I’m long overdue for one of my rambly updates regarding my health. For now, suffice to say it’s been a challenging time, a challenging year. But I am super proud that a personal essay of mine, “Invisible“, was just published in Under the Sun. This is the first piece of creative writing I’ve done that includes my physical situation. Other than blogs, I generally avoid writing about my illness, for me creative writing is a way to forget that I’m a sick person. But I was trawling through some old pieces last summer, and found something I wrote about an experience I had in a German sauna. It needed work, a lot of work actually, especially the ending, and I found myself expanding on what I experience physically on a day to day level. It was a bit clunky, to be honest, but I sent it out, and the wonderful readers and editors at Under the Sun, especially Miriam Mandel Levi, helped me smooth things out and make the piece work. I actually haven’t ever had such an in depth and supportive experience of editorial input from a literary magazine. The whole process was a joy, thank you Under the Sun!
Photo credit: The Selkie team
Sandra Jensen 
Congratulations.
You said you don’t often write about your condition. Is that because you don’t want to embarrass other people…make them feel uncomfortable.
I think you should write about your experiences and submit them wherever you can because I think there’s an appetite among women for information about these things at present. Women are usually the people who get chronic conditions and they’re also the carers. Women find communicating with Doctors very difficult and frustrating too.
Have you tried submitting to the Guardian or women’s magazines or health magazines?
Go for it!
Hilary, I don’t know how I missed your comment, I’m so sorry! Well.. brain fog 😅 No it’s not that I want to make other people uncomfortable. For me writing is, for the most part, a time ‘away’ from all my health issues, and my writing process tends to work best with events/issues that are in the distant past… My brother actually suggested submitting to the Guardian, but I think they only take fairly short pieces, I’ll have to check. I suspect this one is too literary for them, at least the last part…