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Ying: Welcome to ADHD Gathering, a podcast, highlighting diverse narratives within the ADHD community and amplifying strength from real ADHD folks. I’m your host Ying, also known as ADHD Asian Girl across all social media.
Let’s tune in to today’s show.
Today I will be speaking with Linda Yi sometimes called Panda. Linda is a Sichuanese American comic artist, writer and mental health advocate based in New York. She’s the creator of Panda Cub Stories, a weekly comic series about Chinese cultures, Sichuan food and living was ADHD. Panda Cub stories has an engaged global audience for over 20 K followers on Instagram and has been featured in Today.com, Atlas Obscura, and Nextshark.
She’s hard at work on her first book : “Cook Sichuan – a comic book with recipes” to be published winter of 2025.
Welcome, Linda, to my podcast. And I first met Linda through [00:01:00] Instagram when she was collaborating with some of my favorite Chinese American food YouTubers and I thought about, Oh my God, there’s another Asian girl with ADHD diagnosis.
And it was around the same time I just figured out my own ADHD diagnosis. So I DM’d her and we connected and then we met up in DC one time. And then we just kept in touch. So I’m really grateful for Linda to come to my podcast. Linda, could you say hi and a bit of self introduction?
Linda: Hi, Ying. I’m very happy to be here. So I am Linda. Sometimes known as Panda. My boyfriend calls me Panda. I call him the raccoon. And I am a Sichuanese American comic artist. So I write and I draw a comic series on Instagram called Panda Cub Stories, and it will soon be moving onto real paper.
I write and I draw about my lived experiences. It’s like a mishmash of Chinese culture, Chinese, specifically Sichuan food. I write [00:02:00] pretty persistently about my own mental health journey and mental health struggles.
Usually like when I’m going through something, I’ll draw my way out of it. That ends up becoming a comic. And I’m mostly based in New York, but as I was telling Ying earlier, I am at home in Georgia right now with my family. I came down for Chinese New Year.
Ying: We’re recording just about a week after Chinese New Year.
It’s quite sweet to start a new year this way. First I would love to know how, Linda, you figure out your ADHD. That’s the genesis story in the ADHD community. How did you find out?
Linda: I was diagnosed when I was 25.
So this was nine years ago now. Like these days I probably would have watch all A bunch of Instagram reels or whatever and gone wait a minute like that sounds like me But at the time the online adhd community wasn’t really much of a thing yet, at least I was aware.
But I was actually at home in Augusta, Georgia. I was in [00:03:00] between jobs, just trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life. And I was at a local bookstore and they were having a clearance sale. So I was putting a bunch of like books into my basket and there was one book called fast minds and I think the tagline was how to thrive if you have adhd or think you might have it?
And honestly, I picked it up because it was the cover was my two favorite colors. It was purple and green. I was like, oh, interesting. I Started reading through it and there were a bunch of self assessment questionnaires. I was like, this sounds a lot like me that is what? Prompted me to go seek a diagnosis.
I would say at that time I was Like rock bottom isn’t a good term because I still had a lot of support in my life. Obviously I was like living at home with my parents but I had just finished a big fellowship and then was working on a startup with a friend that ended up not happening. Part of it was I was in one of the founding roles and It was [00:04:00] one of the most difficult things and I think that is really where all of the Executive dysfunction hit me right where it’s like there is no job role.
You have to define it yourself and then There were all of these things where I couldn’t define it yet. I was still failing at it. So it was that was the background that led me to discover this book. And then finally go seek a diagnosis.
Ying: You mentioned earlier that you’re Sichuanese American, love to learn more about what it was like for you growing up and you retained a lot of Chinese language and I assume Chinese culture because you’re teaching other people how to make Sichuanese food, which is awesome.
How does that experience impacted whether you realize you have ADHD and, with related to ADHD masking and external support?
Linda: I’ve been thinking about this more and I think, like growing up in an Asian family slash Asian community, mental health is just not something that’s [00:05:00] really talked about.
It’s pretty taboo. And a tangent, but I remember like once in high school or maybe like middle school, I made a comment, I was being a snarky teenager too, but I guess in English going are you crazy?
