For a long time, I thought my writing existed outside my jobs.
As a child, I loved reading. I could lose myself in a whole other world and make friends there. Eventually, I started writing some of my own ideas about what happened after those stories. I tried some attempts to write things. Most of it was not good. At least that’s what other people said. So, I stopped writing like that.
I still loved stories though. I studied journalism early on, learning how to listen closely, how to ask questions that mattered, and how to notice what people left unsaid. Then life pulled me in a different direction. I became a nurse. A psychiatric nurse. A teacher. A researcher. Roles that, on the surface, didn’t seem to have much to do with fiction or storytelling at all.
But the truth is, those jobs rewired the way I write.
Nursing taught me how fragile people are when they feel unseen. It taught me how much weight lives in silence. How a pause before an answer can mean fear, shame, grief, or resignation. I’ve sat with people who were dismissed, misunderstood, or reduced to a diagnosis. I’ve watched how systems fail quietly, how power gets exercised without cruelty but with devastating indifference. That shows up in my work.
Teaching taught me structure. How to explain complex ideas clearly. How to build tension slowly instead of overwhelming all at once. It also taught me patience. With learners, with process, and eventually with my own writing. I became less interested in being clever and more interested in being understood.
Research taught me how narratives shape belief. How evidence can be ignored if the story around it is strong enough. How people protect the version of reality that keeps them safe. That understanding fundamentally changed the kinds of stories I’m drawn to tell. I write about power, about systems, about what happens when truth is inconvenient and about the people caught inside that tension.
Even my work with kids and adolescents has left its fingerprints. Working with young people reminds you that identity is fragile and unfinished. That the way adults respond to fear, difference, or defiance can shape a life. I don’t write children as naïve or simple. I don’t write adults as all-knowing. I write people as unfinished because that’s what I see every day.
I used to think I needed to separate my professional life from my creative one. Now I know better. My jobs taught me how to observe without judgment, how to sit in discomfort, how to listen for the story beneath the story. They taught me that what’s not said often matters more than what is.
And I stopped caring what other people thought.
Ok, not completely true. I care. But I also realize my writing isn’t for everyone. No author is for everyone. So, I write. I hope I can find my audience. The people who read my stories and see their world in it. Or the world they hope for. Or dream of.
I don’t write in spite of my work.
I write because of it.
Leave a Reply