What are your biggest challenges?

Self-doubt leading to self-sabotage is probably my biggest challenge when it comes to achieving my goals and dreams. Like a shadow, they’re always there, and it seems they always have been.

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Many, many great writers were crippled by doubt in their own abilities at one point. Many went on to become legendary, or at least noteworthy. They found a way to push through. I guess I’m still searching within myself for the confidence and guts to do the same.

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Coming in at a close second is illness.

From a physical health perspective, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and hypermobile spectrum disorder plus treatment resistant migraine disorder. All of those diagnoses came within the last 2 years.

Both fibromyalgia and HSD have a lot of co-morbidities. I have too many of them to mention.

I also have a number of issues with my spine that cause frequent pain and discomfort.

As far as mental health goes, I have been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type. This basically means I get a fun combination of bipolar and schizophrenia symptoms.

No matter how hard I try to be friends, my relationship with my body and my mind can best be described as a frenemy situation.

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Obviously, chronic illness and mental illness are both significant barriers. So why do I still rank self-doubt and self-sabotage higher?

Because even on days I’m perfectly capable of putting at least some effort into taking steps toward those things, my self-doubt says that it’s wasted effort, that it’ll never amount to anything anyway, and that I would simply be wasting my limited resources.

I struggle very heavily with having faith and trust in myself.

The ironic thing is that I know the way we build trust in ourselves is by doing The Thing(s) little by little, even if it is scary, until we learn we are not as helpless, hapless, or hopeless as we initially thought – and I still struggle to take those first steps.

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Do it scared is not terrible advice, at least not in my opinion. I did a lot of things while fucking terrified when I was younger and almost all of them worked out beautifully.

With illness, flare-ups of symptoms can be worsened by that anxiety/fear, so one must exercise some caution when doing things that lead to stress of any kind.

I’m still learning to adjust to my new reality and learning how to achieve my goals despite these life-altering changes.

I’m not giving up on myself or my wildest dream – that of publishing books.

I’ve already published one, a poetry collection on living with mental and chronic illness called I Will Rise, currently available on Amazon, Lulu, and other major retailers.

That was a huge win for me.

Here’s to many more wins! 🥂