It’s not nice, but it’s also not terrible. I said it once in Chinese and my my parents got really mad at me. And they were like, never say that to anyone. I’m taking a kind of scattershot answer to your question, I was born in Chengdu, so I was born in Sichuan, and then my family immigrated to the States right as I turned four.
So I don’t really remember this, but according to my relatives, I was a very early speaker and I was obsessed with stories. So there was this cassette tape version of Xi You Ji that I would just listen to on repeat. My obsession with stories started pretty young. And I think it’s also one of the reasons why at least even as I was going through phases where I was rejecting my cultural identity, [00:06:00] I was still consuming these stories and watching Mandarin, like C dramas and Taiwanese dramas.
And so I think In a way, that’s the tether that connected me to Chinese language and culture. Currently like we’re in Augusta, Georgia, so it’s a not very diverse place. So that is what connected me to my language and culture, but going back to yes, I currently do teach other people how to make Sichuan food, but it was an accident because I was trying to relearn my family recipes myself.
And then the way I tend to encode and consolidate information, because our working memories are very horrible. And before I would ask my parents, How to make this and they would tell me and then I would immediately forget. And it’s also, they don’t tell you the specifics.
To help create memory hooks for my mind, I would write the recipes down, but because I’m very bad at like linear anything, instead of writing it down, like step by step, I would just draw it [00:07:00] out.
And then those eventually became my recipe comics, which is how I started teaching people how to make the dishes. I was in the process of documenting and learning myself. Coming back to my experience as an ADHD er who didn’t know she had ADHD growing up. Growing up I knew and we knew there were things that I was Very hyper focused on and art from the very beginning like art and stories was a big thing like the whole audio book obsession even one of my earliest memories that I do remember being my own memory is My parents dropped me off at this YMCA in Maryland.
So we moved to Maryland first before Georgia. I’d spent two days just painting this winter mural on glass. I don’t know why they invited me to do it, but I was definitely not doing it just because, right? They were like, here’s some paint, you can paint. And so I just remember spending hours painting snowmen and [00:08:00] snowflakes.
And I think part of it is I was praised for art pretty early as well. So that kind of also fed into my like self esteem . But I do remember growing up and I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I was a good student and I excelled and I did a lot of extracurriculars, but even then I had a very early sense of I didn’t have a word for it then, but I guess it would be imposter syndrome because I feel like I would always be able to get to a high intermediate level in something, right?
Like piano, like dance, ice skating, whatever. But then I couldn’t push past or like after I got to a point, I would stop practicing or I would just fail. Like I would win the local like Citywide composite competition for piano, but then when it got to the state competition, I was like, I’m not going to practice and then I would try to cram at the end and then I would get like second place.
And so I think looking back, a lot of [00:09:00] that is I would excel in things, and obviously with the Asian parenting background, it’s you’re also pushing to do things up to a certain point, but then I didn’t really have the strategies to keep going once that initial excitement and hyper focus wore off.
And then I would either just quit or keep going, but keep going because there was like a lot of like guilt behind it or parental pressure or like pressure from the outside. So yes, think about that in terms of growing up with ADHD in an Asian context, but I think also I was quite spoiled as an only child but also only a child in an Asian household where a lot of things were just done for me.
So I think there is often this Asian parent mindset where it’s like, You just focus on your academics. There were some chores like that I did here and there, but overall it was, I didn’t really have to worry about [00:10:00] executive functioning outside of school.
And especially with school up until high school, everything is very prescribed for you. And I was also a very good little worker. So there’s a lot of you must respect the teacher and here are the checklists that you can do. So I never really thought about having Any sort of condition growing up until I think in college, which is when I started struggling, but I still managed but I would guide myself down certain paths that I could function more easily.
Ying: We’ll take a little break from the show and talk about my ADHD coaching. So if you’re interested in accomplishing more by doing less, building your ADHD resiliency, amplifying your strengths, as well as craft your own ADHD toolbox and narratives. I’m currently taking 1 on 1 coaching clients. So feel free to visit adhdasiangirl.com/coaching and book a free [00:11:00] coaching introductory call with me. My background are in positive psychology, mindfulness, as well as lots of ADHD tried and true tools. I’m looking forward to working with you. Now let’s turn back to the show.
that leads me perfectly to my next question that I love to know how did you cultivate creativity as a strength. As I was learning more about you, one thing stood out to me was your creativity. You already talked about how it was something you hyper focus on even as a child. But you also picked it as a major in undergrad, which is pretty rare for immigrant children. So I’d love to know how that happened and how that led to you becoming a working artist.
