Tranquila, Tranquila🌿

During one of my ChatGPT “therapy” sessions, it reminded me that my word of the year is Tranquila, and suddenly it all made sense…

At the start of this year, I didn’t yet know I had ADHD. I suspected it, but I hadn’t yet received the diagnosis. What I did know was that my nervous system was craving a downshift. A calming down of sorts.

What I thought was simply the aftermath of a full year of life abroad was actually (and also) my nervous system calling out for help, as what I now know was a perimenopausal, ADHD-fueled sense of internal restlessness that had me feeling unsettled and depleted.

What I craved was a chill-out.

Even looking back at the Substack post I wrote several months ago about my word of the year, I can see someone yearning for clarity and focus. Someone who wanted to be more fully where she was, without constantly switching between the 37 tabs open in her head. Someone who was desperately trying to regulate her own operating system.

So when I received my ADHD diagnosis in May (combined type, with OCD tendencies), it suddenly made sense why this year has unfolded the way it has. What I wanted at the start of 2026 is exactly what so many undiagnosed women with ADHD long for—not more productivity, not more discipline, not another planner or morning routine.

Peace. Calm. Tranquilidad.

Not because we’re lazy or incapable. But because so much of our energy is spent managing the constant hum inside our own minds. The mental tabs. The urgency. The noise. The feeling that we should be doing something else, remembering something else, finishing something else.

I didn’t have the language for it then. I just knew I was tired.

But oh, how wonderful it feels to have the words for it now. It’s as though someone has handed me a dictionary for the first time. You mean there are words for how I’ve been feeling? I’m not the only one? This is just how my brain functions? I’m not actually broken?

Phewf. It’s profound.

It’s funny, really. Before I knew the name for what I was experiencing, my intuition had already prescribed the treatment.

The word Tranquila came to me in December, when I was feeling especially stressed and overwhelmed. It felt like a soft, cozy blanket.

It was never meant to be an instruction to “calm down.” Nor another thing to achieve. It was a permission slip to stop fighting my own nervous system. To create a life that feels less like pushing a boulder uphill and more like exhaling.

Maybe that’s what this year has really been about.

Not becoming someone new.

Just finally understanding the person I’ve been all along.

XOXO,