Nicole Nadler
As she arrives 10 minutes late for our coffee date, she instantly lights up the room and her smile is infectious.
Nicole Nadler is an American living In Scotland. "I love it here; I think I'd be really happy to be Edinburgh based. I don't plan on leaving- it took me so long to get myself organised and I don't want to start over in a new city and have no friends"
Nicole got married five years ago to a scots man named Adam. She never changed her name though and is sticking to her guns on it. "So, my when I got married, I never changed my name and my husband one time like briefly mentioned it like, I never changed my name and he got really upset and I was like, wait, what you thought I was? And he was like, I didn't think neither one of us thought to have that conversation, so. Okay, well, I'll just do it later. Okay. And then I never did. So yeah, it's not changing I just was like, if he ever brings it up again, I'll come up with a different argument."
She is a force of nature, strong willed and can chat for Scotland (our interview ended up 22,200 words!)
she goes one to say” It’s just that, I don't know, I really like my name and I was always as a kid, like, really obsessed with why my mom named me Nicole.
"I don't know. I just wanted there to be some amazing story. Like, oh, it was like her favourite film, and there was she was like, oh, I like the name. I'm like, okay, but why do you like it? She's like, I don't know. It's nice.
And finally, one time she gave in. So, I was born in 1989 and at the time alliteration was just really big, for example, Janet Jackson. Yeah. And she's like, I just wanted to give you a name that just kind of had that flow just in case it was ever a thing where people needed to know your name. Nicole Nadler."
"And I was like, that is what I have been waiting for. Thank you!"
On turning 30 and beyond
It was just funny. I could not frickin wait to be in my thirties. Everybody else is freaking out and they're like, we're all getting older. And I'm like, come on, come on, it's got to get better.
I was just like, it's got to get better, right? Because everyone would always say that when you're 20 years old, you're at the time of your life. I'm like, no, it was horrible. It was, it was not okay. I mean, I guess looking back at the time, it felt really horrible. And in retrospect, it was nowhere near as dramatic as it felt at the time. But at the time it felt really dramatic. And I just was like, if this is the best that my life is ever going to get, I cannot deal with another 50 years of this.
"It's also like culturally people put this really big emphasis on your twenties and then the twenties are over. And you should have already blossomed into the butterfly and like, you know, be in your dream job and your dream partnership.
"Culturally people put this really big emphasis on your twenties"
And when you're say, 22, you feel very impatient. I mean, I was, but also, you just got there. You just started. So, at the time, you're like, what the hell? But looking back, when you're in your early twenties, that's the very beginning of you being a person. But I was 22 and feeling why haven't I accomplished anything?"
We talk about what High school was like and Nicole laughs. "When I was graduating high school, we had this senior video and everybody is asked, so where do you see yourself in five years? So, when you are around 23, right?
So, some of them are saying I hope I graduated from nursing school or like, I've had my first baby by then, all these things.
And I still didn't know what to say, and by the way this got played in front of the whole school.
I didn't know what I wanted back then, so I said wow, I just hope I'm still alive. Which turned out sounding obviously very suicidal, but I did not mean it like that. I just meant like that was the furthest ahead that I could picture when they asked.
So yes. 32. It’s the best it's ever been."
''Girls with ADHD are just not given the same treatment''
"I was recently diagnosed with ADHD, which was life-changing for me. So, in the pandemic somewhere, during lockdown one time I was just casually on the internet, and I found a Huffington Post article of a woman who was like, I don't know, it was a clickbait title- I thought something was wrong with me. It turns out I have ADHD. And you think of like a seven-year-old boy running around being aggressive and loud and all that. And so, I literally had nothing better than to read everything on the Internet, you know what I mean?
It's around May 2020 or something, so I'm reading this and she's just talking about whatever she's saying. And I'm like, excuse me? Did you read my diary as a teen? Like, it was just, it was me. And I don't know, you know, when you read your horoscope and oh, this could apply to everybody, but I was like, nah, this is too specific.
It was different than just being oh, I can relate. It was like, you're talking about me. And so, then I just started Googling ADHD and women, and up pops top ten symptoms. And I'm ticking nine or sometimes even ten out of ten.
"And I'm like, excuse me? Did you read my
diary as a teen? Like, it was just, it was me"
Nicole told me how she kept on with research and reading articles, medical journals, anything she could get her hands on, every single one she read she could identify with 90% of the symptoms and traits of ADHD in women. How her scatter-brained-ness and forgetfulness is more than just losing your keys.
"No, I'm afraid I lose my keys like three times a day in the house.” Also, it affects her at work too, "the number of times I would be talking with a boss at work, and they would tell me stuff and I'm like actively listening...and then I'm like, I don't know what you want or said. I mean, immediately."
"Before GPS, I would call my little brother when I was driving, he was five years younger than me. So, I'm 17 he's 12 and I'm like, hey, I'm at the mall and I need to go to dad's office, how do I get there? Because I couldn't picture all these things and I just, I don't know, I thought I was defunct or just incapable of doing normal shit."
"I used to have my own, punch line, I guess. And it was why am I like this? So, after a year or so of seeing that first article, I began to seek an official diagnosis, because one - I was curious, and I also really wanted confirmation. I also wanted to see if medication would have any effect.
It's very hard to get a diagnosis in the UK. Your GP cannot diagnose you; you have to be referred to a specialist. You can go private, but it's extremely expensive. So, if you wait on the NHS waiting list it's like a two year wait at the moment or it was a two year wait when I first asked in May of 2021. So, two years or you pay part of it, and at this point I've probably paid about £1,000 which is not cheap. I'm very privileged to be able to afford that.
So back when they had test subjects for when ADHD was not quite a diagnosis, all the test subjects were boys. This was like in the seventies. It's fascinating. They used boys and that's why all the classic tell-tale symptoms we all think of? Females with ADHD classically like they would be not necessarily aggressive or disruptive or violent or necessarily hyperactive and being physically running around.
But they feel they are easily distracted, daydreaming, very scatter-brained, very airy-fairy kind of thing. They will often hyper focus more on things that are more socially acceptable. So, I as a child, when I say I would read all the time, I mean, I would read all the time I literally never wasn't reading something. And why would you get in trouble for reading? Like, oh! Nicole reads all the time. What an alarm bell!
There's this movie called On the Waterfront. It's an old American movie with Marlon Brando in it. And there's a famous line in there. Marlon Brando's character was basically he was trying to make something happen. It didn't work out, but he's like, I could have been somebody. I could have been a contender. And it's just it's quite a classic line.
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And I think I saw the movie when I was 19, and it always kind of stuck with me because I felt like I kept being like that. That I just want to be a contender. I just want, like, I want to be in the running. Like, I want to be a contender in my own life.
So, in terms of now, I actually feel like I'm a contender in my own life. This is my own life, and this is my own version of me and my own life, my own perception of how it's going.