I Have All the Answers.

I Solve Big Problems.

When anyone asked me what I did, I replied, "I solve the big problems that everyone says can't be solved." Someone telling me "it can't be done" was an invitation I couldn't resist. At work, I loved the competition—not to beat people, but to find solutions that worked for everyone. My company. My team. Even my suppliers. That collaborative problem-solving was the heart of my success.

I maintained a demanding pace, treating every issue as a top priority. Procurement and supply chain had become almost entirely crisis management—nearly impossible to carve out time for strategic work. Each year, I was working harder and longer hours just to keep all the balls in the air. I always took on more work than one person could physically do in a day, but I never had the good sense to not try.

I never slowed down long enough to see the damage I was orchestrating.

My personality wouldn't let me step back and wait for other people to do their jobs. If waiting meant it would add time that would cause displeasure for the customer, that was unacceptable to me. I would collaborate with coworkers, then offer—in the most helpful manner possible—to do the work myself. I trained people to just let me take responsibility for their work.

Crisis management. Overwork. And the reality that procurement was the target of blame for any product failure. It was a perfect storm.

I never slowed down long enough to see the damage I was orchestrating.

To me, the fear of everything crashing down wasn't just a possibility. It was an inevitability.

What I didn't realize was that I was running on borrowed time.

At 52, I was working seven days a week, 16 hours a day. Pushing through, holding everything together. I was pretty sure I was crushing it.

Until one day, just two months after my 53rd birthday, my body stopped cooperating.

Chest pain landed me in the ER. The doctors ran tests. Not a heart attack—a panic attack.

Then the cognitive symptoms I'd been managing my whole life became impossible to hide. When I looked at my colleagues, friends, and family, everyone else seemed to have everything figured out. Their lives looked effortless. I could not figure out their secret—where could I learn it, why couldn't I access it? In comparison, my life seemed clumsy.

Growing up, I learned that anything less than perfect wasn't an option. I didn't have the skills necessary to ask anyone for help or advice. Now that I think about it, it makes sense why it took so long to get a diagnosis. I couldn't let anyone see me stumble.

So, when life got harder, I just juggled faster.

Until I couldn't.

When my doctor suggested I might have ADHD, my immediate reaction was anger.

How dare she?

For years, I'd been chasing an endless parade of frustrating physical symptoms. I was overweight and had been since my late twenties. I knew the weight was connected to everything else falling apart. I'd tried every diet program. My husband Wayne, ever the trooper, joined me for every single one. I used to joke that if I told Wayne we were going on a diet eating nothing but rocks and twigs, he'd say, "Okay—if that's what you're cooking, that's what I'm eating."

No matter which program we tried, one of us consistently lost weight.

That person was not me.

When COVID hit, we went all-in: whole-food vegetarian diet, daily walks, weekend mountain climbs, weight training. Wayne got in the best shape of his life.

I remained the same unbudging blob.

Meanwhile, I was working 16-hour days—9-10 hours in the office, then home for walks and meal prep, then 4-6 hours on contracts. Sometimes I pulled all-nighters, showered, and went straight back to the office.

When I saw my doctor for a follow-up about the weight, I found myself saying something that surprised me: "I'm really worried. And it's not about my weight."

I couldn't focus anymore.

All my life, I'd prided myself on my mental acuity. (Yes, I see the comic irony now, given I've had ADHD my entire life. But combining my IQ of 138 with unwavering drive and boundless creativity, I'd convinced myself that all the extra work I'd done over my lifetime was simply the price I paid for success. I didn't know it was the tax ADHD demanded.)

And my doctor wanted to dismiss this very serious concern with ADHD?

I couldn't believe it.

I agreed to see her specialist—almost defiantly. I'd be tested. When she found out I didn't have ADHD, she'd have to take this seriously.

I mean, really. I have an IQ of 138. ADHD—that's something people with very low IQs have, right?

(I'm mortified at my ignorance now. It was callous, judgmental, and dismissive. I can't make excuses; there is no excuse. But I have learned since. And you're seeing the journey I'm on as a result.)

Up until the moment the specialist began telling me my results, I was righteously arrogant. Even superior. I resented the time wasted on testing, only to hear this expert tell me, "Of course you don't have ADHD, but thanks for playing!"

