053 Chronic Illness, Creativity, and Faith with Author W.R. Gingell PART 1

April Aramanda: Wendy, I’m really glad you’re here. Wendy goes by W.R. Gingell as her pen name for her books. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation for a bit now, especially after hearing more about your work, getting to read some of it on your website, and learning more about what life actually looks like behind the scenes for you.

I think a lot of people are going to feel seen in this one. Thanks for taking the time to sit down with me today.

W.R. Gingell: I’m really glad to be here. We’ve been trying to make this happen for a little while now. Our schedules lined up for a bit, and then our illnesses did not line up for a bit. So it’s really nice to make it here and talk about this. If we can make people feel a bit seen too, that’s really nice as well. Thank you for having me.

Sorry, I forget the thanks sometimes.

April: That’s okay. We’re simple and easy here. As you can tell, I’m sitting in bed today, so we’re good.

Wendy: I love your curtains. I’ve been admiring them.

April: This is actually my mother’s house. We’re getting ready to buy a house, and these are her curtains. They’re absolutely beautiful.

Wendy: Mothers have the coolest stuff.

April: Don’t they? I want to steal half her house.

Okay, tell us what chronic illnesses you live with and how long you’ve been dealing with those.

Wendy: I’ve got a couple. I’ve got endometriosis, which technically I’ve been suffering with since slightly before I had a period. I was already getting really bad pains when I was quite young, so I always thought it was normal. I think maybe nine or ten years old.

When I got my period a few years after that, I wasn’t early or anything. It was painful from day one, and then it got exponentially worse as it went on.

I’ve had two surgeries so far for it. I’ll probably have to have another surgery in the next year or two, and it’s likely that in another few years I might have to have a complete hysterectomy.

The pain with that has been severe, especially during my period. With all the things that come with it — the extreme tiredness, the pain, the dizziness, the nausea — quite often I would be in bed for three days while that was going on, and then things would ease off.

The surgeries have helped a lot. But as a lot of women out there will know, it is not easy to get endometriosis diagnosed. Everything will be suspected before that. If you’re someone like me who is stage four or five — five is the highest you can get — even with that, sometimes you don’t present typically, or you don’t know that what you’re experiencing is abnormal. Or like me, you’re neurodiverse, and the way you explain things doesn’t match with the way they receive information, and you need help to explain things in the right way.

It took about seven to eight years, which compared with other ladies isn’t that bad, yet it was bad enough for me. By the time I got my first surgery, I was on the pill constantly. Unfortunately, the pill makes me have suicidal thoughts, so that was really hard.

At that point, I was bad enough that I was crying on the bathroom floor through most of my period. The pill did not stop my period. You’re meant to take it the whole time to stop it, and I started bleeding through. Then I was getting ten-day periods, then a week off, and then a new one would come. By the time I was having the surgery, I was really grateful to have it. It did help a lot.

Of course, endometriosis grows back, so it doesn’t actually stop. There are surgeries in the future, but for now, pain meds don’t really work for me. The ones that slightly work also eat my stomach out, so I end up in insane stomach pain as well.

I did myself an injury with NSAID usage. It was the only time I would use them, during my period, but that was enough with the amount I was having to take to take even a little bit of pain away. It did some damage. I’ve got some ulceration in my stomach and probably more happening as we speak.

That’s been a long thing, and obviously it’s chronic. It doesn’t end. It changes shape a little and keeps going.

I’ve also, since four years ago, had long COVID and POTS. Long COVID hit me hard. I was the only one in our family who got really sick with it. Thankfully, we were really worried about my mother because she is inclined to get very sick and have things carry on. She’s got chronic illnesses herself, and we were worried about her. But she and Dad came through all right. My sister came through all right. I was the only one who ended up really sick.

I was in bed — not all the time, but pretty reliably in bed — for about two years. I could get out and do a little bit, but not very much. Then I got a tiny bit better, and then the POTS got diagnosed because I was still struggling so hard and couldn’t find out why.

That was helpful, but the range of things that come with POTS is so wide that sometimes it’s hard to pin it down. Is this POTS? Is this another autoimmune disease?

