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Shop nowWalks Like A Duck
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Learn moreWhen her son's teacher suggests the boy be tested for ADHD, Kim Livingston, uninformed and wary of the label, fights her. She fights the social worker, the doctor. "We can call it whatever you like," the doctor says. "But if he walks like a duck and talks like a duck, they're all going to know he's a duck."
This English professor grew up spacey and overweight. Drowning in the unrealistic demands of motherhood, Livingston steals her son's ADHD medication and watches it transform her life—for good and bad.
She grows weary of subjective diagnoses and chemical treatments from traditional psychology experts, and experiments with functional medicine—brain mapping and nutritional supplements—as a way to understand her brain's potential, bio-hacking her way to a healthy body and mind.
Kim Livingston's story is for the overextended, out-of-shape parent embarrassed over their messy house, or worried whether to medicate their children; and for teachers who seek insight into the mind of that quiet back-row student. It includes frustration, denial, some bold decisions—moments many listeners will recognize in their own lives.
Thirty years of teaching community-college English have made Kim R. Livingston a passionate advocate of neurodiversity. She sees value in our differences and understands that intelligence has many faces. Kim writes what she calls brain memoir, believing way deep down that these stories of ADHD and schizophrenia, of addiction and depression and anxiety-they help us all understand each other and move toward healthier, more peaceful lives. Her essays have been published in the Sun, P. S. I Love You, Grown and Flown, Cleaver, Multiplicity Blog, Carbon Culture Review, Blue Lake Review, and others. She earned degrees in English from Western Illinois University and Western Michigan University, and, more recently, an MFA in creative nonfiction writing from Bay Path University. Kim lives in Oswego, Illinois, where she and her husband, after being cat people their whole lives, are now helicopter parents to two fussy dogs as well. Their three kids were annoyed that the first dog arrived just as the kids were leaving for college. They'll really be mad when the dogs get a pool and a trampoline.