Linda: I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I’m trying to think of a narrative path to pick. So I think my relationship with art has changed a lot. I think in the beginning probably when I was very young, it was very pure joy.
Like I would draw because I loved it and it was just something that would occupy me. Somewhere along the line it also got [00:12:00] mixed with pride of other people telling me I was good. I would win art competitions, like I was the president of our art honor society Which, funny thing, the first year I was president, I organized and then totally did not show up for the initiation because I forgot about it.
I think for the longest time, I just knew I enjoyed drawing and painting, and I liked more figurative stuff the things that I worked on mostly through high school they were all either photorealistic or if not, like I went a little bit more abstract later on, but honestly it was because my AP art portfolio called for it.
There were like these themes and I was like, fine, I’ll do those themes, but I don’t enjoy it. And I think looking back, the things I was enjoying when I was doing art was also things that helped calm my mind down. If I was doing something that was pretty photorealistic, or I used to draw a lot of [00:13:00] manga as well they were things that had a structure.
I had fun doing them, but also my mind wasn’t everywhere as I was doing it. So going into college. I went to Duke University, which is very much non art school. It’s a liberal arts university, but I would say out of the universities out there.
It’s veers towards stem a little bit more. I went in not knowing what I was going to do so I didn’t declare my major until the very last minute of sophomore year and I declared a political science major with a second major as visual arts.
So I think part of that journey was I had a really rough time freshman year of college and I think for me, I got to a point where I was like, I don’t know, like maybe I want to transfer to an art school. But that thought, I realized after a while, like now it wasn’t necessarily I really wanted to do art, but it was more, I remember that was something that made me really happy.
Because of all of the outside [00:14:00] influences I think there was also a lot of pressure to be successful. I didn’t know what success was. All of my friends were like pre med or pre law. If they weren’t, they were going to Goldman Sachs info sessions and like going on the finance track.
I feel like I need to do all of that. it feels like my soul is dying. In my mind, I was like, maybe I just need to remove myself from all of that and go to art school. So I went to my drawing professor to ask for a letter of recommendation for my transfer application. He was like, Sure, I’ll write you one.
But I would also like for you to consider why did you Apply to Duke in the first place and long story short, instead of transferring, I ended up spending my junior year in Paris as part of a study abroad program. So I did a year of art basically, and also political science class, but I took the political science classes in French, so I didn’t retain much.
Anyway, so I declared an art major in school. But I don’t really think I had a solid grasp on what my art was even after four [00:15:00] years of college. So at Duke if you declare an art major, at least back then maybe it’s like different now. You basically just take enough credits in the broad department of art to make up your major.
And so I did a little bit of everything. Like I did some drawing. I did some photography. And my senior thesis was actually this big community art project which looking back, I did not enjoy. I think I was trying to imitate artists who worked in the community space that I really loved.
But I actually picked the worst thing for my ADHD because what, I was trying to do was build community and organize events. And I had to talk to vendors , book a community space and invite people and keep track of schedules.
So I had moved so far away from actually drawing anything. And I was in a space where I was thinking big art, right? Like big, fancy schmancy artistic [00:16:00] statement. This is the philosophy of life that I’m trying to represent. I have a lot of empathy now for the artist I was.
All of that is to say I think that was part of my journey of learning. That not everything I admire is something that I, myself want to or am capable of really doing or excelling at.
After I graduated from Duke, it was an entire year in China because I got a grant also from Duke, but from the public policy school called the HART fellowship, which is a community based research fellowship that funds three new graduates a year and places them with community organizations in different countries. And the idea is you use whatever your expertise is to help that NGO accomplish their mission in some way. So I pitched it with a art theater based organization in Beijing called Hua Dan that worked with migrant children. But as part of the [00:17:00] fellowship, how Duke tracked our progress, there were like reports we had to write, but they also paired us with a writing mentor. Every month We were required to write this like personal essay and then we would workshop with this writing mentor.