I’ve been having consistent stomach pains, and trying to get help for those has been hard because male doctors, a lot of the time, if you’ve got a history like I have of an abusive marriage and other stuff like that, straightaway they start telling you it is because of your trauma and that you need to go see a hypnotist.

April: Right. Depression, anxiety.

Wendy: Yeah. I was so angry at that time too because after I had escaped my marriage, it took me two full years to heal bodily symptoms of anxiety and trauma. I still have some of those, but the specific things — I had worked so hard to re-jig my system so I wouldn’t react to certain things, and so I could go out to restaurants again without being terrified all the time, without having to run scripts through my head 24/7.

And then they use all that stuff to deny you any kind of actual real care.

I’m still in search of diagnosis for a lot of stomach-related issues, but as it turns out, POTS has answered the question of a lot of things I used to have as a kid as well. It turns out I must already have had it, just nothing like the level it is now after COVID.

At the moment, those two things are the main ones I have in terms of chronic illness. There are other things suspected, but diagnosis is a long-winded thing. It’s very hard, especially as a woman. And I know that’s not just as a woman. I know that Black women have it harder. I know that Aboriginal women in Australia have it much harder. But also, it’s hard as a woman.

April: I think because the medical field is still heavily dominated by men — and there’s nothing wrong with that. There are a lot of fantastic male doctors, and I know quite a few. I also know some that aren’t.

I think medicine, because of the years of hysteria and all the different things they said were wrong with women back in the day, is still very skewed where women are concerned.

Wendy: Yes. I also think a lot of the issues come from most science and most bodily information being based on what happens to men and men’s bodies. You can’t really run science like that with only half your information, but that’s what’s been done. It turned out not great.

April: Not a lot of research was done initially on women. It was done on men. What you’re saying is very accurate. That skews things on women as well.

Wendy: And it’s called atypical presentation, but really, a lot of the time, women present like this. It’s called atypical because it’s not the male experience.

April: Right. It’s not what they’re used to seeing.

The other thing with chronic illness that I want to make sure people understand before we move on is that a lot of physicians are trained in what’s called acute care. Meaning immediate need. There’s something they can fix that’s physically wrong with you. You broke a toe. You have an ulcer. You’re having a heart attack. These are acute things. Immediate care things they can look at and go, “This is what’s wrong, and I can fix it.”

A lot of physicians are not trained in chronic illness. That’s something that’s coming up now, but it’s not something that was done for years and years. It’s harder for physicians when it comes to chronic illness because they don’t understand the difference between what they can fix and what’s been happening for so many years that may never go away.

Wendy: Yes. I think it’s probably disheartening for them as well. It’s something they can’t fix.

April: I think it is. I think it’s hard. Some of them will play to their ego and not say they don’t know what’s wrong. Others will actually say, “I don’t understand how to deal with this. I think you need a different physician.”

So there’s my spiel on the medical practice. I come from a medical family, so I want to make sure I always hit both sides of it. I think it’s important.

Wendy: Both sides is important, especially when there’s so much frustration and so much pain wrapped up in all of this. If you’ve got a chronic illness, you’re living with all of that, but you don’t necessarily see or appreciate the other side. It is important to know the other side, not only to be a good human being, but to get effective care and effectively advocate for yourself.

April: Yes. And to know that there are good doctors out there. There are people who will listen to you. You have to take the time to find them, and that’s the hard part. That’s the exhausting part.

Back to you, Wendy. When did you first realize that your life wasn’t going to go back to what you expected? I know you were diagnosed at a young age, but sometimes as kids and teenagers we think, “It’ll get better. We won’t have to deal with this forever.” When did you realize this was going to be a long-term problem and your life was going to be a little different?

Wendy: It’s hard to say when exactly that happened. I’m guessing a lot of the things that happen with my body are complicated by my ADHD. The way that interacts is that I have a hard time not understanding what’s going on with my body, but cataloging and collecting things and understanding what I’m feeling.

