Danielle M. Bryan joins me for a conversation about how she coped with cascading life adversities including multiple sclerosis and divorce, what it was like for her to share deeply emotional experiences on the page, leading with vulnerability, her decision to use a pseudonym, working with a developmental editor, using a hybrid publisher, creating the space and time for what we need personally and creatively, and her new memoir Unparalyzed: Beating an Invisible Pre-Midlife Crisis

Also in this episode:

-the toll of autoimmune disease

-reshaping our stories

-taking solo trips to create

Books mentioned in this episode:

-Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

-Love Sick by Cory Martin

By day, Danielle M. Bryan is a non-profit executive leader and a board member.  She is a proud Jamaican-American, a wife, a mother, a daughter and an avid lover of international travel. So far, Danielle’s international travel destinations have included the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, France, Greece, Indonesia , Jamaica, Mexico, Morocco, South Africa, Turkey, Italy, Belize and Canada! London and Munich are next up – this Summer, in June!  Similar to her passion for traveling, Danielle developed a love for expressing herself through written words and through story-telling. She describes her debut memoir as the story that found her after life threw her a few curve balls and she decided to use her journey and the lessons she learned along the way to inspire others.

Connect with Danielle:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/authordbry/

Website: https://www.unparalyzedmemoir.com/

Get her book: https://a.co/d/iyqrhA3

https://www.archwaypublishing.com/en/bookstore/bookdetails/856866-unparalyzed

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/unparalyzed-danielle-m-bryan/1144672859?ean=9781665753326

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Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book.

More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com

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Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers