's more sensory and but if you um but where you're going into all five senses, but if you are strapped for time, we just name we found three things that were purple. So, you know, naming those three things that are purple really brings you back to that grounding element. And then you move into nurture. And so whether you are nurturing your child or yourself, so maybe you're having a hard time and you're just saying, okay, I am a good mom, I am a good parent. Or you're saying to your child, um, I get it. I I totally understand what was triggering you and why you were feeling overwhelmed in that moment. Um, it's too it's okay to feel that way. Why don't we, you know, try something? Maybe we go play a game together, depending on what you're doing, or maybe let's take 10 minutes to read or just do something that's going to be a bit more calming. But I really try to have that connection with them instead of just jumping to those conclusions that what they're doing is maybe disrespectful, because most of the time it's triggered by some sort of outside factor. Maybe they they haven't eaten yet. Maybe it's been a rough day. A lot of times I'll find out, oh, well, it really was because so-and-so said something really mean to me today at school. And that's why immediately when getting into the car, I can tell there's a little bit of an attitude that's happening there. They're not just having these visceral responses. They're they're really responding to something that has happened that day that has really now their cup is overflowing and they're ready to let those emotions out. So that nurturing peace just creates that connection and it allows for you to be able to move forward. And in that moment, when we were at the game, I said, Okay, buddy, you know, I know you've been complaining, you want to go home. It looks like the line's moving. Do you want to go inside or do you really want to go home? And he's like, No, let's let's go inside. Like, let's go have fun. And so it can really take you out of this heightened sense of kind of fight, flight, freeze to to trying to enjoy what's in that moment. And if you can do it yourself, maybe they're just mirroring you, or you're doing it alongside of them, or you're walking away, you're doing it, and then you're coming back and you're feeling more grounded to then take them through the steps. So there's multiple ways that you can use this. And another thing for me that I found that really helped was writing. And I it was a bit of a shock to me. Um, I had an aha moment a few years ago, you know, very um everything was kind of going wrong in at that time frame. That's I had just gotten diagnosed with Lyme disease, my oldest with all of ADHD and everything that he had been through. It was a lot. It was right after the pandemic, um, really still in the midst of the pandemic. And so I had that moment of, what is my purpose? Why am I here? And then I got out of the shower. It was a quick shower thought, and I ended up writing my first book. And it was extremely cathartic to write. So finding that thing for you that really works in those moments is really gonna be helpful and and will go a long way.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

That's awesome. Now that's the first book, but there's 13 more. So tell us in the how in the world you you got on this this journey and and what the books are um, is it is is sequential or are they all different?

SPEAKER_01 17:14

Or that's a great question. So the over the years I had written, I think I've maybe gotten up to seven, most of them being centered around an affirmation that I said with my boys um at night before bed. Right before bed is the time when they're the most vulnerable. It's when you're gonna get the most information out of them about things going on at school, or just really reaffirm some of those positive affirmations. And so I would say, repeat after me. I am kind, I am smart, I am lovable, I am brave, I am enough, I am safe, and I am a great kid. And not every book is exactly that theme, but that started some of those themes. And many of the actual stories stemmed from something that happened in real life, whether it was a conflict with a friend that they had, or me thinking back to when I was in school and some of the emotions that I felt with having ADHD and not knowing that that was going on with me. And so I met with, I started meeting with a book coach back in July of 24. And that really put more structure around the books that I had. And I had an idea of I think I'd like this to be a classroom of children coming from each one of their perspectives. They're each dealing with something. And we really took that concept and ran with it. And from there, it it allowed these books to center around themes that are very difficult for children to talk about, like ADHD, anxiety, autism, dyslexia. There's um one on even executive functioning skills, bullying, divorce, death. So it goes through a full gamut of very difficult topics that are not done in a way that is really childlike and friendly with a lot of illustrations that are gonna show you those raw emotions. So when I want someone to read it, I want the parent or the teacher to even say that maybe they see themselves in one of the books or in one of the characters. And then for the child to see themselves in another book or another character, or maybe they see their best friend. And so while many of the books do center around neurodiversity, it's still important that even neurotypical kids are reading these to say, oh, that kind of seems like my friend. Okay, maybe that makes a little bit more sense to me. Now I get him or her, you know. So there's an element of this that is gonna be that teaching moment. There are definitely a glossary in the back of definitions. So maybe they don't know what ADHD is or autism is, and so that is clearly defined. And then um some questions for purposeful conversations. So it is the purposefully me series, and each book is gonna be purposefully brave or calm. Um, and they are are slowly coming out. We've we've released the first book um for the ebook and the paperback. The hard cover will come in November, and then we'll have one a month after that for the next year.

