Her Body As a Wonderland

A Q & A with Nina B. Lichtenstein, author of Body: My Life in Parts

I had the good luck to meet author Nina B. Lichtenstein last month, introduced by our mutual friend, memoirist Casey Mulligan Walsh, after a panel discussion at the Woodstock Bookfest, On Permission: Daring to Tell, hosted by Sari Botton and inspired by Elissa Altman’s new book, Permission: The New Memoirist and the Courage to Create. (More on that in another post.)

When we met, I was familiar with Nina’s work, which has appeared in publications such as HuffPost, The Washington Post, Tablet Magazine, Lilith Magazine, Literary Mama, and Brevity Blog, and I was curious to learn more about her forthcoming book, Body: My Life in Parts. But within seconds, we discovered we’d both been diagnosed late in life with ADHD, and our quick meeting was immediately hijacked by conversation about our respective lightbulb moments and the ways our attention issues and impulsivity affect our writing.

It was that sort of conversation where you know right away where it’s going, your shared experience giving you a shortcut to familiarity, and within minutes of meeting you’re finishing each other’s sentences—or, okay, since we have ADHD, let’s call it what it is, interrupting each other.

Before we each took off for home—mine in Northeastern Pennsylvania and hers in Maine—Nina promised to share an advanced reading copy of her memoir, forthcoming from Vine Leaves Press on May 27. She did, and I was thoroughly intrigued by it.

Memoirists often agonize over structure, looking for the strongest scaffolds or containers for their books. Nina’s is unique—a corporeal structure—the whole organized by individual body parts, each serving as a flesh-and-bone threshold to another time and place. It’s embodied writing at an extraordinary scale, every story revealing itself through the interrogation of a body part.

Here, the body has multiple functions—it’s like a camera, a journal, a mold—recording the imprints of a lifetime of experience. It’s both a repository and a generator of memory. As she explains, “My body, which promised to guide me on this journey, became a portal for the remembering and recording of scars and blessings, traumas and joys, shame and pride, even the smallest moments long forgotten; all experience lodged deep within the body parts’ unique shapes, tissue, fascia, and nerve-endings because the body is at once witness and accomplice, reliably present when sometimes—perhaps often—the mind is not.”

Nina’s breasts evoke for her stories of nurturing, pleasure, impropriety, even pain. Her nose leads her back to the summers of her youth sailing with her family on the southern coast of Norway or working on farms in the countryside. Her hands tell the stories of the hands she’s held, the creations she’s made, the words she’s written, and the gestures handed down through love and DNA. Her back holds the story of the pain that happened and the addiction that could have happened.

While most of the narratives Nina recounts are triggered by exploration of one body part, ADHD is a story told through three—the brain, the butt, and the mouth—which she characterizes as her “up-to-no-good trinity, a scheming irreverent threesome” that’s interfered with her ability to comport herself in accordance with behavioral norms. It was the brain that wouldn’t let her butt stay glued to the chair or keep her mouth from interrupting. Yet ADHD finds its way into tales of other parts as well, such as her ears, which are hypersensitive, or her eyes, for which she needs glasses that she routinely misplaces or forgets at school. She may not have been diagnosed until middle age, but the signs of ADHD are present in the body memories of the young girl and young woman.

Perhaps, unsurprisingly, there’s no body part that’s a portal to more moving testimonies than the heart, which takes the author back both to profound love and nearly shattering heartbreak.

The sum of the parts is deeply rewarding. Nina’s sensory memory evokes a fully dimensional and carefully examined existence. Through its wounds, beauty, aches, callouses, imperfections, bruises, lacerations, strengths, and weaknesses, it reveals a life of joy, sorrow, passion, and curiosity.

Eager to hear more about her experience of ADHD and its effect on her creative process, I invited Nina to take part in the first Q&A for Creatively ADHD, and I’m thrilled she agreed.

When did you discover you had ADHD and what prompted or led to that discovery?