I started with pain when I was about nine or ten. It wasn’t until I was 20, I think, and the pain was quite debilitating by then. I was working checkouts, and it was hard to physically stand at that point. Still, my instinct was to keep pushing through it.

For some reason, it didn’t occur to my brain, “We can take pain medication,” because it was so normal. It was so normal to be in this kind of pain that it did not occur to me to take pain medication. At that point, the pain meds did work for the first five years. I’d have to take a lot of them, but they would work.

When it comes to noticing things, I’m a really slow study. I have trouble stopping eating until I am physically unwell sometimes because I’m enjoying the textures of things and I’m not paying attention to signals. I will work for hours forgetting to eat or drink or go to the toilet because I’m locked in.

I feel like I was really slow. I’ve had to consciously — and I think all ADHD people really need to try and do this if they can — learn to start paying attention to what was happening with my body. To log things. To write things down. Even if those things go missing, which they do if you put them on little bits of paper, you’re starting to make a record for your brain to think, “I need to pay attention to what’s happening with my body. This is not a normal thing. That is not a normal thing. This is normal for me, but it is also a lot of pain. Should this be happening?”

With the endo specifically, it wasn’t until nearly ten years into the journey, or even more, that I was beginning to realize, “Oh, this is not normal.”

I don’t think it was until the last few years of my marriage that it occurred to me that unless I get some help for this, unless I’m effectively helped, I will for the rest of my life have to choose between excruciating and unbearable physical pain or excruciating and unbearable mental pain. There were no other options for me.

That made me start to realize, “Oh, my life is never going to be normal.” But honestly, even then, a lot of my feelings until COVID and the POTS diagnosis were, “This is life.”

Then with POTS and the loss of the use of my body in so many ways — even walking normally — and the way that suddenly my legs would stop working and I wouldn’t be able to walk, I kept thinking, “I can get better. I can get better. I need to exercise enough. I need to get my body strong again. I need to work harder, do better, and then it’s going to be fine.”

But it never was.

It wasn’t until I went on holiday again. I went back and did the same kind of holiday I’d done before POTS. When I go on holiday, I want to walk the streets if I’m in a city. I want to look around. I want to see everything I can see. I want to find little places. I love walking. You have no idea how strong my legs were, how much muscle I had on my legs. Walking was good for my brain. It was good for my emotions. I loved it.

I take photographs as a hobby, so I really loved it. Then I went back to Korea after POTS, and I was so curtailed with what I could do. I had to make a plan every day for what would happen if I suddenly couldn’t walk anymore. At that point, I didn’t even understand that I was dangerously anemic.

I knew that I had to eat often enough that I didn’t get faint and lose the use of my legs. Again, with ADHD, it’s hard to remember to have food in your bag every day. I had to make an effort to do that. Luckily, Korea has so many food options everywhere you go. I speak the language, so I could easily stop in a cafe.

April: Oh, wow. Was Korean hard to learn?

Wendy: Yes. Especially at first, it was very hard. It’s the direct opposite of English. It’s one of the hardest languages you can learn from English because the sentence structure is back to front, and the sounds are fairly different. They’re in a different sound group. It was hard, but it’s worth it. It makes the brain happy.

I had to do so much more arranging, and no matter how good I had been or how well I had arranged, the smallest thing would throw my body out. If it throws your body out once, it’s a couple of days to a couple of weeks that you can’t do anything.

Even at that point, I think I was still in denial, thinking, “I need to do better. I need to build my strength up again.” I didn’t realize I was doing damage to myself by trying to build myself up with exercise instead of resting when I needed to rest.

Even now, I still struggle because I do West Coast swing dance as my form of exercise. I love it so much. It’s something you can scale and ration out because you can stop after a dance. It’s hard to stop because you want to keep dancing, but you can stop after a dance and rest for one or two dances, however many you need to, and still keep dancing.

Even now, when world-famous dancers or Australia-famous dancers come in and the dancing is so good, sometimes I will still overdo it. My brain is ever hopeful, like, “Maybe this time it’ll be different.” And it never is.