That’s where I discovered like my love for narrative writing and it was really difficult, but I was like, this is really interesting and really good. And then. As I was doing it, I would also insert little doodles in as well, which kind of looking back was the genesis of Panda Cub Stories, even though it wasn’t called Panda Cub Stories.
It was just essays I was writing and then I would put a version of that essay in my email newsletter for my friends and family back home and they just became doodle letters where I was like, this is what I’m up to, then occasionally there were little pandas in it.
So that’s very long version of the story of how I ended up declaring an art major and choosing art as a career.
Ying: I love what you said [00:18:00] about you’re just gravitating towards what makes you feel happy in your soul. I had the same story of all my friends were studying like math and they will, do finance and they go into insurance companies. I’m like, Oh, my God, I didn’t know how to do any of it. I was trying to keep up and it was just very difficult.
Linda: For sure. Sometimes I wonder if I had found out I had ADHD earlier and was medicated and all of that, I wonder if I would have taken another path because for me I used to have like big fights with my dad about like my schooling path and career path and like he comes from a long line of doctors and medical professionals but like at the very least he was like at least law school or something and law school is something that I considered but I think for me I think I knew my mind enough to know what it couldn’t do.
And then I didn’t know that there were things that you could do to support your mind.
Jump a little bit ahead as well, I think there were a lot of things I was pretty naive about [00:19:00] when I declared my art major and even when I got my first job, which was a one year funded fellowship to go to China to work in the arts.
Even then I didn’t think I’m going to have a career in the arts because I didn’t know how to make it happen. Now that I am running my own business, which happens to be in the arts, there is so much executive functioning and details and things that I am not that great at, that I have to do to be able to make ends meet.
Looking back, I’m like, okay I’m glad I picked this path, but in the end I still had to do a lot of things that were very hard or not had to do and ongoing, currently doing.
Ying: That reminds me of Big Magic. She talked about the shit sandwich. She just basically said every path you picked or anything you do in the end is a shit sandwich. So it’s just a matter of what are you willing to pursue? And what are you willing to tolerate?
We’ll take a little break from the show and talk about my ADHD coaching. So if you’re interested [00:20:00] in accomplishing more by doing less, building your ADHD resiliency, amplifying your strengths, as well as craft your own ADHD toolbox and narratives. I’m currently taking 1 on 1 coaching clients. So feel free to visit adhdasiangirl.com/coaching and book a free coaching introductory call with me. My background are in positive psychology, mindfulness, as well as lots of ADHD tried and true tools. I’m looking forward to working with you. Now let’s turn back to the show.
Your career is solidly in art and culture and I love all that and I love seeing how it morphed, so many years ago and I love hearing stories like this and love to learn more about how do you keep going with creativity and there are so many ideas, which one do you prioritize?
Linda: There are a couple of answers that I have for myself that I’ve been workshopping. For me, I think storytelling and [00:21:00] creating Is something that helps keep me sane and especially when I think about my mental health comics. They’re only three and i’ve been drawing Panda Cub stories as the comics since end of 2019.
So that’s like less than one a year. But they’re by far, some of the more narrative comics that I’ve done and ones that have resonated with the most people. And I think it’s because each of them have come from a point in my life where I was feeling really down. Being really mean to my mind and myself and then getting my thoughts on paper and then gradually drawing my way out of it.
And for a little background of, listeners who don’t read my comics the reason it’s called Panda Cub Stories is there’s a little panda in the comics that kind of accompanies me. I’m like a stick figure in purple. And then there’s some other cast and characters as well. What I came to realize is I put a panda in the comics [00:22:00] initially just because I needed another character to bounce things off of.
And then I had a lot of trouble in the beginning and still now. It’s like distinguishing the panda’s voice from my own. Does the panda have a separate personality? Is it me? Is it not me? Now what I’ve realized is the panda is me, but it’s also not me. So it’s like how our minds are us, but we’re not completely in control of them either.
Because the panda has, in my comics, the same struggles that I have we’re both addicted to watching K dramas and whatnot. Like in the comics if I picture myself being super mean and yelling at the panda and being like dumbass Like what are you doing?
