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Wounded Healer: Sick, Broke, Toothless Single Mom Refuses to Let You Lay Down and Die
Who would’ve thought a chronic illness would help me reclaim my voice?
Hello, world. I’m Heather, a neurosparkly single mom. I’ve been writing online off and on since 1997 when I began publishing poetry on my personal website at age 12. I have been writing online professionally off and on since 2007, back when I was a twenty-something stay-at-home mom of toddlers running an unlicensed home daycare for single moms and military families. I was a top performer at Associated Content, which later became Yahoo! Voices, both of which are now defunct, and ran several blogs dedicated to attachment parenting in the late 2000s.
Life forced me to take a hiatus from SEO writing in 2009 when I drove from Colorado to my home state of South Carolina with my two toddlers, my boxer mutt named Cookie, and whatever I owned that would fit into the back of a Dodge Caravan. I went from SAHM and Air Force wife to low-income single mother in the south, raising two kids in abject poverty during the worst recession since the Great Depression. I kept writing though, publishing on social media and personal blogs, until I finally started college in my 30s.
Family members said I was too old for school, so I became the poster child for Trident Technical College — literally. I gave the commencement speech at my graduation ceremony, and the college featured me on billboards all over town that I got to drive by with my children everyday for weeks. And naturally, I made sure to drive by them with the family members who had said 30 was too old for school.
While I was on stage, giving that speech, my mother was hiding in a domestic shelter following a home invasion and sexual assault the night before. No one had told me because they didn’t want to ruin my big moment. She died a month later of “unrelated causes.” I almost didn’t return to school in the fall, missed the deadline to apply at the Honor’s College, and barely made finished the admissions process in time.
They released her “alleged attacker” not long after. Within weeks, he began a killing spree. The statewide manhunt made national headlines. I got a text message notification that he had shot a man dead while I was sitting in Brit Lit class. He is now serving two life sentences in prison.
Despite brain fog, pain, fatigue, and overwhelming grief, I finished my bachelor’s in English at age 35 (the fulfillment of another lifelong dream!) and began rebuilding my writing career. I had published a short story while still finishing my associate’s, a dream come true, even if the anthology didn’t sell well. I launched an editing company, solicited local mayoral candidates for work, and even started working on a novel.
Life had other plans again, though. Between full-time work and full-time college, homeschooling two kids alone during the COVID pandemic, runaway inflation, health issues, depression, and low self-esteem, I have not had the time, energy, or motivation for writing for years.
In 2022, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, social anxiety, PTSD, OCD, and bipolar disorder, although we now know that this was a misdiagnosis: Hashimoto’s in disguise. I’ve also been slowly accepting that I’m probably on the autism spectrum, just undiagnosed.
I also made the decision later that year to remove the rest of my top teeth, which were crumbling in my mouth. It took several attempts— and a surgery where the dentist filed down my jawbone — to get a denture that fit right. I walked around with no top teeth for a full eighteen months. People who knew me treated me the same. Strangers treated me like crap.
When you lose your teeth young, everyone assumes you’re a drug addict. I’m not. I did a line of coke at a New Year’s party once. I rarely even drink. I just prefer pot. 🤷 No, this dental disaster took years of poverty and self-neglect. Give me the credit I deserve. (In fairness to myself, I now know that untreated autoimmune disease likely weakened my enamel, reduced saliva production, and exascerbated gum disease, raising cavity risk, in addition to robbing me of the energy to get out of bed and brush.)
Hashimoto’s has forced me to slow down and change course. The symptoms led me to work less and less hours and finally to retire from my career as a driver in search of remote or part-time work. The last six months have been a real struggle. It is always darkest just before dawn. I was finally diagnosed two weeks ago, a full eight years after I originally suspected a thyroid problem — when my Circadian rhythm morphed from a circle into a figure eight and my hair started falling out.
I’ve been experimenting with ways of earning money at home from designing POD sweatshirts to call center work. Sometimes I update and optomize resumes or even petsit. Surprisingly, I’ve had the most monetarysuccess with my tarot party business, which is bringing in a part-time income, but bookings aren’t steady enough to support us fully.
The only silver lining is that all of this has freed up a lot of time for writing. What else is there to do when I’m stuck at home with a light workload? I got a taste for creating again as I launched my businesses, building websites like I used to as a kid, thinking up cute slogans to match with my AI-generated fairies, designing marketing materials in Canva. Now all I ever want to do is create!
I even released a children’s book this year, another dream come true. It is a picture book of healing affirmations for survivors of childhood trauma. I plan to solicit donations to get it into schools, libraries, counseling centers, shelters, and other nonprofits at no cost to them. As the neurodivergent daughter of a bipolar schizophrenic, books were a lifeline. The dream of being a writer kept me alive. Books saved me. I cannot save these children, but I can fill their precious hearts with hope.
I spend almost every waking moment now writing, webbuilding, keywording, promoting, networking — working, to put it more succinctly, but it doesn’t feel like work. I’m having a great time. I have been told that I should make more time for me. But this IS my me time!
That’s what has brought me here to Medium. I love writing, and I need money. I know that to make it, you need a story to tell. I have a LOT of stories to tell. But I’m not ready. I want to tell my story, but not right now. It’s long, it’s complicated, it’s painful. It’s hard. It’s embarrassing, shocking, and hard to believe. I don’t wanna write about that crap, not really.
But I know that I have to. Because that’s how you make money, and I desperately need money. But most importantly, it’s because my mother and my best friend both died in their sleep on the same day, and I go to bed every night afraid that I won’t wake up in the morning, and I desperately need my life to have meant something.
I don’t wanna be here. But I don’t think I’ll ever feel ready, so it’s now or never. I need to speak my truth while I still have the chance — not just to memorialize my life and immortalize my experience in this world, but to leave something behind that might help someone like me have an easier time of things. To fill your precious hearts with hope.
Medium is much like the old Associated Content, so much is familiar, but much has changed. I have a lot to learn, and I’m rusty. I began by repurposing old social media posts into about a dozen articles. It’s common for creators to frontload content or to join a new platform with an already existing body of work to crosspost, so I did not realize that uploading them all at once would trigger red flags. Oops. 🤷
I also didn’t know emojis were a red flag, even used sparingly. They draw attention and break up text, plus they’re cute! And while lists are great for Facebook, apparently Medium prefers prose — which is honestly fine with me, as the short, choppy writing needed to capture short attention spans on social media does NOT come naturally to me! I will miss the emojis, though. As you can see, I am struggling to abandon them completely.
After extensive editing, I think most of my articles are good to go now. I am curious to see how they perform. Driving traffic now is quite different from back in 2007. I hear outside traffic isn’t even very profitable at Medium. I don’t know if experimenting with SEO keywords here will help me learn to drive traffic to my business sites either. Hopefully, the practice from prepping this first batch of articles will set me up for success as I dive into more serious, personal writing going forward, at least.
I would say that I look forward to sharing with you all, but the lie would be too obvious. You already know that I don’t. I’m glad you’re here, though. Welcome to the trainwreck. Live. Love. Laugh. At me.
Follow me at https://medium.com/@heatherholmesrocks
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