About Me — Elise Paxson
On a Long, Strange Road
Welcome, reader! Thank you for taking a few minutes of your day to read my story. Stories are important to me because everything comes down to stories, in the end.
The Basics
Once upon a time, a baby was born in October 1965, at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Camden, New Jersey. The world would never be the same. Of course, that’s not saying much — the world wouldn’t be the same without you either!
I am a 59-year-old part Irish, part German, all-American woman. Proud member of Team Gen-X. As the memes say, I drank from the garden hose and lived to tell the tale.
Born and raised in South Jersey — the “garden” part of the Garden State — I am an enthusiastic patron of Wawa convenience stores, the Jersey shore, and Philadelphia sports teams. I never pump my own gas.
In 1989 I received a bachelor’s degree in English and writing from Rutgers College of Arts and Sciences in Camden, New Jersey. Later that year I got my first office job at a small medical publishing company in Philadelphia. I have spent the rest of my career doing some kind of editorial work in the medical field — copy editing, proofreading, development editing. I know something about almost every aspect of human anatomy, from neurology to podiatry.
My Passions
Reading and writing are my two strongest passions. I started writing stories even before I could read. I did this by taking sheets of paper, drawing a picture on each page, stapling the pages together into an ersatz “book,” and then telling the story to anyone who would listen. I would even “edit” my stories during the re-tellings, by narrating the pictures a little differently. For a while I was doing this every day after kindergarten.
Soon enough I learned to read, and I read everything I could get my hands on. During the summer I would ride my bike to the local library a few times a week to return books and get new ones. For books that I especially loved, I would write my own versions, basically changing the names of the characters but still having them go through similar adventures. Few things were more beautiful to me than a blank notebook, ready for my magical words!
As the years went on, though, I had read everything that I thought I could read, and more often than not, I struggled to find books that would interest me.
That’s when a Librarian changed everything for me.
“Let me show you something,” said this little old ancient lady, as she led me to a part of the library I was sure I hadn’t seen before. I was 12 years old. As I think about her today, I wonder if she wasn’t some kind of Fairy God-librarian, because she seemed to know exactly what I was looking for!
She picked out a book, titled The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien. “I think you might like this,” she suggested.
Like it? Kind of an understatement. I finished The Hobbit and then immediately dove into The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The rest of that summer I went on a harrowing journey with hobbits, dwarves, elves, a wonderful wizard named Gandalf, all in a desperate adventure to save Middle Earth from a terrible evil.
The more books I read, though, the more I began to realize that my writing talent could never measure up to what I was reading. My interest in writing began to fall off. I did not have much support, except for teachers who would praise my writing skills, or an occasional contest win. Back then, we didn’t have the Internet and all the social media that went with it. I felt very much alone. By my teen years I had stopped writing altogether. Then marriage and family got more in the way.
The advent of the “information superhighway,” as the Internet was first called, opened up many doors for me. Seeing the possibilities, I slowly began to write again. It wasn’t until recently, however, with the birth of Medium, Substack, and the like, that I started working with a goal in mind.
Family Life
I married my husband on October 20, 1990, and we have been together, for better or worse, since then. We have a wonderful son, who is grown and working on his own in New Mexico — a long way from New Jersey, but we are hoping he’ll get a transfer back to the East Coast one day. To me he is living evidence that if you love your child, they will turn out okay, even if you’re not the perfect parent. And I was not a perfect parent, because during many of those years with him, I was battling depression.
Physical and Mental Health
The years of working in the stress-filled world of medical publishing took a toll on me, physically and mentally. When I had my son in 1999, I was diagnosed with postpartum depression and received medication that changed my life. For the first time in a very long time, I felt like life was worth living again. I also underwent talk therapy, which exposed a lot of ghosts and traumatic events that I had been shoving under my psychological rug.
As I got my mental health under control, it was time to deal with my physical health. My weight had gone from 140 pounds as a newlywed to 270 pounds in 2021. I was pre-diabetic. My cholesterol levels were astronomical. My knees hurt. Everything hurt. I felt ugly and old. In 2022 I took the step to get bariatric surgery. It was a lot of hard work and sometimes pain, but my only regret is not getting it done sooner. I am now 90 pounds down, with about 40 pounds to go.
Spirituality
I was baptized and raised as a Roman Catholic. My mother was extremely devout; my father hated the Church, although he did attend Mass on Christmas and Easter. I had always felt drawn to the spiritual life, even as a child, and it bothered me that my dad wouldn’t let us go to Mass more often.
As I grew older, though, I realized that I could no longer remain a Catholic, for various reasons. My husband introduced me to the Episcopal Church, and I fell in love with it — the liturgy, the finery, the music, the beauty of the prayers, all without the heavy Roman Catholic burdens.
I stayed with the Episcopal Church for most of the 1990s, until 9/11, when my spiritual feelings initially began to sour. In the decades since, I observed the evangelicals taking over Christianity, and their behavior soured me even more. They were portraying a vision of Jesus that was alien to me. My Jesus was the Sermon on the Mount — He taught me to have mercy, to put others before self, to love and serve as He has loved and served us. The version of Jesus that the evangelicals are selling— sinners in the hands of an angry God, women as second-class citizens, judgmental attitudes toward the poor and immigrants — disgusted me. By 2020 I was just “too busy” for Sunday mornings. And then the pandemic hit.
I know that I should not blame God just because one sect of Christianists twisted His words unrecognizably. God didn’t move — they did. At this point in my spiritual life, I still love the Episcopal Church, and I need spirituality to be a part of my life — I just don’t know how right now. I think God is okay with this, and He will be there when I am ready for whatever is next.
Miscellaneous Stuff About Me
- I love animals. I recently lost my beloved shepherd mix Heidi, and have a new love of my life, a black Lab named Midnight. I also have an orange three-legged cat.
- I enjoy gardening. I have a community garden plot, and at home I have a strawberry-rhubarb patch, and several containers are currently growing snow peas, parsnips, and carrots.
- A few of my favorite authors are Ray Bradbury, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Herman Melville. I was born in October, and I absolutely own the month!
- I love all things creepy, scary, and gothic. I enjoy horror movies but not the slasher-gory ones. If you have to show a lot of crude violence to be scary, you’re cheating, in my opinion.
- Science fiction is another interest of mine. The first time I saw the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey,” I was entranced. I vaguely remember the day that astronauts walked on the moon. Even today I look to the stars with wonder and remind myself that I am just a tiny little speck in a very big universe.
- As a teenager in the early 80s, I was really into Dungeons & Dragons (generally called role-playing games [RPGs]). I spent many happy Friday nights at my friends’ houses, fighting monsters and plundering treasure. Satanic panic? We didn’t care and neither did our parents. There is nothing satanic about spending quality time with friends, solving problems and puzzles, and vanquishing evil. Due to life events, I stopped playing for several decades, but post pandemic I have started playing again. These days, there are many more RPGs out there, for just about every interest and skill level! I prefer to play in real life (IRL), but I do play virtually as well. Here is a photo from my current IRL game, Dungeons & Dragons, second edition:
- Coffee is my beverage of choice. I probably drink too much of it. But it’s really my only vice, if it’s even a vice.
- I try to get along with everyone, even those I disagree with. Although I dislike toxic positivity, I have found it easier to look for the good first, than to pick out things to get upset over. It’s hard enough to stand up for the important stuff.
- I hope to retire early in the next few years so I can write full-time, read more books, and play more RPGs. Life is too short not to have some fun.
So snip, snap, snout — my tale’s told out.
