Myth-Busting: On Being Underestimated People underestimate me for different reasons, but it all comes from the same root: they see a fragment and mistake it for the whole. Some only see the disability labels — blind, agoraphobic, ADHD, PTSD — and decide what I can’t do before they ask what I have done. Others know just enough of my trauma story to assume I must be broken, like survival and damage are the same thing. And then there are the ones who project: “If I were in her shoes, I couldn’t handle it, so she probably can’t either.” What they never expect is how much range lives under the surface. I speak two languages fluently and can pick up or drop others as needed. I’m a self-trained junior developer, a voice writer, a violinist, a minister, and a cognitive-science nerd who reads patterns in human behavior like sheet music. People know about the voice, but not the violin. They see the tech work, but not the ministry. They hear the trauma, but not the theory behind how I rebuilt myself. ADHD makes that diversity look chaotic from the outside. From the inside, it’s velocity. It’s a mind that connects systems across fields before most people finish naming the pieces. If I info-dump metadata or shift into cognitive-science mode, I’m not grandstanding — I’m translating the invisible. And when I switch into counselor mode — the community mami, the strategist, the one who weighs assets and liabilities — that’s not coldness. That’s me protecting the people I love by seeing the patterns they can’t. The truth is, I’ve spent years surviving other people’s limited imaginations. They preferred the ditsy blonde persona — light, funny, easy to manage — because it didn’t challenge them. But that version was camouflage, not essence. Every time I step out of it, someone mistakes clarity for aggression, confidence for threat, intellect for arrogance. I’m none of those things. I’m simply whole. And wholeness confuses people who’ve only met fragments. So here’s the myth-bust: I am not broken, scattered, or overcompensating. I am multi-modal. I switch languages, disciplines, and identities with the same fluency that others switch apps. That’s not instability — it’s mastery born of adaptation. Underestimating me is easy when you only see the surface. But the surface was never where the power lived. #ADHDAwareness #Accessibility #BlindCreators #VoiceControl #CognitiveScience #Ministry #Violinist #madamgreen #RosieWrites