Melody Graves

My Story

So I think I’ll skip the part about me being shy and geeky in high school, and the part about me being shy but not-so-geeky in college, and get right to the good part, where I’m sitting in my doctor’s office after a very minor car accident and listening to him tell me that in ten years, I’ll be in a wheelchair as a result of severe fibromyalgia.

A wheelchair. People say our lives are measured in moments, life-defining ones like these. Yup. I’d say it was a defining moment. Anyway, long story short, I floundered, badly, for a couple of years, thought about killing myself, realized what a stupid move that would be, decided to go back to school to get my—ta-da—master’s degree in comparative literature, then decided that, by golly, I was bound and determined to get well.

I had been a prisoner to my illness for too long, and I was going to find a way to get better. Enter my wonderful and brilliant occupational therapist, who essentially gave me my life back with her skillful and intuitive manipulation of my fascia. My what? Fascia—the thin, white layer of connective tissue that encases and runs through your muscles and organs—the stuff that holds everything in place. Skin a chicken leg and look at the filmy stuff between the skin and the muscle. That’s fascia.

Slowly but surely, in combination with the fascial integrative therapy, naturopathy and my belief in a loving and merciful God, I’ve nearly made it back to my old self. Or maybe I should say my new self. Though I never let my illness define me, it has certainly shaped who I am as a person today.

What else did I find during this process of self-discovery? The realization that writing is the only place I truly feel at home. I do it because I love it, and for me, it’s an incredibly cathartic and healing process (painful and grueling as well). In many ways, it’s the other thing that gave me my life back. Writing for me is sacred, a way for me to express what I believe are deeper truths about this fragile thing we call life, and to explore the bonds of humanity that inextricably link all of us together.

Writing is the one place my soul can sing—and where we find this place of soul-singing I think is different for different people. Some find it behind the lens of a camera, others find it in the cockpit of a plane or the design of a building, still others in the rush of air while they're flying down a mountain on a bicycle. Wherever this place is for you, you must find it and embrace it. The world is much too chaotic and life is much too short to go around starving your soul. So find your bliss. And when you find your bliss, you’ll realize that you’ve found yourself as well.