What I Learned About Fiction After My Recent Hospital Visit

I recently finished reading Isola, a fictional story based on a true story.

Marguerite de la Rocque was a real noblewoman in 16th century France who was orphaned and ended up with a domineering guardian. He stole her fortune and forced her to join him on his voyage overseas to New France (Canada). On her journey across the Atlantic, she falls in love against her guardian’s wishes and is exiled to an island where her husband dies while she’s pregnant with their child. She survives on her own for two harsh winters, even killing polar bears. Her child doesn’t survive infancy due to starvation. After being isolated for two years, a ship lands on the island and agrees to take her back to France, where she tells her story to the queen and lives out her days as a teacher to young women of both noble and lesser rank.

I read this story of resilience just in time. It’s like I stored up Marguerite’s strength just when I needed it most during my own pregnancy.

A few days ago, I woke up in the middle of the night in excruciating pain. If you’ve been following my writing, then you know I’ve had recurrent myopericarditis throughout this pregnancy. We went to the hospital to make sure there wasn’t too much fluid around my heart.

This is the most amount of pain I’ve felt during my pregnancy. I worried about the baby. I was breathing hard and fast, but fortunately, my oxygen levels always stayed healthy for the baby.

I whispered through my body to the baby, “We’re safe.” I thought of Marguerite, who lived in the harsh winters with little food and who birthed her baby in the wild. Her child survived all of that. In fact, what killed her child was her inability to nurse due to her own starvation. This was something I fortunately will never have to worry about. I’m not starving, and there’s always formula as an option. My baby will not starve.

I used this story as resilience and fuel during my ER visit. If Marguerite could survive her incredible ordeal, then surely my baby and I would survive this. There was heroism in her bravery, same as mine.

Fiction pulses the truth through us. It injects us with wisdom, knowledge, and story.

I realized during this hospital visit just how important fiction is, just how warming it is to the soul. As a writer, I’ve often asked myself if there’s any value at all in writing fiction. Is it a trivial pursuit? But in those moments, I saw just how clearly it matters. I could read James Clears’ “Atomic Habits” but that would feed me nothing. That would offer no real nourishment besides some hacks on self-improvement. In fact, in some ways, it might empty me more.

I wonder: is self-improvement a somewhat vain pursuit that only matters to us when nothing survival-based is going on in our lives? Is that one of the ironically hard parts of modern times? It can be hard to tap into our innate drive for survival if everything comes easy to us: food, shelter, loved ones, and good health.

Maybe you’re worried about getting fitter, richer, or hotter. Maybe you’re listening to a podcast called Hot, Smart, Rich (yes, that’s a real podcast for women—no shame if you like it!). But I’ll tell you something… I don’t listen to content like that. I hum to a deeper sound in my soul lately. Something that doesn’t resonate at the same frequency as self-improvement or even nonfiction at times. It’s like I’ve been pulled in past an artificial layer of vanity, consumerism, social media, and distraction. I’ve been pulled in deeper and can’t unsee it. I find myself needing to write about it. Do other people want to see it, too?

Fiction offers me something else. It shows me what I primitively, innately know but need to be reminded of, to be brought closer to this human truth, the real meaning of life, and awareness of our humanity. Story weaves us together. It’s timeless. We all have a story. We all survive.

Fictional stories follow the hero’s journey—and we are all heroes of our own journeys. Through watching other heroes traverse their often harrowing stories, we learn how to navigate our own with more resilience and grace. We learn from their example. We watch real bravery, even if it’s ‘fictional.’ Fiction lets us step into the first person of a character as if we are living their story, too. This not only pulls us out of our own reality (the sharp opposite of nonfiction), but in a weird duality, it also serves as a guide for how to live our current reality.

Nonfiction gives us the ‘what’ of life, the facts, and knowledge and info, info, info….so much info we could pull it out of our ears and spool it out onto our kitchen counters and scrape it right into the garbage. We cram that info into our brains and hardly implement it. Fiction doesn’t cram information into our heads. It lays out the fabric of the story neatly so we can fold and put away something tidy in our souls. It mends and weaves. It knits us a blanket to put on us to stay warm.

I found myself in a primitive state of strength during this recent episode. I sounded like I was in labor, and soon I will be (this spring!). When we’re in pain, whether it’s physical or emotional, we need something to cling to. We need story. We need strength. We need resilience. I was amazed at my strength. And I wondered, can you put a price on the comfort that Marguerite’s story gave to me? It was a silent strength. My husband hasn’t read that book. And in moments of pain, I was hardly describing what I was thinking about. But I closed my eyes and thought of her, exiled on an island with absolutely no one. No help was coming to her aid. No food. Only a harsh winter and polar bears trying to kill her. We all have our own version of “polar bears” that we need to confront and conquer. With a story, it becomes much easier to do so.

Fiction also lets us find the truth of who we are through characters. My next read is Hamnet. I have a feeling I will resonate with both Shakespeare’s character (the writer) and his wife (the mother). I could read writing craft books and parenting books, but I have a feeling I will learn the most through reading this story. I have a feeling it will point me toward my instinct to write more. It will show me what it means to be a mother. And for that reason, I’m so excited to read it (and will definitely wait to watch the movie until I’m done reading the book!)

I wrote recently about how pregnancy has made me want to put my phone down. And instead, pick up books. It’s something primal in my brain, leading me back to some sense of home within myself. I have a feeling this compass back into myself, back into story, back into writing is important for my evolution. I hope this serves as a reminder for you, too, of something much more ancient within yourself. Your pull toward story. Your pull toward an innate sense of survival. And your pull toward a shared experience with every other human on this planet for all of time.