Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Hello. Hello. Welcome to Beyond A D H D A Physician's Perspective. I am Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh. I'm a family medicine physician practicing in rural Texas. I used to be hindered by my A D H D, but I now see it as a gift that helps me show up as the person I was always meant to be. Both in my work and in my personal life. In the past two years, I've come to realize, That unlearning some of my beliefs and some of my habits were just as important as learning the new set of skills. Hey, did you hear that? That was the attention? So I just got back from Costa Rica like literally yesterday and. We spend an incredible week there and my tour guide, his name is Carlos and he's from the Mela tribe, and he gifted my husband a wonderful drum that he had. For himself for over 15 years and that's the sign for attention it. Anyways, I wanted to grab your attention as I'm starting this and, uh, let you know that I will be, uh, Putting a hold on my group coaching for a month. I've decided I won't start again until June 19th. So, um, that gives you some time to start going through some of the modules that I already have there, and then when we come together, we can reconvene. I am in Cloud 45 right now after such an amazing transformational ex. Experience that I was able to facilitate in Costa Rica and I wanna share all about it with you. Um, so June 19th, if you are considering the coaching group, you need to sign up now because of course spots are limited. And, uh, I really, really like my. Groups to be small, private, and intimate. And of course there's already some physicians who are going to continue the level of membership and I'm glad to have them. And some of them have been with us for, for a while. But anyways, June 19th, put that in your calendar. Uh, you can come to the 11:00 AM class that I'll be having, or you could come to the 7:00 PM class that I will be having. And so with that in mind, let me tell you about my most amazing week that I just had last week, and some takeaway points and some things that maybe will inspire you to consider it for the next time. What do I start? Uh, I was asked why Costa Rica? So first of all, in September when I went to experience Costa Rica myself, I booked that on a whim. I, my husband and I had gone to Costa Rica for our honeymoon, and that was almost the 11 years ago prior to, uh, September. And in September we were gonna have our 11 year anniversary. So I decided to, um, Book a hotel and the flights and everything without telling my husband. Yeah, very A D H G impulsive. Like I found this amazing hotel and I just could not wait. I didn't want it to be sold out. So I booked everything and then I went, I told my husband, Hey, um, in a month from now, we will be going to, uh, Costa Rica. To celebrate our, our 11 year anniversary. I hope you're coming cause I am going with or without you. Cause this place is divine. And of course he came with and the rest is history. So when we went to uh, Costa Rica, I just. I fell in love with the hotel, with the atmosphere. It just felt like paradise. I love having my own private villa bungalow. It was so cool to hear all the birds, the frogs, uh, to see this logs, uh, in the hotel grounds. And I felt like I needed to bring people to that place to experience it for themselves. And so the purpose of the retreat ended up being. A place where people could dis live behind all their troubles. They could like disconnect and just reevaluate and having fun along the way in doing such, and in a place where it would be non-judgmental and the place. by the R N l um, volcano and the hot springs and the hanging bridges and the Safari River float. So I decided to. Also tap into the indigenous tribe that was around the area, which is called Maku. And I wanted to really learn more about them. Um, they are located near a town called San Rafael aso, which is about. One hour from Launa where we were staying. There's about, uh, 600 people that live on that reserve and is one of the smaller tribe in Costa Rica. And so as luck would have it, when I attended in September, I. The tour guide that I met, his name was Carlos, and he and I met him on one of the tour guides where he was showing us the Safari River float. And I just, in talking with him, I asked him if he knew. Any indigenous people that I was interested in, in maybe having like a coco, a blessing ceremony. And he got super excited because he told me that he was of that tribe and that he could help arrange that. And that was in September. And of course, uh, he probably thought that, you know, I was just this crazy girl having crazy thoughts, but I kept, um, Emailing him and sending him Zoom messages and zoom links and Instagram messages and letting him know that I would be coming May 1st through the sixth, so that I would be able to, to have this, uh, ceremony and, and, and have him as our tour guide to do the different things. So