I’m like, I can’t be mean to panda. It’s not its fault, right? And yelling at It’s not gonna make it feel any better. It’s just gonna eat more ice cream and and sleep for another day. Let’s try something else.
To bring it back to your question, like one of the ways I decide what to focus on is when nothing else is working and I just need to try and heal. And [00:23:00] some of the tools that for me work is to write down everything that’s happening and then try to figure out a way to tell my story differently so that in the future when this thing happens again, I can, in my real life live a different path.
The kind of second way of basically deciding what to do is constantly have a lot of projects that I want to pursue. And like we said before it’s very hard for me to keep anything straight in my head. like everything you put in it, it stays for a while. And then it just scatters away. And so for me, I found that. Especially the medium of comics, which is words, but also images together. And I think comics as a medium is very interesting because it’s one of those things where you can represent the flow of time on a single page.
Video doesn’t do that. Text kinda does it. But you have to [00:24:00] then translate what’s happening in the text into like visuals. I started recording things that I was trying to learn myself whether it’s like recipes, Sichuan recipes, or recently I’ve been researching Chinese festivals, drawing those down in a way where it’s basically, knowledge, but like distilled and concretized into a thing. It’s almost like a little SD card, right? I’m like, I don’t know it, but now I have the comic, I can just look at it and enter it into my head. So I think that is the other way I like choose what to work on or what to prioritize.
For me, it’s like, if I fill my environment with things that I’ve created, I’m reminded that oh, I did that. And then also because a lot of it is functional art, I can also look at it and I’d be like, okay. This is what I need to host the hot pot party I’m hosting.
Because I already drew it down and it’s a poster now.
Ying: It’s almost like how to guide, but a cute panda form, as well as, I love what you [00:25:00] said about retelling your stories and imagining different scenarios to prepare for the future. It reminds me of some people do of visualizing a different way of handling things. But for you, it’s like drawing it out.
Linda: And I think that’s what makes I guess my work resonate with the folks who like it because they’re like, okay, I see my own story in this as well. So if this change worked for her and Panda, like maybe I will do something similar and it might work for me.
Ying: I love the fact it’s foretelling the change because I have this tendency of I have to wait until I don’t know like this magical moment and I was like, I am perfect, quote unquote, until then I felt like I can tell my story but I love the idea of foretelling the story and giving that possibility and speaking it into existence and helping other people to see it into existence.
Linda: For sure. It’s a t shirt I’m thinking about making for my boyfriend for either our anniversary or his birthday but it’s like a Cha Bu Duo club t shirt. So like in Mandarin, it means like good [00:26:00] enough. An Ikea desk or a shelf. It’s like you’re done and then there are like two bolts left and you don’t know where they were supposed to go, but it’s like solid enough. So you’re like, good enough. And so like for me, I’m working on embracing that.
My thing that I struggle with is not necessarily not doing things well enough, even though that’s what I tell myself. A lot of it is that struggle with perfection. Like sometimes I cycle through different Cheng Yu. So for me, I’m like, okay Hua She Tian Zu?
I’m like, I don’t need a dragon, I just need a snake. A drippy snake will do. This is good enough.
Ying: Yeah. Actually one of my big thing this year is to work with accepting good enough. And it’s hard. I realized how much am I comparing myself to perfection? Having that as a benchmark is really helpful for me personally.
I come from the Chinese Asian community as well. I don’t have an open dialogue with my parents about my mental health. I told them I have ADHD, they’re like, Okay, like [00:27:00] there’s no real conversation happening.
So for me personally, I find finding a community in this situation really crucial because I essentially can’t get that support in my family. Luckily enough, I have my partner and my friends who can help me and the online ADHD community. So I’d love to learn more about how do you find your support and your community and how to keep it going.
Linda: Yeah. So I would say I’m similar with my parents. My mom is definitely more open to dialogue, but don’t really talk openly about it either. One thing that was sweet was, she actually read one of my first mental health comics and we have a conversation, so she was like, I think I’ve struggled with depression too. So my mom and my dad is not really where I go to for mental health support either. And one of the big things is they’re just very wary about medication. And yeah. And I would say definitely my partner is very supportive. I think he’s very familiar with some of the things that I struggle with. He is a big source of support. I [00:28:00] think sometimes I have to be a little careful, too, because he, is very willing to also take on roles if I’m completely like flat on the couch, like not functioning, like grocery shopping, like you’ll do the cooking and all of this stuff, which is like really nice once in a while, but I think part of me is I have to be careful to not make him the parent.
