Today we’d like to introduce you to Heidi Dellafera Eagleton
Hi Heidi, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
FROM THEN TO TODAY
In 2021, I began my career as a writer. My previous careers as a lawyer, as owner and president of my own development, architecture and construction company, Open Design & Development, Inc. (The Odd Group), and as an adjunct professor of architecture at an Historically Black College and University (HBCU), all make up large parts of my “life’s” story and how I got to where I am today. But for this interview, I’m choosing to focus on what I’m doing today, and where I’m going at age seventy-five soon to be seventy-six.
What I’ve come to realize looking back to when I started writing in 2021 is that since then I have been on a mission, focusing directly or indirectly on my journey living with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). And writing is and has been my go-to.
So, you ask, “what drove this train?” “Why this new mission?” Well, simply put, one thing just led to another as things often do.
I never imagined at the start of the Covid epidemic or in 2021 when I closed The Odd Group, that writing a children’s chapter book series about my dog Maddie, an Italian Spinone, drawing loosely upon my experiences as a girl growing up with undiagnosed ADHD, would jump start my mission. (https://heidieagleton.com) Nor did I imagine that a freak Christmas Eve Day fall in 2022 would lead me to writing a yet-to-be published memoir, Aging with ADHD, One Woman’s Journey, about my life as a girl growing up to an adult with undiagnosed ADHD, to my life now as an “older adult” with diagnosed ADHD and the challenges I faced along the way.
But mostly, I never imagined looking back on my ADHD journey, that I would realize that I’m just a grown-up version of who I was, albeit a bit grayer now. I’m the same “kid,” turned adult turned into the “older adult,” looking for ways to meet ADHD’s challenges by harnessing its positives, including “out of the box thinking, creativity, boundless energy, tenacity, and the ability to hyper-focus.”
I was one of the lucky ones. I was diagnosed with ADHD in my sixties. But I’m an exception. Few adults over sixty, particularly woman, are identified as having ADHD, let alone diagnosed with it. And even though research over the past twenty years has increased on adults with ADHD, this has not been true for older adults, or adults over sixty. (Years Pass-ADHD Lasts. https://Letterlife.se) They are the “forgotten ones.” They are invisible, and they are falling through the “proverbial” cracks.
Because of my diagnosis, I no longer wonder why I’m different or why I think differently. For years growing up with undiagnosed ADHD, I thought I was “stupid” and “less than.” But no more. Thanks to my diagnosis, and years of cognitive behavioral therapy, I now have the tools in my toolbox to harness its positives and deal with its challenges.
So today, when I’m not writing children’s chapter books, you can find me working on my memoir. My hope is that by reading it more adults over sixty with diagnosed or undiagnosed ADHD, especially women, will feel validated and will benefit and learn from my personal experiences, and, by knowing that they are not alone, will along with their health care professionals seek out for themselves all of the advancing technologies, new medications, therapeutic strategies and treatments that are out there currently and on the ADHD horizon.
I also hope that my memoir will help put to rest questions like “What’s the point at your age?” or comments like, “just live what life you have left to live.” (Nadeau, Kathleen, PhD. “Q&A: Is it Worth Seeking an ADHD diagnosis After 50?” Additude Magazine. Updated on July 14, 2022) These questions and comments are misplaced. I’m living proof of that. And as more older adults over sixty live longer and age better than previous generations as is expected, proper diagnosis and treatment will not only impact the quality their lives living with ADHD but will significantly impact the quality of life for society as well. (https://www.ncoa>article>ge.December 12, 2022)
I’ve acknowledged that my ADHD and I are and will forever be a work in progress many times. Nothing has changed. I’ve also said that my job aging with ADHD is to hold close the differences that make me, me, to find joy and to live life to its fullest from the front seat focusing on what works and drawing from it. Nothing has changed there either.
My life with ADHD is a never-ending series of twists and turns, but what I haven’t said until now is that I wouldn’t change any of it.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
MY STRUGGLE
The challenge I’m facing today is a challenge entirely of my own making. I agreed to do a second interview for “Bold Journey,” but I’m questioning that decision. I’m almost ready to back out. I’ve been asking myself, “is there a place for your second interview in “Bold Journey?” Just thinking about it makes me shudder.
Unlike my first interview which was about my life’s journey from childhood, this time and for this interview, it’s about my journey now, nearing the end of my life, with a new career as a writer and as a woman soon to be seventy-six living with ADHD. This interview is not about what I’ve done. It’s about what I’m doing and what I still hope to do going forward. It’s about how I have “redesigned my life” as an older adult approaching seventy-six.
In the end, I decided not to back out and to go ahead with my second interview remembering the Arthur Brooks’ article I read a few years ago in the “Atlantic” about “professional decline” and after reading the “mission and purpose statement on “Bold Journey’s website.” Both Brooks’ article and Bold Journey’s mission and purpose statement had a profound effect on me.
So, I asked again, “is there a place for my second interview in “Bold Journey?” And my answer was “Absolutely yes.”
