When Dorchester native Melody Cunningham started wearing glasses at the age of 44, being farsighted was not the only problem; she kept misplacing and breaking her glasses.

She figured if this was a problem for her, this must be a problem for other people.

Inspired by the Korean Spa Headband, the certified doula birthed the Vision Band, “a patent-pending headband that stores and deploys retractable eyewear. It was designed to eliminate nose pain, lens smudging, and the constant frustration of losing or removing glasses throughout the day.”

The Weymouth resident has worked in many fields, which include being an MBTA driver, an information systems manager for an engineering firm and a business manager for an interior design firm. Most recently she was in birthwork, certified as a certified doula, a lactation counselor and a midwife assistant.

The mother of five talked about what she hopes her children are learning from watching her transition into an inventor, while struggling with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), depression and grief. Cunningham lost her mother and then her ex-husband just a year later.

“I’m trying to show my children that there are different ways [of working]. There’s nothing wrong with the 9-to-5 model, but it never worked for me and I didn’t understand. I could never do these things for too long, and now, after going through the tragedies that I did, I sought help for myself mentally, and then I realized, ‘Hey, I’m neurodivergent, or what I like to call, alternatively brilliant.’ That model doesn’t have to work for everybody. You can find your niche,” she said.

“What I hope for them is that they can discover whatever their path is and understand you don’t have to be boxed in. I tried it for decades, and it never worked out, and now I understand why.”

But there are challenges and barriers Cunningham faces as a new inventor.

“Being a Black woman with limited resources, that’s the biggest. Even if you invent lovely things, if you can’t protect your IP [intellectual property],” she said. “A patent agent is lots and lots of money. Then filing the patent — they do have micro entity status, [so] I was able to file my patent for under $500, but not everybody has $500 even. So [there are] lots of barriers for you to bring your idea [and] your intellectual property before the government, to make sure that you can protect it, because that’s… super important.”

With the help of the Arts and Business Council of Boston and the Volunteer Lawyers Association, she is in the process of trying to build a proper working prototype of the Vision Band which can cost up to $10,000.

Cunningham has also reached out to some local college and university engineering departments to see if a student or any programs would help her with a prototype or refine the mechanics, but she has not heard back yet.

However, she is not giving up, as she currently is in the pre-seed early funding stage to help bring the Vision Band to life.

“I launched an Indiegogo [online campaign], as a pre-seed to help me, so that I’m not leaning on the people in my environment or asking for anything, but just throwing it out there for anyone who believes in my vision and wants to see it happen. Ideally, I want [The Vision Band] to be priced between $49 and $99, but I have no idea if that’s going to be feasible yet, because I don’t have a prototype. I have’’t done that part of the market research, but I’m hoping to get there. I will get there,” she said.

Cunningham’s advice for anyone who has an idea for an invention is to float the idea around.

“I threw mine on Reddit, where they are brutal, but I gathered over 60,000 views, and a lot of really organic interest [and] lots of critics, but I had an answer for everything. So, it prepares you to defend your product and to explain it,” she said.

“You want to hear the naysayers, and you want to hear the good stuff, but you don’t want to just engulf yourself in that. Our friends and family are going to be supportive, but you want to hear the adverse reaction, so that you can prepare yourself, defend your product, and if you need to, you might have to adjust and rework it to accommodate what the people are saying. You may hear something that you didn’t think of.”

ON THE WEB

Learn more about Cunningham’s Vision Band at indiegogo.com/en/projects/vision-band/vision-band