For me, and maybe for other people, there’s never been a single realization. Again, maybe that’s from the ADHD as well, my extreme forgetfulness. I always have to keep realizing it, and keep realizing it, and come to that realization again and again.

Each time it’s less devastating, but it’s more insidiously sorrowful, I guess. I loved walking. I loved feeling my body capable. It gave me actual joy. I don’t get joy from actual exercise, but from feeling my body capable and strengthening with the type of walking I was doing so I could see more places and take more pictures. That was such a joy to me, and I’ve lost that. It’s not coming back.

That continuing realization has been one of the hardest things, especially about the POTS, because I’m used to pain. The type of pain I get even from POTS is like broken-bones-level pain, and I can deal with it. It’s not fun, but I’m used to pain. But not being able to rely on my own body, not being able to be sure that my legs are going to hold me up on any given day when things are bad, that’s been really hard.

April: I think the fatigue and the uncertainty, especially for those of us who are very independent and always have been — that’s me — and who have seen those days when we were stronger and are now dealing with this, I think what I call it is internal ableism. I do it to myself constantly.

I totally understand what you’re talking about. I think I can do more because I have the energy and I feel good, and then an hour later I’m wasted. Then I’m like, “What is wrong with me? I need to get stronger.” Then I lay down and I’m in this deep moment of sorrow, and I’m going, “This is my chronic illness, and I need to learn how to pace myself all over again.” I have to tell myself this all the time when I have moments like that. So I totally understand where you’re coming from.

You are a writer. What does a normal workday look like for you, especially with brain fog, fatigue, and extreme pain in the mix?

Wendy: On a normal day, if we’re talking normal fatigue and not too much pain, I try to get up. My alarm goes off at nine. That’s not usually when I get up. On a normal day, it takes me an hour to get up.

That involves my little dog running up to me to get some pats, doing his little huff at me, stretching at me, and then flopping down again because he knows I’m not getting up.

That’s the time I prefer to do my Bible reading and praying if I’m awake enough. If I’m not awake enough, I try to wait until I’m sitting up. That’s changed as well. I used to do physical reading. These days, for my Bible reading, to be able to concentrate, I have to listen to the audio Bible. I love that it’s there. It’s great that it’s there, but I do miss the tactile feel of my actual Bible.

I spend that time doing that. If I’m not awake enough, if there’s too much fog, I’ll listen to something from LawTube or one of the YouTube channels I follow. I’ll listen to a couple of videos, and then by ten o’clock on a good day, I’m up and about.

By that time, my alarm has usually gone off several times for me to take my morning pills. I take my morning pills, and then it’s cup-of-tea time. After that, the window curtain opposite me gets put up because then my nephews know it is okay to come in and disturb me.

If the curtain is down, they’re not allowed to come in. If it’s up, they’re free to come in and out throughout the day to get opinions on the weapons they’ve created, or get me to have a sword fight with them, or to tie something up, or cut something, or find out if I have duct tape because they need more duct tape.

From ten through to about twelve, that is morning pottering. If I remember to, I’ll water plants. I’ll tidy up the stuff I left in a mess the night before. I’ll do little things, catch up with YouTube, and try to wake up. It takes me a while to wake up and get to a stage where I’m able to write.

I’m normally an afternoon writer. From twelve through about four, I’m either trying to write, procrastinating writing, or actually writing. When the brain fog is bad, it’s honestly really hard to get a decent amount of writing done. On a good day, I will put on, at the moment, Florence and the Machine’s Everybody Scream album. It’s been going on a loop as I write because it fits the vibes of the series I’m writing at the moment, which is urban fantasy with a bit of Australian Gothica. The vibes have to match with what I’m writing.

For that period of time, I’m usually either writing or trying to write. I’m also trying to remember that I need to have a nap in that time. I was doing really well when I remembered to have a nap or wasn’t pushing myself, and I need to start doing that again.

