Nowhere Girl

A ground-breaking blend of memoir, neuroscience, and feminist medical history that reframes what it means to be a woman with ADHD

For Carla Ciccone, the feeling of not quite knowing how to perform adult life was all too familiar.

After a lifetime of muddling through shame and self-blame, Carla was finally diagnosed with ADHD at thirty-nine years old. With this late diagnosis came the realisation that her most troubling traits weren't deep personality flaws, but symptoms.

The knowledge that her ADHD had gone unnoticed all her life felt like a missing puzzle piece. It prompted Carla to explore the cohort of women and girls (the 'nowhere girls') that science had ignored. Through scientific research, interviews with experts, and the warmth and wit of her own lived experience, Carla explores how the gendered approach to ADHD left girls just like her to struggle in silence for years.

A powerful and deeply personal account, Nowhere Girl is a source of explanation and solace for women who are embarking on their own journey of discovery of life with ADHD.