I was diagnosed in 2023 at the age of 57, but that was only the formal part of my “discovery.” As I worked on my memoir Body: My Life in Parts, work that began during my MFA in 2018-2020, I explored my life and what I call my muscle and emotional memories through my various body parts. Little by little, a pattern began to reveal itself. It showed how from an early age, my personality and identity were shaped by reactivity, unrest, emotional dysregulation, among other tell-tale signs of ADHD. It was like having an aha moment in slow motion, and it led me to dig deeper and research how adults who had not been diagnosed as children had lived their lives and what it was like for them to finally receive a diagnosis. What a relief it could be. A coming home and an affirmation of the challenges and gifts of our neurodiversity.

Would you describe yourself as primarily inattentive, hyperactive, impulsive, or a mix?

A mix of these classic traits.

What was your initial emotional response to discovering you had ADHD?

My initial response was relief. I remember breathing better. And a feeling of validation, that my emotional and behavior struggles—historically—had an explanation that did not point to me being a “bad” or “difficult” person who made poor choices.

Do you consider your diagnosis transformative in any way?

Yes, it is transformative because it has enabled me to be more compassionate toward myself and to learn to value better all the extraordinary and positive things that folks with ADHD bring to relationships, their work, and to life.

If you’ve told others you have ADHD, have there been any helpful or unhelpful responses? Are there things you wish people wouldn’t say or things that have shown insight and support?

I have almost exclusively experienced positive responses to the tune of “me too!” and from friends and family, almost an unspoken “you think?”—which I take with a smile. They know me, they have lived with me for many years!

Do you have a writing routine or do you find a routine to be incompatible with your experience of ADHD?

I (still) aspire to sit with a routine, à la Stephen King or Hemingway, (because we ADHDers are so hopeful and optimistic and always willing to try again!) but typically, each new attempt invariably doesn’t last long (notice I did not say “fails”!). I can’t say I don’t feel disappointment at myself at times, but I am learning to consider my distractibility kindlier. I find that deadlines work well for my workflow and ability to complete tasks, so that’s a strategy I impose on myself or ask from others for/with whom I write or work or collaborate.

Once you knew you had ADHD, did you alter or attempt to alter your writing process in order to accommodate your new understanding of the way your brain works?

Haha, I probably don’t fully understand the way my brain works, other than that I am so utterly distractible. I think that all along, as I have written my way through two master’s and one PhD, and now two books and innumerable articles and essays, I accept that I will postpone and be distracted until I don’t have a choice and it comes down to not meeting a deadline or managing, and that is when I hunker down and get the job done. I guess that is what we’d call our ability to compensate and adapt, to, actually, survive and even perhaps thrive in our own way.

Do you believe ADHD gives you an edge creatively? If so, in what ways?

Absolutely. I once had a three-day-long aptitude test at a fancy-schmancy evaluation place in Boston, and one thing they found was that I have what they called “ideaphoria,” meaning a specific strength is that I can come up with many new ideas in a short time and get very excited and bring lots of energy and enthusiasm about it to the table. But then, without the accountability to follow through, the idea(s) can just as easily fall by the wayside, not be pursued, whither. The ideal creative setting for me is when I collaborate with people whose strength it is to be organized, to stay on task, to follow up, and to see a project to completion. That’s how the literary magazine In a Flash came to be: I was part of a flash writing group, and suddenly I had the brilliant idea that we should start a Substack and eZine for flash nonfiction, because our take on this would fill a need. Today, my co-founders and co-editors laugh about how it was all my idea, but in my contributions in the running of things, I need to be told and reminded what to do and when. And I’m always the last to submit my work/complete my tasks.

What aspects of writing does ADHD complicate or make more difficult? (For example, choosing or sticking with a topic, keeping a writing routine) Do you have a top five list of the biggest challenges?

My Top 5 List of Biggest Writing Challenges:

1. Pursuing (and completing) an idea beyond the exciting initial concept/title/first few lines.

2. Routine? What routine?

3. Staying off social media and not checking my email every three minutes.

4. Stopping my work in the evening at a reasonable hour (I must catch up with all the lost time from browsing the internet and checking my emails during the day.)

