Hi, I’m Adria
…Sophia Melichar (she/her)
TEDx Speaker | Podcaster | AuDHD Coach
I help AuDHD women stop fighting who they are & start building worlds that actually fit.
Not by fixing yourself to fit existing systems—but by redesigning your environment, your rhythms, your life to match your Autistic & ADHD brain.
This is how I learned that mattered…
Beyond the riddle…..
I’ve spent over a decade as a self-employed coach, designing my life around my needs and helping my clients do the same.
Yet after I was late-identified as AuDHD, a few years shy of 40, I was stuck.
I finally had the key. I understood why decades of my life had felt so hard. But that key didn’t open the door I thought it would.
In my twenties, I played the part.
Marriage. House with a yard. Career path. I had the kitchen, the plants…all the things I’m creating again now.
And in many ways, life was good. I was experimenting, following sparks toward what felt right.
But something was always pulling tight inside me.
Every Sunday, dinner with my ex’s grandpa. Forced smiles. White lies about who we really were, what we believed. I had to play the role—wonderful granddaughter-in-law—while feeling shame at wanting to opt out.
At work, eight hours in the same chair. Hand on the mouse. Open office where everyone could see if you moved, if you didn’t look like you were working. Eyes on screen. No getting up except bathroom, lunch, two fifteen-minute breaks.
My ADHD side was suffocating. My Autistic side was perpetually tense from masking so hard.
Post-divorce, in my thirties, I remarried and built a very different life.
Minimalist. Nomadic. Virtual work. International travel, then vanlife. Free.
My ADHD side loved never staying still long enough to feel stagnant. But my Autistic side was in constant meltdown—packing, unpacking, no control over noises, temporary everything. I couldn’t plant things that would grow season after season. Couldn’t paint walls. Couldn’t put down roots.
But even after my identification, even knowing myself more than ever, I couldn’t see the answer.
The more I understood my needs, the more meeting them felt like trying to solve an impossible riddle.
Everything shifted when I let go of “either/or”—structure or freedom, roots or adventure, fitting in or rebelling completely—and started listening to what my bones were screaming for.
Roots. Quiet. My own space where things stayed where I put them. AND the flexibility to move when I needed to.
I created an intergenerational house. My own kitchen. My own door I could close. But also the ability to work less hours while supporting my parents as they aged. Our campervan parked in the driveway, always ready to hit the road.
Roots AND freedom. Community care instead of isolation. Ancient patterns instead of modern pressure.
Fast forward months later:
I was planting trees in my yard—putting down literal roots—and watching them grow. Lighting candles on dark mornings. Sitting through family dinners without my nervous system begging me to escape.
Not because I fixed myself.
Because the world I’d rebuilt was finally working.
This isn’t just poetic truth—it’s genetic reality.
This AuDHD brain isn’t a mistake. It’s an inheritance. Your restless mind? Your grandmother had it. Your sensitivity that sees what others miss? Your great-aunt at the edge of town, who knew which plants healed, carried it too.
When you connect to this lineage, you stop trying to be normal and start remembering: you were never meant to be.
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What I believe to be true about being an AuDHD human in this world:
Your brain has a lineage.
Our AuDHD brains aren’t binary. We’re dual beings.
We need deep rest AND hunger for the next adventure. We create careful plans AND follow the spark when it calls. We ground in ritual AND leave space for what wants to emerge.
We’ve been taught to choose. Be one or the other. But we were never meant to split ourselves in half.
My work is about reclaiming both/and.
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You’re built to hold opposites.
This brain connects you to every healer, every midwife, every wise woman who couldn’t fit the village mold but held medicine the village needed.
Our difference isn’t failure—it’s our actual role. Different thinking. Different ways of leading. Different models of living.
But you can’t offer your medicine when all your energy goes to surviving.
The world doesn’t need you performing. It needs you resourced.
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The world needs you resourced.
The grounding we seek…..
You come to me asking for systems. Structure. Something to tame the chaos.
I understand. Our heads feel scattered. Drowning in tabs and tasks, waking at 3am to thoughts that won’t stop swirling.
We think what we need is better organization.
But what if the answer isn’t another system?
What if the rootedness we’re craving comes from remembering we’re woven into something older?
The rhythm of seasons. The wisdom in our grandmothers’ hands. The way the earth steadies us when we actually touch it.
This isn’t woo. It’s remembering we’re animals with bodies and ancestors. That lighting a candle isn’t just aesthetic—it’s marking time, creating ritual, telling our nervous system: we’re here, we’re safe, we belong to something.
This is the grounding you’ve been seeking. Not in a planner. In your bones.
My background
TEDx speaker on fueling your dreams without burning yourself out
Host of the AuDHD Sparks Podcast
Over a decade of experience helping folks create lives that actually support who they are
MS in Environmental Science & background in Architecture (no wonder I'm obsessed with designing environments that actually work for people!)
Late-diagnosed AuDHDer who's walked this exact path and redesigned my own ecosystem from scratch
Childfree woman & auntie, modeling what it looks like to chart your own path & create meaning outside the expected script
