By Ellen Baker
I first met Melissa Seitz in 2004 at the Bear River Writers’ Conference at Walloon Lake, Michigan. In 2005, we both attended the conference again, and this time we were in the same workshop, studying under Laura Kasischke. I gravitated toward Melissa because of her authenticity and her offbeat personality. I liked the clear-eyed way she saw the world, and I was impressed (and a little bit intimidated) by the fact that she taught writing at a college, while I was just an event coordinator at a bookstore.
In 2007, when my first novel Keeping the House was published, Melissa was kind enough to show up at a book signing for me at McLean and Eakin in Petoskey. She said modestly that she didn’t know if I’d remember her, but of course, I did! In August 2011, when my second novel I Gave My Heart to Know This came out, I had the privilege of joining her book club in person for a discussion at a friend’s home in Traverse City.
Little did we know that just two months later, in October 2011, Melissa’s life would change forever. She would have a grand mal seizure in the middle of running a road race, and she would learn that she had a brain tumor.
I didn’t know about any of this as it was happening, but, years later, Melissa contacted me looking for an editor for the book-length memoir she’d written about her experience of dealing with the tumor in tandem with a series of other devastating losses. As I worked with her over a series of back and forths to hone Lost in Time in Michigan, I was amazed all over again by her tenacity, authenticity, and the strength of her will to seek answers, peace, and the right words for everything.
We were just finishing up edits on the memoir in late 2023 when she let me know she’d had another frightening experience, this time an incident where she had lost her ability to speak. She wrote a series of short essays about that and put it into a powerful chapbook, Brain Aura Blues, which showcases her singular voice and which won the Michigan Writers Cooperative award for 2024.
As a witness of her talent, growth, and tenacity, I was not surprised, though of course I was very proud of her! I had the opportunity to talk with Melissa about her journey as a writer and the challenge of expressing the inexpressible.
Ellen Baker: Melissa, over the last 20 years that I’ve known you, you’ve gone through a remarkable journey as a writer and as a human. Does writing about your experiences help you understand them? Where does the impulse to write memoir comes from?
Melissa Seitz: First of all, thank you for the kind words. I’m so glad that we met so long ago, and that we are still connected. I have always been a fan of your writing, and I am thrilled for your success. Your opening questions get to the heart of the matter for me.
My mother and grandmother were terrific storytellers, so I had great role models growing up in Dodge City, Kansas. I began writing when I was quite young as a very confused teenager. I think that even then I wanted to tell stories, but I hadn’t learned the craft necessary to write a story worth sharing. I finally went to college and graduate school after I moved to Michigan and got married. When our daughter Nicole died, I wanted to write, but grief scared me away from examining my experiences. After I found out I had a brain tumor, I wanted to write, but it was very challenging for me. My memory, language, and emotions were seemingly under attack by the tumor and the medication. As I waited for the benign meningioma to shrink after gamma knife surgery, I was scared to death of what was happening to me. Would I be able to write a coherent sentence? A paragraph? A poem? Luckily for me, my husband, son, and good friend Chris encouraged me to write anything! A former student suggested that I start a blog! Alie seemed to think people would be interested in my story. I believe that was the rough start for the impulse to write a memoir. For the blog, I wrote short essays about whatever situation I found myself in at the time. It was then that I realized that by writing about my experiences that I was discovering things about myself I had not wanted to think about. I had never dealt with grief. I really didn’t want to deal with a brain tumor, either.
In your full-length memoir, Lost in Time in Michigan, you write a great deal about grief and loss and the intersection of generations, of trying to figure out who you are (a portion of your book deals with your search for biological family, juxtaposed with your deep love for your parents, who adopted you when you were an infant). Do you think identity is something that we’re born with, or that we create? If we create it, how does that work?
We create our identity. I’ve given this a lot of thought for probably as long as I could comprehend being adopted. My parents adopted me when I was two months old. I knew at a very young age that I was adopted, but I didn’t really understand what it meant. I obtained my original birth certificate and discovered more information about my birth family shortly before my grand mal seizure. I have two very distinctly different birth certificates. What if I had lived life as “Connie,” as I was originally named, and not as “Melissa”? I would have had half-brothers and lived in a different town if my birth mother had not given me up. I grew up as an only child and loved it. I crave my solitude. It all started with a spot by the dam at the Arkansas River by our house in Kansas. In Michigan, despite having a wonderful husband and son, I still need time to be alone, certainly for writing.
Photography is another huge part of my identity, and I started shooting photos at a young age. I choose these things as part of my desire to be a storyteller through writing and visually. My father worked hard running a farm and a restaurant. He was a great cook. I hate to cook. My mother worked at the restaurant, and she was also a great artist. She was also extremely funny, and I like to think that I am sometimes witty. I choose to be like my parents in so many ways. Melissa—writer, photographer, can’t cook, runner, guitar player, and sometimes humorous. There are worse things. I suppose my husband and son might have a few things to add. I am filled with gratitude every single day that I was adopted by my parents and grew up in Dodge City.