When I remember, somewhere during that time I’ll have breakfast. Breakfast is not usually breakfast time. It’s usually more like twelve or after. Lunch is usually around four. Then I usually take a break and either play games with the nephews — at the moment it’s Skyrim — or take the dog for a little play when he’s in a playful mood. Or I’ll do my language studies then. I’m hoping to start doing violin practice again, but that has been hard to get back into. It’s still a work in progress.

I try to stop writing earlier in the day, but lately, because it’s been so hard, I’ve been writing right up until midnight or sometimes later to try to get the output that feels necessary. Again, that’s the internal struggle between, “I can’t do this and my body needs to rest,” and, “I really need to get this done.”

By the time eight o’clock comes around, I usually try to have stopped writing for the day. After that, it’s maybe reading if I can concentrate. I like doing physical things while I’m listening to books at the moment. I have a Shaun Tan puzzle that I’m going to be working on very soon. If anyone knows Shaun Tan, he’s an Australian writer and illustrator. He does amazing stuff. If you get a chance, look at The Arrival or The Red Tree. Gorgeous works. Technically, they’re picture books, but they’re not really kids’ books. I’ve got one of his puzzles, and I’m very excited to get into it.

That’s usually my evening. I’m either listening to YouTube while I’m doing a puzzle or knitting. Knitting is really a happy place for me. Sometimes sewing. Sometimes I’ll go to Skyrim, but I try not to play too much Skyrim at night unless it’s the weekend, because once I start, it’s really hard to stop. It’s not only quest-based and story-based. It’s, “You’ve reached this goal. What’s the next thing? Oh, there’s another thing. Oh, I can do another thing. Oh, I can earn money on this. Oh, I can spend my money on this.” It’s hard to stop, so I try to keep it for the weekends.

If it’s a comfort night, my comfort night in is usually a horror movie and a cup of tea and some ginger biscuits. Basically, I’m a granny. But I’m a granny who likes horror movies.

April: Nothing wrong with that. I think as artists, there is something different about the brain that lets us enjoy things like that as a comfort or calming time, which is weird, but it’s true. I love crime shows.

Wendy: That’s one of my special things I like to talk about when people will talk about horror movies with me. Horror has a predetermined end, and it makes sense of terrifying things. In a lot of ways, anxious people and people with PTSD tend to enjoy horror movies. I think a huge part of it is genuinely because there are expected things in horror movies. They follow expected formulas. You have expected outcomes, and even if the outcome is technically bad, it’s an expected bad outcome. There’s a resolution, and there’s a reason for the horrible thing.

It makes sense of horrible things happening, even if that horrible thing is that there are horrible monsters out there. It makes sense. I feel like that calms and soothes the brain.

April: I think it can, especially for PTSD and CPTSD people like us.

Wendy: It makes sense to me anyway. That’s a pretty normal day.

The things that might be different about it are if it’s an endo day, if the pains are particularly bad, or if I’m exhausted from that. Then I’ll be in bed writing instead of sitting up writing. I like to be able to stand, but my writing setup is very versatile. It consists of the bench, usually a little computer stand, the computer, and a couple of keyboards. At any time, I could be sitting on the chair at the bench writing, standing writing, in bed writing, or if I’m a little bit better than bedbound but couch-bound, then I can be on the couch writing as well. It’s not much of a couch, but it’s good enough, and it’s got a nice view.

If I’m having a really good day in terms of physical strength, I enjoy getting out to a cafe to write for a couple of hours because those are usually my most productive days because of the ambience there. There’s a babble of noise, but it’s not noise directed at you or noise you need to understand, so it’s not overwhelming usually.

April: I’m the same way.

Pardon my puppy barking in the background. I think my brother was going in and out of his room, and she heard him and started barking. Everybody pardon the little three-pound dog who thinks she’s a twenty-pound dog.

What is something people assume about a full-time artist like you that isn’t true for you?

Wendy: I think there are a few things. There’s a mindset that as an artist or author, you’re either struggling financially and living in an attic, or you’re really well off. I don’t think people think of there being any middle ground. For the vast majority of writers, especially the ones like me who are fortunate enough to make it their day job, most of us have a fairly standard income, like a mid-list regular job-type income, that comes with some added versatility.

