Speaking of Writing ✍🏼

 I have still completely lost the mood for writing. One thing I’m scared of is negative opinions. You would think a book about helping children wouldn’t garner negative reactions, but some aspects of it might. For example, when I worked at the child abuse shelter, I took care of siblings whose mother tried to kill their infant sibling. It was a case of shaken baby syndrome that left the baby disabled, and it was attributed to the mother’s postpartum mental health. In cases like that, there is very little sympathy for child victims.  If I include a version of that story that would protect the true identities of these siblings, then I might be seen as someone who is uneducated about postpartum mental health. I might be seen as someone who thinks “mental illness isn’t real.” I do think it’s real, even though it’s not seen on imaging or bloodwork.  I would just have to be very careful about telling that story, because unlike other cases of child abuse, the child victim isn’t automatically considered. The mother is. Telling a story of helping children might sound like I was this heroic person who always had the answers that lined up with the popular opinions of the times, but that wasn’t reality. 

If you ever watched “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” in the 90’s, you might remember that no matter what the conflict was in the episode, the episode always ended with everyone realizing Dr. Quinn was right. That’s the kind of writing I want to avoid, because it’s not realistic. In the case of kids abused and/or killed by a mother with postpartum psychosis, more attention is given to the mom than the child victims. If you sympathize with the child victims,  you’re seen as “bad” in many ways. The emphasis is usually sympathy for the mother. Avoiding what I call “Dr. Quinn syndrome” where the main character always comes out the hero who’s right and has the popular opinion is likely to garner some negative reactions. I hope that makes sense. 

If that still doesn’t make sense, then think of Andrea Yates. When people talk about her case, do they even mention the names or the details of her children?  No- they talk about her and how the fact that she murdered her kids is because of her postpartum issues. If you say out loud that the kids were victims, or that it wasn’t ok what happened to them, you are snapped at immediately to give graces to Andrea for what she did. The children themselves are rarely real people in people’s minds. They’re game pieces in an argument to let a certain person be excused for an inexcusable action. If I tell the story of the kids I cared for, the focus will be them as victims, not any kind of excuses, reasoning, anger at, or rage towards the person who committed the abuse. 

I also was just talking to my therapist how, when people hear that I worked there, they assumed that I saw all this horrible abuse on the kids. The truth is, 95% or so of the kids that came there were not there because of abuse. (Obviously the siblings I just mentioned were the 5% that were), but they were there mostly due to homelessness, drug use, or both. If the kids were being physically or sexually abused, that was not the reason for admission the vast majority of the time. The worst thing I ever saw on the kids was that sometimes when they came in they were dirty. For the majority of them, it’s not like I “saw all this abuse”. If I read their files, it would just say homelessness, tested positive for this and that (parents) but it’s not like I had all these kids full of bruises all the time. That’s what people think. The truly horrific thing about working there was that every single member of the staff hated each other. Plus having to care for all those kids in those unstable situations with people who all hated each other. Some of the staff members tried to get even with others and involved children, and I’ll get into that another time. 

So, it’s complicated. The last thing I want if I do include the story of the siblings and shaken baby syndrome is some smart ass saying, “Educate yourself!” About XYZ mental health issue. If the book is published, I may get thousands of hate letters like that. I would just need to keep it about them and their care, keep it super minimal about their mom, and of course change names and identifying details. 

Also the postpartum/shaken baby thing is just one example. If I express any anger at the woman who did this to that baby, then that will not be popular at all. 

That’s a reason why I want a pen name.  I used to want Simi for a pen name, but I’m over the name Simi. I don’t like it anymore. When I started working for this inventory company in 2023 and developed a crush on Kevin, I put his last name with Simi, not realizing that I would eventually marry him and it would be my real last name. So that’s out. 

I really like the name Dassy. It’s short for Hadassah. Yes, I got it from Miriam on TikTok!  Miriam is an Orthodox Jew and mother of five who educates on TikTok about Judaism. Hadassah is her second youngest child, and they call her Dassy. Dassy also resembles Danny, which I like. Hadassah was the original name of Queen Esther in the Bible, before she became Queen Esther. Would my character be Jewish?  I don’t know. I mean for all intents and purposes, she’d be Greek like me, but the main character’s culture wouldn’t play a part in the story at all. Plus, my main character is a Christian who starts out fundie and goes through a Pentecostal phase before having a crisis of faith. I myself do have a drop of Jewish blood, but since it comes from my father’s side, it doesn’t count. (According to them anyway). 

Hadassah also means Myrtle tree. It’s symbolic of peace and joy and prosperity. That again gives the “heroic”, “everything goes smoothly”, “everything I battle is in agreement with societal norms” thing I want to avoid. So therefore, I also like the name Amalia or Amalyah which means work of God. And there are a lot of Greek women named Amalia or Amalyah. 

As far as last names, I have none at all. 

If you care to, tell me which you like better: Dassy or Amalyah. And perhaps suggest a last name. I do not want to use my real name at all.