Brooks’ article was published in 2019, “Your Professional Decline is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think,” and there he writes of “redesigning” your life as you age to use knowledge gained from the past, or what he calls the “essence of wisdom,” and to dedicate yourself to sharing that knowledge in some meaningful way.
On its website, “Bold Journey” affirms its mission and purpose to “help community members and audiences find their purpose by creating a space for all to learn from each other,” and “to encourage that we live our lives boldly by exposing ourselves to all sorts of risk – risk of loss, risk of criticism and judgment, risk of mental, emotional, or physical distress,” to push ourselves to “reach our high potential.”
There is no age limit on “redesigning your life” or pushing yourself to “reach your high potential” or learning together from others doing so or by sharing knowledge in some meaningful way. That’s even clearer now as I grow older.
So, I’m trusting myself and my judgment and sharing, in my second Bold Journey interview, my story for today and for tomorrow. And without hesitation and with a renewed sense of purpose, I’ll sit with quiet satisfaction on my roof deck tonight watching the sun set over Lake Union and the Fremont Bridge.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
OF THIS I’M MOST PROUD
I’m proud that in the final stages of my life, I’ve found a new passion and a career as a writer. But mostly, I’m proud that I’ve learned to try to find joy every day and live life to its fullest with gratitude.
Over the years, I’ve taken the “road less traveled,” even in the face of self-doubt and fear with the support of my family and friends and by always remembering my late father’s word’s, “reach for the stars but keep one toe on the ground,” words I still hold closely in my heart.
Now, I’m still on that road, harnessing ADHD’s positives, tackling its challenges and embracing even more tightly the differences that make me, me. Seldom have I ever thought that I should take a different path.
Is there anyone you’d like to thank or give credit to?
KAREN
She read my work over the course of almost a year. Daily, I rushed to her floating home across the dock from mine on Lake Union in Seattle with my latest draft in hand. I’d sit in her living room surrounded by art, much of it hers she painted, and books, lots of books, some of them hers she authored as well.
When I was there, Don, her husband, usually sat quietly on the couch in front of a picture window overlooking Lake Union, reading the Seattle Times occasionally shaking his head over some disagreeable content. He was a true Renaissance man, an architect by trade and a boat builder by hobby, and he adored Karen. They met on the dance floor at a Greek music festival.
As she read my latest offerings, I’d try to “read” her facial expressions for signs of approval. She always smiled. All she ever said to me was “keep writing, keep writing, keep writing.” She made a few grammatical corrections here and there, mostly about things like word choice for instance. But she said little else, except “keep writing, keeping writing, keep writing.”
Until one day when she stopped. She looked up at me over her reading glasses, and said, “you need a “real” editor now. And that was that.
Before then, during our living room meetings, we’d discuss the draft I left behind on her coffee table the previous day. After an hour or so, we’d break to reconvene the following morning. I’d exit out her front door to the barking of her little black and white dog, Darcy, who hated my daily intrusions.
Karen was my mentor and my friend, and I owe the beginnings of my writing career to her. She listened to me read every word of my first children’s chapter book, “So You Think I Should Be a What?” in the Maddie’s Tails series then poured over every page of the drafts I left behind with her, noting the small changes she thought were needed with a red pen in its margins.
Karen was never discouraging. To the contrary, she encouraged me to do what I wanted to do most, WRITE. And finally, when she thought it was time for me to go to the next level, when she had finished her “job,” she helped me find my first “real” editor, as she would put it. No, Karen that would be my second “real” editor. You were and always will be my first.
Karen is a woman of many talents. She founded Facéré Jewelry Art Gallery, which represents work made with nontraditional precious and non-precious metals from artists in the U.S. and abroad. Formerly, she was an educator, teaching in Chicago and Seattle. She also holds a degree in painting. I have several of her pieces hanging on my walls.
Karen retired reluctantly from her Gallery at the end of 2018 with forty-six years of retail experience. That also was the year I became her neighbor on the dock. She welcomed me with enthusiasm.
Today, Karen lives in a retirement community and struggles with memory issues. Her husband, Don, died a few weeks after they moved from their house on the dock they so loved to their new community.
Every day, I miss her. I miss her encouragement, her wisdom and her caring. But most of all, I miss her hugs.
In her 2015 interview with Art Jewelry Forum (https://artjewelryKarenLorene-ArtJewelryForum12/06/2015) she said for writers:
“I try to write every day. I have written and published five books. I am presently working on my third novel. The memoir, “Building a Business, Building a Life,” is a tell-all retailer’s book. I wrote it in hopes that someone entering this field might be helped and encouraged by my words.”
And in that same interview for emerging jewelry artists and art jewelry curators she added:
“Smile. Enjoy every day. Stretch. Say what’s on your mind. Laugh. Tell good stories. Write. Love public speaking. Don’t pass up opportunities. Wear jewelry art!!!!”
And in my 2024 interview with Bold Journey, I say to Karen:
THANK YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART
I wear jewelry art, and I write every day.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.heidieagleton.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heidieagleton
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heagleton
Image Credits
Dipan Desai Photography