Along with expectations of either high salary or low salary, I think most people think you get an advance, and that’s your payment for the year. With some people, that can be, but for me, being an indie author, money is very up and down. I don’t think people realize the extent to which your income can fluctuate.

If you’re like me, not great at planning stuff out, that can be a problem, and you have to learn how to deal with it because the low months are going to be really low sometimes, and the high months are going to be crazy high sometimes. You have to adjust your mindset a lot with that.

I feel like a lot of people have wrong ideas about the payment and the lifestyle of a writer in general. Also, a lot of the time what I get asked is, “How do you get all your ideas?” or, “Where do all your ideas come from?” as though they’re a finite resource.

That one has always puzzled me because I will never in my lifetime be able to write all the ideas I have simmering in my back brain at this moment. I’m nearly forty, which means I’m probably about halfway through my life if I’m fortunate, and I have exponentially more ideas yet to come. I’ve not had all the ideas I will have.

I think a lot of people think creativity is a finite resource that will one day run out. I suppose some people might be like that. I don’t like to say nobody’s like that. But for me, it’s a never-ending well of inspiration because if you’re living, you’re learning. And if you’re learning, you’re growing. And if you’re growing, there’s always going to be a new idea to explore or a new way to look at life.

As a writer, writing is my primary way of processing. Therefore, there is no end. There is no limit to how many ideas I can and will produce.

April: That’s very interesting. I think some people do think it’s a finite resource and that we can run out of ideas. But I think those of us — I’m not diagnosed ADHD, but I think I am. I’m definitely neurodivergent. I think our brains are constantly running, so we’re constantly thinking of the million things we have to do and the things we see and the different stories running in our heads.

I’ve always had stories running in my head, and music, and all these things that continue to run in my brain. I have recently found out that is not normal for people.

Wendy: Is it not? I thought at least that was normal. With ADHD, I’m sure you know this and have experienced it as well. The underbrain is where a lot of the stuff is going on. Even if the upper brain has other stuff, all the really deep stuff, the cogs and everything working things out, all the percolation happens in the underbrain. Then all of a sudden, there’s a fully formed idea in your head again. I thought at least other people had something always.

April: I think people can think things, but my husband does not always have a song in his head or thoughts running around. When I go to bed at night, it takes me forever to sleep because my brain is running ninety miles an hour. He turns around and falls asleep in five minutes because there’s nothing going on in his head.

Wendy: That’s very quiet for him. Who can do that? That’s insane. I’m sort of jealous, but also every now and then it feels like nice company to have Michael Scott popping up in your head saying, “Pam, Pam, Pam.” I don’t know why that’s one that happens all the time. If it’s anything that rhymes with Pam, Michael Scott pops up in my head and is like, “Ham, ham, ham,” or whichever thing it is.

April: I do songs. I think in song lyrics. Somebody says something and I start singing a song in my head if I don’t sing it out loud. Every once in a while, it’ll be a Friends reference like, “My eyes! My eyes!” Which, you being almost forty, I’m sure you know.

It’s funny that that’s not actually a normal thing. The circles I run in, a lot of people are like that, and my entire family is like that, so it’s normal.

Wendy: My dad isn’t, but I thought he was weird.

April: See, this is the thing. There is no normal. So if you are listening and you feel like you’re crazy, no. You’re your own version of normal.

Last question on your creativity: have you had to grieve the version of creativity you thought you would have versus what it has turned out to be? Or has it flowed in a different way for you and not really been like that?

Wendy: That’s a really good question, and it’s one I’ve never thought about. I’ve thought of something tangentially connected, which I will connect after I answer the question.

I don’t feel that I mourn a type of writing or the writer I thought I would be. I feel like my writing ability and style and everything that goes with it has grown with me as I’ve grown as a person. Like I said earlier, I’m really fortunate to be able to write as a day job, and that was the dream. That was my dream.

Once you get there, it’s like, “What is the dream now?” You have to sit back and say, “I want to keep writing better,” or, “I want to try this next,” or, “I want to explore that next.”

