JAIME
Good morning, Effie. How are you?

EFFY
Good morning, Jaime. I am doing really well. How are you?

JAIME
Oh, wonderful. Such a pleasure to talk to you. Where are you at these days?

EFFY
I am in upstate New York in Saratoga about 45 minutes north of Albany.

JAIME
Okay, wonderful. So has that always been home for you or have you lived anywhere else? Is that sort of like a second home?

EFFY
Well, you know I was born in the UK in England, the north of England, and I lived in England until I was 13, and immigrated to upstate New York, actually not too far from where I live now. And that was in 1995.

JAIME
Oh wow, so that’s a pretty big change, right? When you were, how old were you when that happened? 13?

EFFY
Yeah. Just on the cusp of adolescence.

JAIME
Yeah, yeah, it’s never an easy thing to experience a change like that. I recall something like that happened to me where I moved to Wyoming from Mexico when I was just about 10, 11. And that seemed to be kind of like a huge transformative thing. So for you, coming all the way over, what was that experience like getting settled in and figuring out the first steps of that change?

Yeah. Just on the cusp of adolescence.

EFFY
Well, you know, it went kind of heightened by the fact that I had just had plastic surgery on my face right before I immigrated to the US. So I was sort of dealing with a change in image at the same time as I was dealing with culture shock.

It was hard. It took me, I think it took me a long time to kind of adapt and find my feet.

JAIME
And so just to be sure that we introduce folks to, you know, the entirety of your situation. As you mentioned in the introduction of your book, which is Saving Face, it’s a memoir. And the description here says, born with a rare condition of facial paralysis called Mobius syndrome, Redmond’s grit and eye for beauty help her survive childhood bullying and adolescent doldrums. It’s a great recap of the experience, but from what you’re sharing, it seems like there’s just so much to overcome. I guess I wanted to ask you, was there a point where you realized that you actually understood what had happened, you know, during that time of growing up in that kind of difficult adolescence?

EFFY
Yeah, definitely. And thank you, by the way, for introducing my memoir. I think I didn’t really begin to come to terms with that life changing change and transition really until I went away to undergraduate college and I think I came from such a tight knit family that there are benefits to having a tight-knit family, but I found that I needed to kind of go away to college in order to have the strength and the reasoning to really process what I had gone through on my own. Kind of, on my own terms. I think that’s a fairly common tendency, particularly with individuals I meet with disabilities. It can take a while to find your own world for you.

JAIME
Right. So, did you have a lot of siblings growing up? Were there other kids in the family as well? And did they protect you and look after you? Or, how did that go?

EFFY
Yeah, yeah. I am actually the eldest of five. So I have three younger brothers and one younger sister. Growing up, I have one brother who is a year younger than I am. He, in particular, out of all my siblings, I think was very protective. But we were so close in age that we were often in the same school. He actually even went to the same college I went to. And he actively protected me. And for the most part, I appreciated it. Occasionally it felt like too much. I wanted to kind of stand up for myself. But, I’m thankful for the bonds I have with my siblings.

JAIME
Absolutely. What were you going to college for?

EFFY
You know, I went for dance and literature. Well, really, I wanted to dance and to write. I thought seriously about both dance and writing. As a high school student, I kind of knew that I wanted to find a way to do both. So I went to Bennington College and the dance department kind of took me by surprise. It was a more avant-garde style than I was accustomed to. So I actually talk about that in my book, how I went through a process of a kind of changing to the dance department. And so I wound up loving it and studying choreography and dance, and dance really, for me as a disabled woman was a way of taking ownership of my body and saying: I am empowered and I might have a paralyzed face but I can dance. And so that was really empowering. And in terms of writing, for me, studying writing, it was really a way of finding a voice and coming to the understanding that I had a voice and also that there were people who wanted to hear my voice and people who could be touched by what I had to say, you know, ideally. So writing became a tool for connecting, although it did take me a considerable amount of time to go from understanding that I love to write to using writing as a tool for connecting with the disability community and later the LGBTQ+ community.

JAIME
Right. There is, there’s so much to unpack and I thank you so much for sharing those sentiments, In particular, the idea of finding your voice. And coming into that world where there’s so much hesitation, like you go into college and then you realize, am I, is this really going to be for me? Am I going to be able to contribute something or discover something about myself and sharing that moment about finding your voice and dance, you know? I think that that might’ve been such a transformative eureka moment! B ut I’m curious if you remember earlier on before college: If you had a specific moment where you didn’t feel like you had a voice and then something happened that got you through it. Was it the arts? Was it family? If you could maybe share a moment when you came upon that difficult hardship of feeling voiceless.

