When I was entering middle school, my parents filed for bankruptcy. My father worked a manual labor job from which he had to take a great deal of time off due to back surgery. Since his was the primary income of the household, our family struggled substantially. I mean this in the financial and emotional sense. Financial strain has a way of causing relationship problems, and for my parents it was no different. They began to drink and fight. I, as a young girl already struggling through puberty and the increasingly complicated social scene of adolescence, developed a plethora of mental health issues. I became bulimic, depressed, and anxious. I began to self harm. However, I am the stereotypical oldest daughter, and I behaved accordingly in the midst of my struggles. I maintained a GPA above a 4.0 with a schedule full of honors and AP level classes, and I was involved in many extracurricular activities. Staying busy was one method of coping with what I was going through. Reading was another. I had loved books since I was a small child, but this period of my life made me view them as an escape. Books represented the fantasy of what I believed my life could eventually become even when my current reality was far from desirable.
Let’s fast forward to my high school graduation. I had started to experience some of the more extreme symptoms of having an eating disorder, and I had come to the realization that the way I was living was not sustainable. I started recovery during the summer after graduation, and I geared up for my first semester of college as a psychology major. I wanted to use my career to help people through the same mental health issues I had experienced. Little did I know that I would switch majors and career paths multiple times throughout the years.
After completing two years of coursework for a psychology degree, I transferred schools to pursue a ministry degree. While working toward this degree, I interned at a local church. This was the same church that I accepted a job at post grad. It quickly became clear to me that ministry was not a career I could do for the rest of my life. Growing up in a southern religious family meant that I had been raised by people with very conservative views, and I simply did not agree with these views anymore. The same views I was raised with were the views being promoted by the church I worked at, and the cognitive dissonance of being liberal in a conservative environment led me to feel that I was not helping people at all. In fact, it felt like I was actively contributing to the harm of marginalized communities.
I enrolled in a graduate program to study social work. It seemed like it would be a simple course correction. I would enter a field similar to that which I had originally intended to when I started college, and I would help people in a more hands-on way. A few quarters into the program, it was time for an internship in the field. This internship made me aware of how often I would be required to work with people who grappled with substance use, and I knew I couldn’t do it. Even if I could, it would take an extreme toll on my mental health due to the history of alcoholism in my family. I was at a loss for what to do next.
Every decision I had made had been driven by my desire to use my life to help people, but none of my choices felt right. I left the graduate program and my job at the church. I then did something I had not done in a very long time. I took time to sit still. I thought about what I loved and what had helped me through hard times. Then I remembered the young girl who always had her nose in a book. I remembered the girl who disappeared into stories that made her believe in a better tomorrow.
I now know that I want to be a part of bringing those stories into the world. I want to help publish literature that gives others hope. Because the first step to making the world a better place is hoping that it can be.
Caylin Moore (she/her) is currently pursuing a graduate level certificate in book publishing from Pace University, and SAFTA is her first internship in the publishing industry. Her previous work includes copyediting, social media marketing, and project management. She hopes to use these skills and those gained during this internship for a job in either editorial or marketing one day. As someone who has often felt seen by the stories she reads, she is passionate about bringing stories into the world that help others feel that same comfort. She is planning her wedding to Nathan, the love of her life, for next August. In addition to her fiancé, she also loves romance novels, murder mysteries, musical theatre, and her pets Stitch and Oreo. Stitch is a hound dog named after objectively the best Disney character of all time, and she will hear no debate on that matter.
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