May 23, 2023
Note From Rochelle
Dear Writers,
I’m thrilled to welcome Lyndsey Medford to the weblog to speak about her memoir, My Body and Other Crumbling Empires. Her story will show you how to embrace your personal humanness, hook up with your non secular course of, and take into account how slowing down may profit your writing apply. Enjoy!
Happy writing,
Rochelle, the Write Now! Coach
Welcome to the weblog. Tell us about your new ebook, My Body and Other Crumbling Empires.
Thanks a lot, Rochelle! My Body and Other Crumbling Empires is a researched memoir about my expertise with autoimmune illness and what that taught me about therapeutic the world. I had a number of ambitions to avoid wasting the world once I bought actually sick at age 26 and needed to actually reckon with what I believed about my physique, God, and my worth to the world.
Eventually, I used to be in a position to put collectively a number of items of the puzzle of what should be blamed for me sick (in addition to simply my unfortunate genes); and the extra I discovered, the extra I acknowledged that these have been additionally issues making the world sick. But these experiences additionally taught me that the methods I’d as soon as believed we must always go about “fixing” them can really be counterproductive. Healing may be very totally different from fixing. Healing requires us to take a look at issues with respect, as greater than damaged; it takes a sluggish and winding path; it asks us to convey our complete selves and be open to vary in our complete lives. And that’s usually an unexpectedly stunning, and deeply efficient, countercultural journey.
Why do you take into account slowness a device for creating change fairly than a hindrance? And a comply with up—are you able to speak about the way you balanced including writing to your schedule whenever you have been coping with power sickness?
We’re taught a very slim definition of “efficiency” that usually doesn’t measure every part that’s essential to us. So we get caught in a way of urgency, or chasing after the newest “solution,” when really our issues are providing us suggestions and asking us to pay attention. When we decelerate, we are able to take note of what is working and what sources are already accessible. We can begin small with making an attempt new issues, which permits us to implement them at a sustainable tempo, and likewise lets us be artistic and make errors at a non-catastrophic scale. We make area to ask higher questions and spot small clues which may level to deeper root causes—which suggests deeper, extra lengthy-lasting change.
When I bought sick, I used to be writing within the margins of a brand new household, new city, and a full-time job. So once I bought laid off from the job and scaled again my ambitions for the opposite issues, writing was type of what remained. That’s been a privilege, in addition to an actual want, to work half-time or by no means. Reading and writing all the time make me really feel like myself and total fill me up greater than they drain me.
The profession half—the social media, advertising, networking, constantly publishing a e-newsletter—has been so much more durable. But after fighting these issues for a very very long time, I’ve discovered how efficient it’s to take issues sluggish there, too. What do I actually like doing? How can I worth and deepen my reference to my present viewers and community? My numbers are nonetheless comparatively small, however they’re all the time rising, my readers are tremendous loyal and assist me share, and the authenticity and pleasure make all of it sustainable for me.
Many speak about writing as a therapeutic course of. There have even been medical research! How was scripting this ebook therapeutic for you?
Sometimes as an advocate for myself or for others I discover myself saying that chronically ailing and disabled folks have tons to supply the world, a complete countercultural manner of being that’s stunning. Writing this ebook was a possibility to present what I imply by that. It’s additionally laborious simply to really feel such as you could be seen in any respect, and particularly seen as a complete particular person, whenever you’re sick or when the world isn’t set as much as be accessible to you. So telling my story felt like bearing witness to my youthful self who’d been so remoted—and within the course of, I feel, to a number of different people who find themselves missed or disinvited due to their our bodies and wishes.
Can you speak about your publishing course of. What suggestions would you supply to readers?
I suppose this really goes again to the slowness concept—each my agent and my editor are these superb ebook individuals who actually believed within the concepts and the writing and trusted that the ebook would discover its readers regardless that I didn’t have dazzling platform numbers. So that was a sluggish course of, however a easy one, and it was constructing on the ten or so years of writing and craft work (and networking at a number of conferences and workshops) that had preceded the precise pitching half.
In the method of writing and publishing, I discovered myself feeling grateful that I had a difficult and fascinating subject, a narrative I used to be enthusiastic about, and large inquiries to sort out. It wouldn’t have served anybody if I’d tried to play it protected by way of material. It all takes perseverance that I used to be ready to attract from my very own sense of journey in exploring these concepts.
Do you’ve got any writers who’ve struggled with power sickness that you just look to as your mentors?
Yes! KJ Ramsey, who wrote the foreword for My Body and Other Crumbling Empires, is one other chronically ailing writer (and now nice good friend) who I actually met via a paid group mentorship together with her. Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes taught a workshop I bought to attend and is such a sort and smart voice who’s manner forward of me on plenty of this stuff. Sarah Bessey isn’t a private acquaintance, however somebody I additionally look as much as and comply with carefully to see how she navigates this stuff. I actually take into account all my pals my mentors, too, together with Brittany Paschall, Elizabeth Cravillion, and Holly Stallcup.
What are you studying now?
Oh, I’ve manner too many books going as standard, and I’ve changed plenty of my social media scrolling time with the Substack app.
The Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco, Book Lovers by Emily Henry, Simply Complexity by Neil Johnson, After Whiteness by Willie Jennings, and the Culture Study, Brutal South, Notes from a Neighbor, and Austin Kleon Substacks.
About the writer. Lyndsey Medford lives with a uncommon autoimmune dysfunction within the American South and is the writer of My Body and Other Crumbling Empires: Lessons for Healing in a World That is Sick. She writes and speaks about spirituality and justice within the ecosystems of our lives. Lyndsey writes at www.instagram.com/lyndseymedford and to her e mail listing through www.lyndseymedford.com.
