Guest Blog Post by M. E. Schuman

Writing provides the opportunity for the brain to take a break from reality to immortality. 

Creative writing, especially a memoir can be an emotional roller coaster, requiring the whole body to play along. During graduate school my environmental ethics professor said to me, “Michelle, I look forward to reading your published writings. You have a gift.” 

Living in Alaska, it was easy to write about nature and the art of environmentalism. Every morning Granite Mountain stood guard in my backyard, as I listened to the howl of a wolf, my wakeup call. Writing about nature nourished my soul.

Graduate school ended and full-time work took over. Who wants to write creatively after sitting behind a computer all day writing reports?

My professional career demanded writing scientific reports and hundreds of technical documents. No matter the day or my emotional status, it did not impact my ability to write as technical writing is ‘robotic’. 

While working as a wetland scientist in a remote area of the Interior of Alaska, I suffered a devastating helicopter accident, that crippled my body and mind. Left alone on the top of the mountain where I lived, while my partner went about his business of vacation and field work, my life in the outdoors diminished. My computer on the dining room table, a foam mattress on the floor, and my faithful cat, Chessy became my existence. My anxiety grew as I wondered if I would be able to return to my physically active life and career.

To alleviate the thoughts running through my tortured mind, I turned to writing a story of fiction weaving in facts and truths, using my expertise as a scientist and my travels to the Caribbean and South America. Samantha, an ecologist, working in a man’s world of mining gold, was the antagonist, my heroine.

While attending a women’s writers retreat, during a conversation with a published author, I mentioned that I had finished my memoir while I sat along a busy river walk, typing away. The author, with a look of surprise on her face, asked me how in the world I could focus and write with so many noisy distractions? 

I have contemplated that question many times. Writing about one’s life requires the writer to ignore the realities of one’s every day existence. It is difficult to fight back against your well-trained brain, telling you what you should do rather than what you want to do. As women, we are inherently wired to nurture and protect others first. This is never truer than writing a memoir.

For two years, after I retired, I desperately tried to write and failed. I was surrounded by nature’s beauty. And yet, forced to leave Alaska and all that I loved, I sat in a darkened basement room, with the constant drone of a pulp mill and the loud, reverberating horns of trains, and I wrote. I wrote because my heart told me to write.

All that I suffered came back in painful truths of what I endured. And yet, I survived. My memoir, The Understory: A Female Environmentalist in the Land of the Midnight Sun, exists. It is my life, but it mirrors countless others who have been told that they are not worthy.

And here is my advice on how to put pen to paper, as a woman, as a survivor, as a person who was expected to never put herself first: listen to your heart, your soul, your gut, but not your mind. Let the words flow, and like magic, they will appear.

Guest Blog Post for Leonella Press by M. E. Schuman

Michelle Schuman is an environmental scientist with over four decades of experience in Alaska. Her most notable and arduous accomplishment was acting as a first responder on the Exxon Oil Spill, analyzing one of the most devastating and long-term man-caused disasters in North American history.

In October 2020, she began writing her memoir, The Understory: A Female Environmentalist in the Land of the Midnight Sun, now available on Amazon and Indie Bound. 

Passion and peril are intertwined in this true tale of a bright young woman, driven to make the natural world a better place, while hindered not by physical challenges, but by human adversaries and predators.

For more information on the author and where to purchase The Understory: A Female Environmentalist in the Land of the Midnight Sun go to M. E. Schuman’s website: www.meschumancom.wordpress.com 

If you’d like to be considered as a guest blogger for Leonella’s Blog, “Write On” we’d love to hear from you. If you provide a service to authors or have an article or book recently released (or coming soon), even if it has been publisher elsewhere, don’t forget to include a small blurb and a link to your website at the end of your post.

We are committed to supporting fellow writers. Email your blog post suggestions to Hello@LeonellaPress.com