After decades of self-doubt and depression, I’ve finally found my place in the world

Jean Ward always wondered if there was something wrong with her, and hated herself for it. The feeling started at school, where she could see a stork in a knot of her wooden desk, but the blackboard failed to hold her attention. Her sense of shame and displacement grew until, at 71, she learned she had “severe ADHD”, and finally began to accept herself.

“There’s an empowerment that comes with diagnosis,” she says. “And confidence. Maybe I’m not as awful as I thought I was.”

Tell us: has your life taken a new direction after the age of 60?