EFFY
Sure. Well, there were a couple of moments with writing. I did a mentorship in ninth grade with a journalist, and I was sort of painfully shy as a teenager and I think integration and the culture shock of that had a lot to do with how shy and kind of isolated I became. But in ninth grade, I did a mentorship with an art journalist named Penny Schachtel. And she kind of opened my world to a love of the arts and writing. And I think that carried me through high school, although it wasn’t consistent. I kind of had periods during high school when I wrote a lot and then there were times when I was struggling with depression and kind of didn’t write as much but towards the end of high school I would say in 11th and 12th grade I had a dance teacher, a ballet teacher, who really encouraged me to study dance intensively. And although I should say, I ultimately, as an adult, decided not to pursue dance professionally. At that time as a high school student I found having that intensive physical practice and kind of the focus and also the intimate connection to music and musicality. It really changed my life in a very positive way. I think doing that, I began to really come out of my shell and feel, I think it did a lot for my confidence.

JAIME
Thank you for sharing that. I think, as I mentioned before and as I’m reading the description of the book: When does getting a sense of your identity become a pivotal goal for you? Or do you remember like at an early age feeling discomfort with your identity? And when does that begin to take shape for you? And ultimately, you mentioned that you, by the time you were in college, you had come out already. Was that something that was part of the conversation earlier or was it later on in life?

EFFY
Actually, I hadn’t actually come out in college, although I had come out by the time I went to graduate college. I was 25 years old when I came out, so that would be three years after I finished undergrad college. But I would say that, yeah, my sense of identity, that really began to come together when I came out because I think before I came out there were so many aspects of my identity that didn’t just like I didn’t quite understand why I felt a certain way and why certain things were happening in my life. And so I think around the time I came out, it really became very important to me to accept my identity, both within the queer community and the disability community and also sort of the mental health diagnosis community and also as an immigrant. So I think coming out really kind of brought all these aspects of who I am, both as a person and an artist. It all kind of started to fit together into a holistic picture. And it became so much more important to me to communicate like, I started asking questions, like what does it mean to feel like the other or an outsider and to kind of really put that into my work as a writer.

JAIME
It’s such a powerful feeling to be able to look back and say, there’s these ideas and these uncertainties about me and my personal identity, my personal life are kind of coalescing. And so perhaps you arrive at a point where you say, okay, I think I’ve traveled enough on the journey. Can I look back and make sense of this? So when was that time when you decided or felt that it was the right time to explore writing about your experience in the form of a memoir?

EFFY
Oh, yeah. Well, that’s a great question. It was 2013, so about six years after I came out and I’m trying to do the last about nine years after, almost a decade after I graduated undergrad college. A friend of mine who also had Moebius Syndrome invited me to do a writing exercise. We each wrote about our disability journey in the form of an essay and we didn’t really have a sense of where we wanted to go with the project but from that I began in a much more intimate fashion than I ever had before to write about having a disability and kind of the story of having a facial difference. And not being able to smile, which is a huge part of my disability. My essay kind of reflected on what it means to fall outside of traditional beauty standards. So I shared the essay with my friend, and I also shared it with a couple of my mentors. And they felt like I went onto something and that this could be a book. And so I wound up going to graduate college to work on the book and began what would become almost a decade of work between inception and publication of my memoir.

JAIME
As you’re developing this, sure it takes years. And I imagine that there’s a lot that changes from what you initially intended it to be to what it actually became. So sure you had been writing about this, but how did the book itself clarify an understanding of yourself on the other side? There seems to be a lot. I mean, 10 years is a long time. And then, you know, obviously we change perspective from who we were at a certain age to, you know, 10 years later, so what were some aspects of yourself that you felt more centered on or centered in that, that you feel made your life better or more equipped to write the book by the end of it?

EFFY
Yeah, that’s a wonderful question. yeah, definitely a lot can change personally over the course of 10 years. I went through a lot over the 10 year period of working on the book. I think I went through good times. I mean, graduate college, I went to CUNY Hunter College in New York City to do an MFA in creative writing. And that was an incredible experience. Studying with some incredible authors, with some very interesting and intelligent classmates. And so that brought a lot of inspiration to the book writing process. I think what I didn’t realize at the time as a grad student was that the work I was doing then in school on the book wound up largely being exploratory. And a lot of what I wrote during that time would need to be rewritten and edited and rearranged. I think overall probably close to 20 drafts of the book manuscript and I think over the decades, I was working on the book. I was also growing as a person. And during that time, I did have some mental health challenges that I had to work to overcome. During those times, it was really helpful to have a long-term project to return to and I am fortunate that I have had a mentor to kind of help my hand along the way. I think what the writing process for Saving Face clarified in a way was to… There were times when I wanted to give up on the book. Particularly when I began sending query letters to agents. I got so many rejections and there were times when I think I wanted to give up. And I didn’t think I would ever find a publisher, but I just knew that if I could hang on and keep trying, eventually it would be worth it to stick with it. So I think I learned a lot about persevering and how hard it can be to stick with a project and how much commitment it can take to put your work as an artist out into the world.

JAIME
Absolutely, it seems like it’s been a tremendous journey, but thankfully for us Vine Leaves Press became a good collaborator for you and it came out this last month. So what is that feeling that you’re left with as the book is out into the world? It’s going to live its own life. And what are the feelings that you’re left with now that you’ve seen this thing through?