One of the things that’s remarkable to me about the story you tell in Lost in Time in Michigan, and about your writing in general, is that your tumor severely impacted the language centers of your brain. Can you describe what it was like, as a person who had always written, to lose words? And how did you find them again?
Although I had been suffering from severe headaches and other weird symptoms such as missing turns when I was driving and just generally feeling out of it, we thought I was stressed out like most of the population. We had a lot going on. As soon as I had the seizure, I was put on an extremely high dosage of anti-seizure medication. I had the gamma-knife (radiation) surgery about a month later after the road race, but I was on the amped up medication for two years. My head was not happy. I constantly used the wrong word for things. My emotions were out of control. For a person who thought she was funny, I cried all the time. I wrote depressing poems that took forever to write, because thinking of just the right word was a painstaking process. But I kept after it. I would read a paragraph in a book, take notes, and then think about whatever I had written. I started reading poetry again, particularly work by Laura Kasischke. I wrote in a journal every single day. I sent writing to Chris. He sent feedback. I begged my brain to work again. After two long years, more tests, and so on, the doctor began reducing my anti-seizure medication. The tumor was shrinking. The memory erasers were going to give me a chance. I was so afraid that I was becoming like my mother. She died of Alzheimer’s, and even though we weren’t blood related, I kept thinking that this was what it was like—losing memories and losing words. I wasn’t going to go down without a fight. I am on a low dosage anti-seizure/migraine medication now. The tumor, golf-ball sized, has a permanent space in my head. I still get killer migraines. I still mess up words.
That brings us to your amazing chapbook. In late 2023, you had an incident where, as you write in Brain Aura Blues, “Language dissolve[d] somewhere in your brain like water evaporating on hot pavement.” You were out for drinks with your husband and friends, and suddenly you couldn’t form words, and you had “the worst migraine of your life.” That must have been terrifying. Would you tell us about that experience?
It was terrifying. We were on vacation, I hadn’t slept well, and I felt off. I’d skipped a hike with my husband and friends and tried sleeping in the car while they were gone. At a restaurant a few hours later, there was suddenly a bright light above my friend’s head caused by a reflection from the sunshine striking something outside and then reflecting something inside. The aura appeared as if a spectral ghost light had suddenly decided to blind me in the middle of the day. I could not look at George who was in the direct line of fire. Recently, my friend Julie told me that at first she thought I was talking to Jim in code. That’s how messed up things were. Jim called it gibberish. Someone asked me if I knew what town I was in (Marquette), and I had no clue. I did know that it started with an “M.” Everyone insisted that I go to the ER, but I refused by shaking my head no. I could understand them, but I could not respond coherently. Even though I was scared to death, I felt like I would get better. I have no idea why. When my husband and I discussed the incident with my neurologist, he said I absolutely should have gone to the ER. Lesson learned.
And then, you began to write! You emailed me at the time, in the fall of 2023, explaining that you wrote this chapbook very quickly, and that it was “unexpected writing.” You said, “My language was so messed up for that short 5-10- minutes, and then I just wanted to write.” Would you describe the process of writing the chapbook? You were waiting for test results as you wrote, weren’t you? Did you have some sense you were writing for your life? What was it like to lose words entirely and then find them again?
I was obsessed with writing everything down. I had close to a year working with you on editing my manuscript. I was so connected to Lost in Time in Michigan. My story and my writing felt so vibrant and alive. When the aphasia/complicated migraine hit, as my neurologist referred to it, I was determined to write this new chapter of my life as it was happening. Amazingly, I could weave the past and present together as things were happening. I told my neurologist about this desire to write it all down as it was happening, and he thought it was interesting. I asked if he had heard of this happening before, but he had not! I literally would go to an appointment, come home, and write about it and work on chapters for the chapbook.
You also described that you didn’t know why you wrote parts of the chapbook in second person. Much of it is in first person, too. Did you feel some sense of distance from the version of you that had suffered the moment of “transient aphasia,” as it ended up being diagnosed as? How did you decide, chapter to chapter, whether you would use the “I” voice or the “you” voice? How do your latest experiences affect your sense of who you are, and what kind of writer you are?