I would say my main sources of mental health support have still been professional, so I’m not in therapy currently, but when I was first diagnosed, I was in pretty consistent talk therapy every two weeks, at least paired with medication and I think, when I was doing both very actively, that was very helpful.
I am currently completely unmedicated as of the last two months, not completely by choice. And it also has to do with kind of how imperfect the system currently is, right? I think maybe ADHD in [00:29:00] particular, because being able to access help and medication is very not ADHD friendly.
Long story short I was not able to get my meds renewed before coming down to Georgia and then because I’m flying to China to do my research trip in a month. I knew that it wasn’t going to happen before then either.
The half a month plus where I was adjusting to cold turkey no meds after being on meds for years was really tough. Now I’m feeling a little bit back to normal, but similar to what we were talking about before, I realized that there are a lot of things that are currently because I’m at home aggressively done for me.
Like I’ll try to help with the dishes. I’ll try to cook. Like I’m writing a cookbook for goodness sake. Wait, please let me take care of dinner. Basically three meals a day, all the chores everything like my parents have already done. And then if I try to do it, I’ll just do it again.
But I’m [00:30:00] realizing that okay right now, I’m basically on ADHD retreat mode, like everything is done for me. All I need to do is my work, which in and of itself still asks a lot of me. So I’m just reminding myself that I have to go back to real life soon.
But apart from that, have found a lot of online support even talking to you or I, for the longest time I had a coach when I was thinking about getting back into therapy.
I was like, maybe I’ll try ADHD coaching instead. So I had a weekly call with an ADHD coach, which was helpful. And I’ve recently been trying a couple of different apps as well.
I would just say just as important as having an online community is having the awareness that it’s okay to ask for help and prioritizing asking for help as well. So I run a chinese heritage membership community called panda cub heritage and for me like my business is also a lot about I want to live my life better.
[00:31:00] How do I do that? Like i’ll create a community around it. So one thing that i’m starting this year is like a weekly monday wellness slash meditation meetup because it’s something that I’ve had in my life in the past that has worked really well, but it’s just because I’ve moved cities, I haven’t found the same community in person.
So I’m like, okay, if I can’t find it in New York, in Brooklyn, where I am or I haven’t found the right one, I’ll create it myself.
Ying: I want to end with one final question of, what kind of stories and narratives do you want to leave in the ADHD community or do you wish to see more in the ADHD community?
Linda: I would love to see and there already is, a lot of this, but continued stories of action.
There is a lot of stuff I think we worry that we won’t do well or if we tell a story like, Oh, it might be embarrassing or even for me. The first comic I wrote about, how to get out of ADHD paralysis that I collabed with DT [00:32:00] Perrion. I was really proud of that comic.
Yes, it’s like a recipe to get out of ADHD paralysis. And then it’s been, like, two and a half years, and since then I’ve also had many spells where I’ve been in awful slumps, and I’m like, I thought I already learned, right? I thought I already achieved my way out of this what is wrong with you?
But realizing that, yeah, it’s like, it’s not you have a trophy and now you’re fixed, right? But it’s more, it’s it’s a way of life and we’re all on this journey. If you slip up, if we burn out that’s fine. You can just start again and it’s not starting from zero.
It’s just you continue along your path with that having been part of your story.
Ying: Oh, I love that. Just the spiral growth. Spiral growth and learning from each trip. And yeah, your story just represents that so much of how, what you did, even when you thought you were just randomly doing things and totally morphing to what you’re doing today.
Thank you so much for being on my podcast. Thank you, Linda.
Linda: Thank you, Ying.
Ying: [00:33:00] Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode. If you enjoy today’s episode, please feel free to drop a comment and review on apple podcasts or Spotify podcast. Or send me a DM on social media or send me an email to adhdasiangirl@gmail.com Sending lots of love to you and have a good day.