SPEAKER_00 20:12

It's fabulous. And typically, how long are they and what age range is appropriate?

SPEAKER_01 20:17

There, it's a 32-page illustrated book. Um, and they are really appropriate for elementary school ages. Um, you know, five to twelve is where I see most of that. But I've had some conversations and it's just been a little bit eye-opening with others and their perspective of, you know, the ADHD brain, the way that we consume information is better done in a short format. And so it really might be helpful for people who are older than that, whether it is middle school or high school or even adults, because you can have that element of feeling a little bit less alone in your own brain and resonating with one of the characters without having to have the pain. I'm the ADHD kid that's very math-brained in science. And so for me, reading, I've always loved to write, but reading was very painful if it wasn't really interesting. And so doing it in a way that's fun, colorful, and and draws that raw emotion, it might resonate with an older crowd as well. So, so we will see where that goes. Um, at least the adults who have read it have have really enjoyed that and they've found themselves in some of the books. And and many uh psychiatrists, psychologists, teachers, principals, social emotional counselors, OTs, um therapists, they have all read the books and really have um enjoyed them and found um that deep meaning in the the stories that that we're discussing. So for me, it's it's it's come it's easy to write about emotions. My oldest is like, Mom, when are you gonna write a fun book? So it's funny because I'm actually just started on working on a real fun adventure book for him, but there still will be. Uh some signs of from the two characters that they have some sort of sensory sensitivities or neurodiversity. It won't clearly state it. Um, but it's easier to write about those raw emotions because I've felt all of them. And so it really is coming from the heart.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

Yeah, I love that. And I mean, I'm I'm one of those people that sometimes I get told I'm too curt because I can't absorb a ton of information unless it's like bullet points or like shorter. Like just tell me what's going on. Like I it bothers me to read through lines and lines and lines and understand what's happening. So I totally appreciate that. Um do your kids read all your books?

SPEAKER_01 22:35

They do. And my oldest has been very influential in even some of the content where he's he said, Oh, I don't know if it's in written in lyrical form. So, you know, it's it's rhythmic in that sense. And he's like, Oh, I don't think that sounds right. Um, maybe try this. And, you know, oh mom, let's change that. It there was the first one, is actually a situation that happened at school, but changed a lot of of how it all transpired. And he's like, We don't want to read that one in the class. Everybody's gonna know it's me. I'm like, you also wanted the character to look like you, buddy, and uh the name is very similar, and so um it definitely, and then my little one is in another book where I've I've kind of created that one a little bit more around him. So um it's it's been a fun process. He's a little less likely to want to, he's read some of them, but he, you know, just turning six has less of an attention span.

SPEAKER_00 23:31

For sure. Anything else you want to dig into or share that we may or may not have covered?

SPEAKER_01 23:37

Um, you know, this has been been wonderful. I, you know, I think that uh just going by some things that we we had talked about before and you know, misdiagnoses that can happen. I've just I encourage parents and and children out there to just be advocates for your own health. I've gone went through a very long journey with Lyme disease of being told it was potentially something else and you know, it wasn't. And so it's so important for you to to seek out all different resources and talk to people and try to do as much research as you can because there's so many unknown things that are out there. I also wonder, you know, is are a lot of their symptoms an exacerbation of what's underlying? And so you just have to trust your gut. That was the moment for me with my youngest, where I found out that I had Lyme disease because he had an absent cranial nerve uh and he has a facial palsy, and so it hit the nerve seven uh allows for your eye to blink and it has a bit of a droopy smile. And I was reading something around um Lyme disease and children and how they can have Bell's palsy, and I had this gut feeling in that moment. Maybe that is what's going on with my child, and maybe that's what's going on with me. And through that process, they thought he had a stroke in utero, cerebral palsy, craniosinosenosis. There were a million things that they thought were happening, and none of those were accurate, and he's completely healthy. There's nothing wrong with him besides this absent cranial nerve and maybe a little ADHD. But he is Mr. Personality, he's hilarious, he's insanely intelligent. Um, and he's the cutest thing on the planet, and his little crooked smile is very endearing. But, you know, with all of that, I had to trust my gut in it. I and that ended up taking me down the path. That's when I got diagnosed with Lyme disease. He has since had that bullseye rash and histamine reaction. So that could be what happened because there was no rhyme or reason. So you just have to have that instinct where you you really trust yourself. And if it doesn't feel right, then get a second opinion. I mean, it being in the healthcare space um and in for a very long time, I think that's one of the biggest things. And seek out both Eastern and Western medicine. You know, make sure that you're not just putting all your eggs into one basket because there might be a different solution out there for you.

SPEAKER_00 26:03

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Sarah. Really appreciate you being on today.

SPEAKER_01 26:07

Oh, thank you so much for having me.