Healing Through Writing (Guest Post)

Jackie M. Stebbins, Esq, author of Unwillable: A Journey to Reclaim My Brain, on how writing (literally) brought her back to life.

My friend and local Humanities scholar, Tayo, once said that he, “writes to pay attention and teaches to pay the bills.” His words caused me to reflect upon why I write.

I put words on paper neither to teach, nor for financial reward. And while I appreciate how I now see the world through the eyes of an author, it’s not my driving force. For me, writing is healing—and I’ve been healing through prose for over six years.

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

On May 8, 2018, after spending nine years practicing criminal and domestic law, I left my law firm in the early afternoon. Months of insomnia and an overall sickness became impossible to cope with. Convinced I was having a mental breakdown from chronic stress, I believed I needed time off and medication. But after that day, my life was never again the same.

Upon leaving work, my body and mind shut down. I became paranoid and hallucinatory, was voluntarily committed to the psychiatric ward, and had seizures. I lost my mind in front of my husband and small children—and over a month of my life to amnesia.

This protracted and torturous onset finally culminated when I was diagnosed with autoimmune encephalitis (“AE”). I had a rare condition where my immune system was mistakenly attacking my brain causing inflammation and severe impairment.

In a grand stroke of luck, days of high-dose intravenous steroids halted the attack and returned me to reality in June. But the damage was done, and my life had already drastically altered its course while I was a prisoner within myself. When I woke up, I was devastated.

It's a great understatement to say that I didn’t know where to turn or how to regain control of my spiraling life. In an instant, I had lost my career, daily activities, health, finances, and my ability to participate in basic life. And I knew I’d lose the law firm I helped build. I also faced an illness that I’d never heard of, feared my health and personality would never return, and didn’t know another person with AE.

I tried to believe I still had some agency left and felt a desperate need to grasp anything I could to prove it. The night before a pivotal trip to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, I picked up a journal that I had started scrawling in months prior. While hot tears streamed down my face, I managed to write a little about my fears and emotions. As the days passed, I tried to channel my hopes, my anger, and what seemed like (im)possible dreams in that little notebook. And the habit stuck.

During my recovery, under the influence of heavy medication and isolation to protect my healing brain, I wrote through the extreme lows and fleeting highs. I asked existential questions no mortal could answer, composed mean letters that no one else saw, and convinced myself that the unrecognizable woman with the steroid-face whom I saw in the mirror, wouldn’t stay forever. Through this writing, I started to organize the chaos.

I also began posting on my CaringBridge site. I tried to reassure loved ones (and myself) that I’d return to me, but that it would take time. And I made an outlandish promise to write a book about my experience.

In the early days of my diagnosis, my family had to repeatedly explain my condition to me and help me understand what had transpired, all while reassuring me about my future. To do so, they told me a woman named Susannah Cahalan had written a NYT #1 bestselling book about our illness, called Brain on Fire. They learned of the book at my initial neurology appointment when the doctor referenced it and told them, “I think she has that [AE].”

I immediately pushed the book away, because it scared me. But it also planted a seed in my mind. Once I understood Susannah’s words had helped save my life—and probably the lives of countless others—I decided it would be selfish to keep my story locked away. I hoped that by sharing my journey, I could help someone too. With that realization, I decided to chase the wild dream of writing a book.

During the first 365 days of my treatment, the hope of a published book burned like a bright flame inside of me. And while I waited patiently to embark upon the endeavor, I committed to a modest, but diligent, daily journaling practice.

When I finally began writing, I started from scratch and toiled for the next three years. My broken brain (and heart) and lack of foundation in memoir prevented good writing from coming quickly or naturally. But I never stopped believing in the power of my narrative. In real time, I diligently worked to create my story’s arc and shape its ending. From that effort, Unwillable was born.

In hindsight, my desire to write was a healthy and accessible way to cope with trauma. From participating in a contest about the Circle of Life lyrics when I was ten, to crafting high school speeches, to joining law review, to drafting motions and briefs, I had always been a writer. What changed was my belief in the magic of creation.

It’s no exaggeration to say that in that first year of my recovery, small notebooks spared my life. And the not so wild dream of becoming a published author gave me hope when my life’s prospects felt bleak.

I may have set off to write through my healing, but I truly believe that I was only able to heal from AE by writing. It is my sincere hope that others see themselves in this story and are encouraged to write through their own hardship.

Jackie M. Stebbins graduated from law school with distinction in 2009. She practiced family law, criminal defense, and civil litigation, and became the senior partner at Stebbins Mulloy. She was nationally recognized as a lawyer under the age of forty by The National Trial Lawyers and Super Lawyers, Rising Stars.

 In 2019, after a harrowing and devastating battle with autoimmune encephalitis, Jackie retired from the practice of law and founded JM Stebbins, LLC, to raise awareness about her rare illness. She is the author of Unwillable: A Journey to Reclaim My Brain and the JM Stebbins blog, a keynote speaker, and hosts the Brain Fever podcast.

Jackie lives in Bismarck, North Dakota, with her husband, Sean, and their three children. In her free time, she enjoys exercise, the outdoors, reading, current events, and trying to be funny.