Living with ADHD can certainly be a challenge that can come with a lot of less-than-pleasant symptoms. But is one of them a changing accent? That seems to be what Hilaria Baldwin wants us to believe, anyway. In her new book, she attempted to explain what caused the controversy around her disappearing Spanish accent, but people simply aren’t convinced.
She opened up about the controversy, which happened in 2020.
In an excerpt from Hilaria’s new book, Manual Not Included, that was first shared by People, she wrote about the time in 2020 when her Spanish heritage was called into question, with some people wondering why she claimed to be from Spain (and spoke with a Spanish accent) when she was actually born in Boston and named Hillary Lynn Hayward-Thomas.
According to Hilaria, it all came down to her ADHD and dyslexia wreaking havoc in her brain while she “just tried to be ‘normal.'”
“At that point, I had not discussed any of this publicly,” she wrote. “I just existed in a land where sometimes I spoke one language and sometimes I spoke another, sometimes I mixed them and got mixed up, and I never talked about my processing differences.”
She admitted it was a dark time for her.
All the backlash she received caused her to “unravel.”
“I was confused. I felt lost. I missed my family. I couldn’t eat. I got very thin. I started to question my sanity. I started to question if I was a good person,” she wrote. “I returned to what I used to do as a child, and started to call myself stupid. When I woke up, I wanted to be dead. And I got worse and worse and worse.”
Hilaria wrote that once she was better treated for ADHD, the way she spoke began to change.
These days, Hilaria doesn’t seem to have that problem anymore – that much seems to be clear if you’ve watched her new TLC series with husband Alec. And according to her, it’s because she’s now properly treated for ADHD (and decided to get speech therapy).
“The more I got treatment for the ADHD that I was trying to ignore, the better I got at separating the two languages and not getting as distracted,” she wrote in her book. “I tried to improve myself in all the ways the internet trolls had told me I was broken. And then I got to the point where I realized: This is not helping me. I am mixed-up but I am not bad or broken. And then Hilaria returned.”
People aren’t convinced she’s telling the truth, though.
On Reddit, people didn’t hold back when it comes to how they feel about Hilaria’s explanation, and most simply aren’t buying it, including people who also share her ADHD diagnosis.
“ADHD doesn’t make you lie about your background and tell everyone you came to the US from Spain at 19 to attend NYU,” one person wrote.
Someone else commented, “Hilary from Boston never stops lying. This is just another insane excuse of hers in a long line of excuses to justify faking an entire identity.”