As I’ve been growing and writing, my writing has changed a bit. Of course, as I’ve grown, I feel like it’s gotten better and deeper. I hope it’s gotten more enjoyable, and I hope it’s gotten technically better. I think it has. No, I know it has.

A line I still remember that I wrote was that someone spun around, arrested, and a troop of policemen poured into the glade. That’s not great for a start, and also putting “arrested” and “policemen” in the same vicinity without a proper connection — anyway, I have gotten better.

The tangential thing is that sometimes I will reread my writing from a long time ago when I was younger. Sometimes it’s not that I miss the person I was, but I look at that and think, “I was really innocent back then.” There was a kind of joy and innocence in my writing that I see and think, “Oh, it was really unfair that that was taken away from me.”

It’s not that I don’t still have joy in writing, because I do. I have what I think of as a deeper joy. It’s not the uncomplicated and effervescent joy that it was when I was much younger. I don’t think it can be, and I don’t think it’s right that it should be. But sometimes I read some of those things and I miss the uncomplicated joy of writing at that time.

I wouldn’t trade it. I love what I do now. I love that I write with more layers and more depth and more thematically resonant layers. I love that, and I want to keep doing that. But sometimes I do miss that uncomplicated joy of writing.

April: I think there’s a piece of us with chronic illness, as we grow and learn how to deal with this and grieve over and over again pieces that we lose, that always misses the uncomplicated joyful times. The times in our life when things were a little easier. Most of the time, it’s when we were much younger.

You didn’t have to plan around your body. You didn’t have to think through the brain fog. You didn’t have to deal with the many doctor’s appointments. You got to be and write, or paint, or whatever your creativity is. Create software, whatever it is.

I think there’s always a piece of us that misses that part of our lives. As we get older anyway, as human beings, we grow and mature and things change. Things do get more complicated because we’re older, wiser, and we’ve lived pieces of life that are hard. With chronic illness, it’s hard every day. Sometimes that makes that grief a little more. But also sometimes it makes that time a little more sweet, where we think, “She was so naive, but man, she was great.”

Wendy: Her mind soared. I feel really fortunate because with writing being the way it is, I have a record of that version of me. I have a little window into what I was when I wrote that, and that’s pretty precious.

Even with everything else, even with the way things have changed and how much harder it is to write these days, being able to see my progress and see those little parts of myself as I proceeded through my life, that’s pretty good, I reckon.

April: Because of chronic illness, we’re going to switch into faith a little bit here. We’ve touched a little bit on it. A lot of us don’t get to go to church regularly, and I’m assuming that’s the case for you. What kind of feelings does that bring up for you when you miss church regularly, and when do you feel that the most?

Wendy: The biggest feeling that comes up is shame. There’s a very specific reason for that. I grew up in very fundamentalist Baptist circles.

April: Every time the door was open.

Wendy: Yes. Not only church. Church twice on a Sunday, the Wednesday night prayer meeting, youth on Friday night, whatever’s happening on Tuesday night. You’re always there. If you can do that and want to do that, that’s wonderful. It’s wonderful to have those things. Take advantage of all you can.

But in the circles I was living in, and in the way I internalized everything, and in what I’m coming to think of as some very OCD tendencies, the shame in my brain is very real and very long-lasting because you don’t miss a church service. You go. You always go. If you don’t go, people look at you weird.

April: You’d better have a high fever and be on your deathbed.

Wendy: Yeah. Instead of it being, “I’m sitting in church and my body is vibrating so much from all the noise and all the singing, which I love to do, that I am about to faint,” or, “My legs stopped working in the middle of church, and I cannot move myself in or out. I’m on the floor.”

Usually, the thing in your brain, the little shame monster, the gremlins in your brain are like, “No, you’re a wicked person. You are not a good Christian, and you don’t love God.” That has been the hardest thing to come to terms with because that voice is really strong.

With a lot of the mental struggles I’ve had, along with the ADHD, PTSD, and everything that’s come along with it, I was already struggling mentally. Then to have that on top of it, and to start realizing, “I’m not performing my faith. I’m living my faith.