Meet Eleanor Vincent

We were lucky to catch up with Eleanor Vincent recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Eleanor, we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to share your nuggets of wisdom with our community. One of the topics we think is most important for folks looking to level up their lives is building up their self-confidence and self-esteem. Can you share how you developed your confidence?

Confidence comes from a string of experience, like beads on a necklace, each experience revealing a new facet of personality and strength. If we let it, life will teach us. But we have to pay attention. Over the years, through my writing and through meditation, I’ve built the ability to pay very close attention. Physical activities like yoga, weight training, and dancing have helped me increase my strength and confidence. The key is doing what you love. You create self-esteem by contributing your unique skills in a way that supports and informs others. That sets up a positive feedback loop. For instance, in my latest book Disconnected: Portrait of a Neurodiverse Marriage, I share a journey of discovery through my marriage to a man on the autism spectrum. My husband (now my ex) was brilliant with computers, but feelings baffled him. He had never been diagnosed and went through life masking his autism. As the mask dropped during our marriage, and the differences in our brain wiring became more clear, our communication suffered. The marriage became the source of stress and conflict. I share many scenes of love during our courtship and gradually reveal how that changed over time, showing the progression so that readers can really grasp what it’s like to try to love someone with Asperger’s syndrome. I share my hard-won discoveries and the resources I found that helped me cope as the marriage fell apart. It was one of the greatest learning experiences of my life, and one of the most heartbreaking, but I’ve used it to try to help others.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I’ve been writing professionally for more than five decades. I began writing for newspapers and magazines, and then branched out into corporate communications, editing publications for several large companies in the Bay Area. At the same time, I developed my skills as a creative writer and went back to school at Mills College to get a Master of Fine Arts. There, I met other writers, colleagues I enjoy working with to this day, and learned the craft skills I’ve used to write two memoirs. It takes great strength and self-awareness to reveal deeper dimensions of oneself as a character, including more difficult traits, but that is what will truly engage readers. I write stories about ordinary people who have extraordinary challenges, but who find the way to overcome whatever life throws at them. My first book, Swimming with Maya: A Mother’s Story is about how my older daughter’s death following a crushing blow to her head when she fell from a horse almost destroyed me. I agreed to donate her tissues and organs to strangers when she was declared brain dead in 1992. That forever changed my life, and the lives of those who received her gifts. I show how recovery from the worst grief is. possible, and how to thrive following devastating loss. That book has appeared on the New York Times bestseller list twice in e-book and it continues to inspire readers. I’m committed to helping people through my writing, bringing more love and inspiration into the world through my words. Disconnected: Portrait of a Neurodiverse Marriage is helping other neurotypical people better understand how autism affects intimate relationships. It helps them feel less isolated and alone. I wrote the book I needed to read during my marriage. That makes me very happy.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I think the qualities that have been most helpful in my life are resilience, determination, and a sense of humor. In my books, even though they are about difficult subjects, there is a lot of humor. I tend to see the funny side of life even during difficult times. That provides helpful perspective so that I don’t get bogged down in problems. Even as a child, I had the ability to get up after being knocked down. As Mr. Rogers always reminded the children who watched his TV show, “Look for the helpers.” I’ve done that my entire life, and I’ve been fortunate to have amazing teachers and mentors. I’ve increased my resilience by turning even the most painful experiences into stories that can help others. I always look for the lesson, the bright side, or the blessing in any circumstance. For me, the glass is always more than half full! For a writer, determination is vital. Rejection is part of the business of writing, one I’ve learned not to take personally over the years. Six years after Swimming with Maya was published, the publisher closed their doors. The rights reverted to me. I started looking for a new publisher, and through a referral from a writer friend, I found Dream of Things who re-published the book as a paperback and an e-book which enabled it to go on to reach a much wider audience and generate more sales. If I had given up, that would never have happened. Never, ever give up. Every seeming “failure” is simply a new opportunity to learn and to adjust. your approach.

Alright, so before we go we want to ask you to take a moment to reflect and share what you think you would do if you somehow knew you only had a decade of life left?

At the moment, my biggest challenge is recovering emotionally and financially from a contentious divorce. It is very common for autistic men to go into “divorce mode” after a breakup and fight for every penny and every stick of furniture. That was the case for us, and I had to fight very hard and give up a home I loved in order to get free. My now former husband even tried to claim my new book as community property, which would have entitled him to half the royalties. Thankfully, that did not happen, but it shook me to my core. It is so painful when someone you loved deeply becomes vindictive. I am slowly recovering from the heartbreak of the way the marriage ended, and also getting back on my feet financially. Because we were so much older when we married – I was 71 years old at the time – the blow to my finances was very scary. The marriage was brief, only 3 years, but we had been friends for more than 6 years before we married, and we were dance partners during that time. I trusted him. All that happened has destroyed my trust, primarily in my own inability to see the signs before it was too late. Gradually, I’m learning that we all make errors in judgment, but we cannot let them define us. I’m in the process of forgiving myself for the misjudgment I made, and lavishing myself with lots of positive self-care. In time, I’ll recover. Meanwhile, I’m trying to help others avoid what I experienced, and that brings me a lot of satisfaction.

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Image Credits

Photos by Victoria Remler and Navneet Jammu

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