EFFY
Well, I am hugely thankful to Vine Leaves Press. They have done a wonderful job throughout the publication process. And the book has entered the world and people are reading it. I’m feeling tremendously thankful for the way my book seems to be becoming a tool to connect with the sort of marginalized communities I am a member of. More and more people have been reading my book and reaching out to me to say how this book helps them feel seen and you know disabled or queer or in some way othered. I had one woman who wrote me a long letter talking about how she was raised by a mother who had a mental health diagnosis and she always felt like an outsider because of it. And she really connected to the element of mental health recovery in my book. And so moments like that are so rewarding because it shows me that my work can become a tool for change and how, you know, whether or not people feel seen and recognized. And that’s really a huge thing that I hope for and as an artist. So I’m hoping that that will continue to happen and the book continues moving through the world.

JAIME
That’s beautiful. I was actually going to ask you something along those lines of what you feel that message is to impart. If there were some vital things to share to people who wanna be allies, but also to folks who are struggling with that kind of difficulty or feel marginalized for whatever reason, be it mental health or disability or identity, there’s so many aspects that you’re covering here. You said it pretty concisely, but maybe I’m asking for more because I think that it’s, it’s really good information for, for people who just want to be more empathetic and have more connection with people who are different than them.

EFFY
Yeah, I would say to people who either want to be allies or are disabled, queer, or in the mental health community, or some combination of marginalized identity: You are not alone. There have been times in my life when I felt alone and it took a long time to kind of find community. But I am also a disability advocate and activist. And there are a lot of resources out there now today for individuals in marginalized communities. It’s so important to reach out and kind of search for community and if anyone wants to reach out to me directly I’m happy to share a lot of knowledge I know. But there are a lot of organizations, thankfully, out there supporting people with disabilities and LGBTQ+ communities and people with mental health diagnoses. I think it’s just a matter of doing that research and thankfully we have the internet so hopefully it’s not too hard.

JAIME
Absolutely. So first and foremost thank you for your generosity there and sharing that so openly and making yourself available to assist folks and to lead the way as you have for a long time. So I have one more question to be mindful of your time and I do have to say this has been phenomenal. And I hope that folks check out Effie’s book, Saving Face, a memoir of living with physical disability now available from Vine Leaves Press, who are doing amazing, amazing work over there. But if I may be honest, I’m having such a hard time with the idea of defining what a life well lived is. And I think this is why I started the podcast, but I did such a horrible job of not asking the question. And I feel like it’s appropriate for me to just start asking anyone and everyone who’s willing to answer it. But over the years, you’ve gone through tremendous hardship. You’ve had an incredible journey to being an educator, to having strength, to share the learnings of the lessons and tribulations that you’ve gone through. So I’m curious of how you define for yourself what a life well-lived means, because it’s different for everyone. So what does that look like for you? And yeah, what are the things that keep you going?

EFFY
Wow. That’s a great question. Yeah, it’s a hard question.

JAIME
I gotta say, I didn’t mean to throw my existential crisis at you, but I figured it might be good to ask.

EFFY
I’m totally fine. Totally fine. I mean, for me, there are a couple of components to me for a life well-lived. And I think it has to do with being patient with myself and kind of accepting… You know, I tend to really push myself to work hard and sometimes if I don’t achieve everything I had set out to on a given day, I might have a tendency to beat myself up for falling short. So for me, a life well-lived would be to just accept that it’s okay that there are going to be days when I don’t check off everything on my to-do list. And it’s equally important to take a walk in nature and appreciate the beauty of the natural world and kind of enjoying those simple moments: Like a walk in nature or a cup of coffee, listening to a good song. And you know, for me, community building is extremely important. I do have a loving family, but I, also equally important, have chosen family as a community I have built for myself and built-in community and kind of enjoying sanctuary and offering sanctuary to others who might be in need is important to me. I’m sure there’s some other element of a life well-lived that I’m not thinking of. But yeah, I think just taking each day moment by moment is so important.

JAIME
That’s wonderful. And I can’t thank you enough for giving us such a remarkable note to end on. But Effy, this has been such a pleasure and I really hope that folks check out your work. You’ve written tremendously. There’s a lot of work. Links on your website that I’m gonna put in the episode description so folks can not only have access to your latest release, but have access to a lot of the previous writing that you’ve done, which is very informative and really emotional and true. But I can’t thank you enough for taking the time to chat with me. This has been such a blast.

EFFY
Thank you so much, Jamie. It’s been an absolute joy talking with you.

JAIME
Oh, that’s awesome. And shout out to Catherine as well for connecting us. You’re the best, Catherine, thank you. But I will be in touch on the internet, Effie, and again: Thank you for being amazing and for the wonderful work that you’re doing. Thank you so much. All right, well, I’ll let you enjoy your Sunday, but take care, Effie. Talk to you soon.

EFFY
You too, Jaime.