5. My desk is a huge mess of accumulated scraps of paper with notes about different, non-related things that come to mind while I write. I imagine other more successful writers would look at that disorder in pure horror.

Have you learned anything that helps with those issues or developed your own workarounds?

Honestly, I just trudge along and do my best. I have tried “methods” to be more organized, purchased and paid for organizational tools etc., but you’ll find them tucked in a corner of a bookshelf or at the bottom of a stack of papers, practically unused, save for perhaps the first few pages…I’m not much help, am I?

If you write both fiction and nonfiction, are the challenges/benefits of ADHD similar or different?

So far, my experience is that it is similar. But I have yet to complete a fiction project, so perhaps I have something to discover here.

Do you believe ADHD has affected your overall career as a writer?

I am sure it has, in both positive and negative ways.

Since you were late diagnosed, how do you think your career might have been different if only you’d known you were neurodivergent? If you do believe your writing life would have been different, you experience any feelings of grief or regret about that?

Oh my, feelings of regret, grief…such a tender thought. I think I carry regret and grief for many things that are likely results of being neurodivergent, not just career-wise, but I feel like I have conditioned myself to soldier on, and just do my best. Now that I am prompted to think about it, I can tell I am feeling almost afraid to go too deeply with it, lest I become really depressed. It’s as if I am afraid to think about it, to discover how things might have been different.

All writers face rejection, and most on a regular basis. And while it’s not fun for anyone, people with ADHD often experience it acutely. If that’s your experience, how do you cope? What keeps you putting yourself out there?

Somehow, I seem to have built a sturdy protective shield for myself to cope with rejection in my writing life. I always feel a brief pang of disappointment at the receipt of a rejection, but then brush myself off and begin again, understanding it’s par for the course. I find that I am much more acutely sensitive when it comes to social rejection, including within my family and friends.

Are there any self-care practices that for you ease difficulties associated with ADHD in general or with writing with in particular?

Staying physically active and practicing yoga and meditation are life-saving time outs for me, as are biking, kayaking, and cross country skiing, all giving me space to just “be” in quiet and solitude. I find that if my body has its movement, I am more likely to be able to sit and remain seated, and even stay more focused. Part of my self-care is also to allow myself (shamelessly) to nap for 40 minutes or so (and I can be found to do this anywhere), whenever I feel overwhelmed or fatigued, which happens often.

Is there anything I haven’t asked about ADHD as it relates to creativity/writing that you’d like to address?

I am actually kind of proud of my ADHD, and I feel that there are so many gifts that come with the challenges, and these are invaluable to who I am, the parts of me that I really love and know I am loved for, so that brings me a sense deep contentment. I do wish I had a support group of other creatives with ADHD, similarly neurodivergent folks I could commiserate and celebrate with, learn from, and be inspired by.

If you could recommend just one thing—a book, a podcast, a Substack, whatever, what would it be?

Well, my dear, that would be YOUR Substack. I am so happy I met you and found it.

What do you think are the biggest misconceptions people have about ADHD?

That we—folks with ADHD—can or should get a grip and pull ourselves together to fit it and be “normal.” As if it is a choice.

If there’s anything you want people to understand about ADHD what would it be?

That we yearn for compassion and curiosity about our experience as neurodivergent people.

Finally, if you could give up your ADHD, would you?

I would like to live for a day or maybe a week without it, to see what it would be like. Then I’d be able to answer this very interesting question.

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A native of Oslo, Norway and a mother of three grown sons, Nina Lichtenstein writes a Substack newsletter called The Viking Jewess and Other Curiosities. With a PhD in in French from The University of Connecticut and an MFA in creative nonfiction from Southern Maine University’s Stonecoast program, she calls herself a recovering academic. She’s the founder and director of Maine Writers Studio, a cofounder and coeditor of In a Flash lit mag, a contributor to several anthologies, and author of Sephardic Women’s Voices: Out of North Africa. She lives with her husband in Maine, which reminds her of her home in Norway.

You can learn more about her work here and preorder her book from Vine Leaves Press, Bookshop.org, Amazon, or Barnes & Noble.