I wanted to distance myself. Exactly. I actually wrote the entire chapbook in 2nd person, and it was submitted as such. When it came down to editing the book and preparing it for publication, we did make some changes. It was a lot of hard work, but I managed to complete it in a fairly short amount of time. It was essential to keep the “you” voice for the “Where are You?” chapter. That is such a significant chapter and the catalyst for the chapbook. I had to do it for my own wellbeing. Distancing can be a good thing. The other chapter I kept in 2nd person was “Dreaming of Dead People: The Underbelly of Dark Dreams.” As a writer, I felt that chapter also required distancing—the disconnection we feel when we dream, but also the real connection we feel when we wake up and see just how close dreams are to reality. I think 1st person works really well for sharing my story, but I think it was cathartic to write the chapbook in 2nd person. I love the chapbook. I am extremely proud of it. I am grateful to Michigan Writers and Christine Maul Rice for the opportunity to share my story. It has been an amazing experience.
Finally, speaking of “your sense of who you are,” I hope you’ll talk to me a little bit about running. You write of your rooms full of running trophies from all the road races you’ve run, and of your “obsession” with road races. You took up running years ago to try to deal with the grief of losing your infant daughter, and you were in the middle of running a road race when you had your first grand mal seizure in October 2011 (which probably saved your life, since you were running next to a doctor). What has running taught you about who you are? How do you think your writing informs your running, and vice versa? And what is next for you?
You are exactly right. After Nicole died, I began running to combat my grief. I really didn’t know what to do with myself. Matt was six and went to school. Jim returned to work. I had planned to stay at home and raise my kids for a few years. I was severely depressed. I had no idea what to do with my grief. Running literally saved me. I started doing road races with my friend Julie and loved them. I was with my friend Darcy and her husband Jack during the Zombie Race in Traverse City in 2011 when life threw me another curveball. I am grateful for Dr. Schultz and all the people who helped saved me. I wish I had learned everyone’s names.
Running has taught me that I am powerful. I might not look like a runner, but I am strong. I can overcome things. Life can knock me down, but I am going to get back up again. My father taught me to be strong. My husband and son fully support me in everything I do. Running or power walking teaches me every single time I go out that I do not need to be afraid of anything. I’ve already had horrible things happen, and I am still here. Alive and kicking.
Running, power walking, and road races also provide me with solitude. This is something I cannot get enough of even though I am a very social person. It seems contradictory, I know. Even when I am surrounded by two thousand other runners, as soon as a race starts, I am very much alone—music on—I am in the zone. This is my time to find my joy. To grieve. Feel gratitude. Express love—especially for nature. I often warn people not to talk to me during a road race. I am competitive, yes, but I also like to just think. I do, however, thank volunteers along the way.
Running or power walking and watching the sunrise every morning are things I am passionate about. I am obsessed with them. I know that the time will come when I can’t participate in road races. I especially love doing them now. My son started doing races with me not long after I found out I had a brain tumor. As for sunrises, I am on year seven of not missing a sunrise. I have taken a photograph every single day. How does running and perhaps watching sunrise affect my writing? What a great question! These moments of solitude provide me with time to think, to meditate, to consider, and to ask questions of the universe. Ideas are always forming! As soon as I can, I grab a journal and pen, and I begin to write to discover, to learn, to remember.
As for what’s next, I am searching for a publisher for Lost in Time in Michigan. I am also working on a collection of short stories—fiction—that I hope to turn into a book. Thank you so much for asking these thought-provoking questions. I appreciate our friendship over the years.
Ellen Baker is the author of the novel The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson, which was the HarperCollins Lead Read for Winter 2024, an Indie Next pick, a People Best New Book, and a Woman’s World Best New Book. It was also named as one winter’s most anticipated books by Goodreads and placed on multiple Best-of lists by BookBub, including Best Historical Fiction of 2024. Authors including Lisa Wingate, Tara Conklin, Kim Michele Richardson, Thao Thai and Kristin Harmel praised it respectively as “colorful,” “gorgeous,” “electrifying,” “riveting” and “beautiful.” Ellen’s earlier novels, Keeping The House and I Gave My Heart To Know This, both published by Random House, were called “masterful” (Booklist), “vivid” (Chicago Tribune), and “artful” (Philadelphia Inquirer). Keeping The House won the Great Lakes Book Award and was a Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year, as well as an Insider Discovery of the Literary Guild, a featured selection of the Doubleday Book Club and Random House Reader’s Circle, a BookSense Notable Book, and a Midwest Connections Pick. After living most of her early life in the upper Midwest, Ellen currently resides on the coast of Maine. Her website is www.ellenbakercreative.com.
Melissa Seitz is the author of the chapbook Brain Aura Blues, winner of the 2024 Michigan Writers Cooperative Press chapbook contest for creative nonfiction. Her work has appeared in After: Stories About Loss & What Comes Next, Bear River Review, Dunes Review, The Lake, Transformational: Stories of Northern Michigan Arts & Culture, and Walloon Writers Review, and other journals. She is a writer and a photographer who lives at Higgins Lake with her husband. She is currently seeking a publisher for her memoir Lost in Time in Michigan.