I was stunned into silence.

At 53, I absolutely, indisputably had ADHD.

I didn't understand what that meant, except that my brain was broken. I had no idea how it happened, but I suspected the relentless stress of work and COVID had finally broken me.

You don't come back from that kind of injury.

The doctor continued speaking, but I couldn't hear the words. My hearing shut down, sending all available resources to the flash flood in my mind.

Then I was pulled from the raging currents of self-pity by something unexpected.

The doctor's whole demeanor had shifted. From serious to... joyful. She was smiling.

What in the world?

She had just told me the world as I knew it was ending. What was there to smile about?

I'll never forget what she said next:

"Laura, I'm so excited for you! Your whole life is going to change!"

I left that meeting armed with a prescription but no more understanding. Despite the doctor reviewing the test results, I remained unaware. I was surrounded by a fog of shame.

This diagnosis was confirmation of a lifelong fear.

All my life, I'd been pretending. I'd lied to everyone about my capabilities—lied so convincingly that I came to believe I was an intelligent and capable woman.

This diagnosis was proof the opposite was true.

My brain was broken. Who would ever trust me again?

How would I tell Wayne? I didn't have the words.

I was damned sure I couldn't tell anyone else. Who would believe me? Or worse—they would. They'd say, "Oh, that explains so much."

No one would want to work with me or be my friend ever again.

My life was ostensibly over.

The ADHD Specialist was right about one thing: my whole life was about to change.

Just not in the way I thought.

My ADHD Specialist preferred to prescribe a medication she saw as very effective for her patients. As luck would have it, my insurance refused to pay for it. It was a newer drug, and much more expensive than the legacy generic. My insurance wouldn't even pay for the extended release version, so that set me up to manage taking short-acting medication routinely throughout the day.

Does this make any kind of sense? I have ADHD. Doing anything routinely reliably was not in my vocabulary. In many ways that meant I was available to react to emergencies as they arose, but routine? How would I ever manage?

In less than a week's time, I had up-titrated to the ideal dose for me. This is where faith meets science. My ADHD Specialist told me to trust this process. When I arrived at the correct dose, I'd "know" it. I wouldn't feel sluggish, or jittery. It would feel just right.

No one was more surprised than me when on day 5 I hit the jackpot. I was alert, focused, and available to participate in my day. It was transformational. I couldn't remember ever feeling this way. I remember wondering if this was how the majority of people I knew went through their day every day? If so, then no damn wonder I struggled. I had been the Mayor of Struggle City all my life! What the actual Hell? How did no one figure this out sooner?

So I did what I always do when I need to understand something: I researched. Laser-focused and hungry to learn all I could.

I read everything I could find about ADHD. Clinical studies. Neuroscience papers. Personal accounts. Support group posts. I was looking for an explanation. Some framework that would help me understand what was happening to me.

What I found instead was a mess of contradictions.

Some sources said ADHD was a deficit—a disorder characterized by what we can't do. Others described it as a superpower, as if struggling for decades was somehow a gift we should be grateful for. Neither explanation felt true.

I researched for years. There were moments when I gave into the popular narrative of neurodivergence and your brain is just different. It was an explanation, but it always felt to me that we stopped digging before we found the treasure. I needed to understand more, so I kept digging.

Then I found it.

A neuroscience paper discussing executive function and resource allocation in ADHD brains. The language was clinical, but the concept was revolutionary.

ADHD brains don't have a deficit of attention. They have difficulty regulating where attention goes. It's not that we can't focus—we focus intensely, sometimes obsessively. It's that we can't always direct that focus where conventional systems demand it.

It wasn't a disorder. It was a different operating system.

My brain wasn't broken. It was running high-performance systems software in a low-performance environment.

I spent twenty years in procurement and supply chain management. I specialized in solving resource allocation problems—how to get the right resources to the right place at the right time under impossible constraints.

And suddenly, I saw it.

ADHD is a resource allocation pattern.

In the right environment, with the right systems, this is extraordinary.

In a world designed for linear, sequential processing—the industrial-era systems most of us are forced to operate within—it's catastrophic.

The problem wasn't my brain. The problem was the mismatch between how my brain worked and the systems I was trying to work within.