everything came together and he became our tour guide and. You know, through the whole week it was a learning process for all of us. Um, I did not know all the details. I did not know the how, but I knew the why, why I was doing this. I was doing this to provide physicians and healthcare professionals with the way of reevaluating I. Their current lifestyle situation and allowing them to walk away empowered with, uh, executive function tools, emotional regulation tools with ways to integrate their desires and their goals and creating them into a reality. And I really, really set the intention to have only people who were. Soul aligned, who were really ready for a transformation, who were really ready to put in the work that it required to help themselves succeed. And so with that intention, we embarked in this beautiful journey, 12 people, 12 beautiful physicians in a total of 20 people, uh, attended my retreat. Uh, out of those 20 people, five were my support group, meaning my husband, my, uh, sister, my brother-in-law, um, my niece. And then of course myself, so that's five of us. And then the other 12 positions, speakers were, you know, there for the, for the event. And I had some guest coaches and luck. And as luck would have it, I, the guest coaches ended up being amazing. And I even had a therapist who came and we complimented each other so well, uh, because we were doing coaching and having real talk. And also she was, uh, helping us to talk about. Different things and from the therapy perspective, and she even offered to help process some of the things that came up. So yeah, it was really wonderful. So I'm saying all this to let you know that again, I'm in Cloud 45 right now. I, my cup is so beyond full. Uh, we had such an amazing, amazing, amazing experience. It. Came out 10 times beyond what I expected. I'm sure you're gonna start to see all the pictures online. I didn't really post on social media, um, but I will start to, we were able to, Yeah, to see wonderful things like slots and monkeys and, uh, frogs and we were just able to be present with each other. I even wrote the last day, I wrote together, uh, I wrote a poem that I gave them that I wanna read to you guys that I think really, really, um, Helped or really helped us to put all, every, all the themes that we were talking about. And so let me read it to you. I wrote, it's okay. It's okay if things don't turn out how you expected them to. It's okay to adjust course and choose another path. It's okay if you don't have all the answers right now. It's okay to be a beginner and be clumsy when trying something you've never done before. It's okay if it takes some time. It's okay to feel your feelings, whatever they might be. It's okay if you don't always feel okay. It's okay to ask for help. It's okay to rest even when there is a lot to do. It's okay to take a break from growing and just be, it's okay to let others share your burden. It's okay to say f**k this shit and it's okay to sign up for the next experience with team Deanna. So I'm laughing because a lot of these things came up and I'm laughing because some of these were inner jokes. Um, I gave them a. A little swag bag. And in one of the, the key chains, it said, I had one that was, you know, not cursing, but I had another one that was, and the one that was cursing said, a wise woman said, fuck this shit, and lived happily ever after. Uh, and I'm laughing because, Sometimes we all have expectations of how something needs to go, and then we get mad that it didn't go that way. But what if it also means that that's our flexibility or ability to read the room and modify. I allowed myself to see that we were kind of tired one day after enjoying a beautiful day at the hot springs and getting a massage that I, instead of going out to eat at a restaurant, I decided to change course and just to bring the food to us and to then decide to dance and just have an impromptu, uh, get together. And so it's okay. If you don't have all the answers and it just kind of works out, like trusting the process that, you know, some of the areas that I had gone to. Uh, like the volcano, I had gone through another site where I had climbed it and it was like an hour of rocky, uh, lava. But our tour guide suggested that we go through this other site where they had a lake and you could actually go kayaking, and that was optional. And some of us took advantage of the kayaking and took advantage of the paddle boating, and others could just chill. And you know, it was okay for people to decide to sit out in some, in some of the activities because of whatever they decided. Maybe they didn't wanna wake up or maybe their knee was hurting, or they just decided they wanted to skip out. And it was okay for us to realize that we're not gonna have everything in that moment in time, that we sometimes want it, that it's okay to not. Feel like it's okay and it's okay to ask for help from those around us and to let us share your burden. So it was
