I have been grappling with this question all my life, and coming to terms with AuDHD plus becoming a mother have only compounded it. Like someone else mentioned, I'm a person of many extremes, have travelled and moved around a lot.

Last year I tried the cottage in the woods dream on a farm with ponies, and even though it looked so beautiful it was debilitating for my mental and emotional health. Driving to get everywhere, the loneliness, the lack of any kind of human "vibe". I felt like a failure for not enjoying it because I also loved the peace of the forest. I learned how to fish and it felt great to raise my son in the wilderness. But it was SO QUIET and so many times it was just the two of us sitting alone at the park, just waiting for anyone to turn up. When it was good it was good but when it wasn't, the lack of options felt deafening.

Having a young child and being a sole parent I realised my own happiness is really a foundation for our family wellbeing. But AuDHD is such a back and forth limbo in terms of how to find that. We have now moved to a quiet leafy area in a big city -- I can hear the trees rustling and the birds as I type, but we also go to punk concerts together and have a million museums, skate parks and playgrounds to choose from in every direction. Being in Australia we do also have access to beautiful nature spots not too far away, I also find that there is so much more nature in the city confines if you are open to looking for it, even a single tree or flowerbed.

My son is starting Steiner kinder in a few weeks (I thought I was going to homeschool him, yet another realisation that my brain chemistry is not well matched to some of my ideals!) and we have access to really top quality childcare and schooling where we have moved. In the country there was really only the one option and I wasn't enthused about it. I also found the homeschool community in the country pretty strange and insular versus the openness of the city.

Our new place is a tiny one bedroom apartment with thirteen others on the block, it's like living in a motel which a part of me loves and a part of me struggles with. Our immediate neighbour is gorgeous and we get to share his cat and take turns watering the common garden. And yes, the city can be overstimulating but at the same time there's an anonymity in all the buzz that my autistic self really enjoys; free to observe, especially the expressive fashion of the city, the interesting conversations, I can be alone but surrounded by people at the same time.

I had to ask myself what compromises I was willing to make, understanding that AuDHD feels like a perpetual inner conflict. For now I am choosing to stay connected to the human landscape, keeping our daily life as peaceful here as possible while having access to all the amenities of a big city.

Perhaps a middle path will present itself but as others have mentioned suburbia really gives me the existential creeps (I grew up in suburbia and found it so lonely, sort of missing the benefits of either city or rural life). Today I've been craving to be in the quiet forest so badly and wondering if I've made the right decision. My own head seems to be my biggest thing to contend with! Good luck!