I needed a new term. "ADHD"—Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder—locks us into deficit thinking. The language itself perpetuates the problem. If we're going to shift the global narrative from pathology to capability, we need terminology that reflects reality: this isn't something broken that needs fixing. It's a different cognitive architecture that needs different systems.

I called it Systems Resource Allocation Syndrome: SRAS.

Not a disorder. A syndrome—a collection of traits that emerge when a high-performance cognitive architecture encounters low-performance organizational systems.

This reframe changed everything.

If the problem was systems mismatch, then the solution wasn't fixing me. It was architecting better systems.

Not managing ADHD. Architecting for ADHD/SRAS.

Not coping with a disorder. Optimizing for a different operating system.

But this understanding of resource allocation wasn't enough to dive into making wholesale changes in my life. What was evident was that I'd spent all of my life operating from ignorance. What else did I not know or just take for granted?

I began to actively challenge my values, my opinions, my habits. The process was arduous—there was no roadmap to follow, and I had no idea how deep this work would take me. But something unexpected happened: the process became satisfying in itself. Each layer I uncovered revealed more truth about who I actually was. For the first time in my life, I felt genuinely joyful and confident—not performing competence, but inhabiting it. No pretense. Just me.

Without the work on my self-inventory, I don't think any changes to my outer systems would have meaning or impact in my life.

Then I started experimenting. What if the problem wasn't me adapting to systems, but systems that needed to adapt to me?

I redesigned everything. My workspace. My schedule. My information processing protocols. My decision-making frameworks. Even my sleep and nutrition became strategic systems rather than habits I hoped would stick.

And something remarkable happened.

The things I'd struggled with my entire life—the executive function failures, the time blindness, the emotional dysregulation—they didn't disappear. But they became manageable when the systems supporting them were designed correctly.

More than manageable. I started performing at a level I'd never reached before, with a fraction of the effort.

The exhausting compensation—the extra hours, the constant vigilance, the perpetual sense that everything might fall apart—it wasn't necessary anymore.

For the first time, I was building around my strengths instead of compensating for perceived weaknesses.

This wasn't just personal transformation. This was a methodology.

If I could architect systems that worked for my ADHD/SRAS brain, I could teach others to do the same. And more than that—if these systems worked for ADHD/SRAS brains, they would work even better for everyone else.

Because here's what I discovered: Systems designed for high-complexity minds elevate everyone's performance.

When you architect systems that accommodate dimensional thinking, non-linear processing, and multiple simultaneous data streams, you create organizational capacity that doesn't just help the "ADHD people." You optimize the entire ecosystem.

This became the foundation of everything I'd build next.

Not coaching. Not therapy. Not "ADHD management."

Systems architecture.

And that's how Hyper Refinery was born.

Hyper Refinery isn't traditional coaching. It's ADHD/SRAS systems architecture.

I work with extraordinary individuals who've spent their lives compensating—brilliant minds running on borrowed time, wondering why success feels so exhausting. Together, we architect bespoke systems that work with their cognitive architecture, not against it.

The transformation I experienced isn't exclusive to me. It's replicable. Methodical. Strategic.

Through The Hyper Reactor Array™—five interconnected systems addressing cognitive, emotional, physical, environmental, and legacy domains—we redesign everything from workspace protocols to decision-making frameworks to relational boundaries. Not habits you hope will stick. Strategic systems engineered for your cognitive architecture.

The Japanese concept of kintsugi—repairing broken pottery by filling the cracks with gold—has always resonated with me. The breaks don't disappear. They become part of the object's beauty and strength. The golden seams are what make it valuable.

Your ADHD/SRAS isn't something to fix or manage or cope with.

It's high-performance systems software that needs the right environment to run.

If you recognize yourself in this story—if you've been the Mayor of Struggle City, compensating brilliantly while exhausting yourself completely—you're not broken.

You're running extraordinary software in ordinary systems.

And I can help you architect systems worthy of your brilliance.

Revolution Ignites Refinement

Hyper Refinery™

The Refinery Protocol™ forges sustainable clarity, structure, and performance — one deliberate step at a time.

Schedule a focused 20-minute Initial Consultation to explore whether our partnership is the right fit for your next evolution.

Every revolution begins with a single endeavor.
This one starts with a conversation.