Sneaky Adversity, Collective Strength

By Jamie K. Enfield

Guest Blogger for the Overcoming Adversity with Collaboration Series 

Years ago in Castle Rock, Colorado, during the 2009 recession, my husband’s work became unpredictable, and the wellness center I had poured our life savings into began to unravel just as I was pregnant with our third child. I still remember the day my son asked for milk, and I stood in front of an empty refrigerator, realizing I could not afford to buy any. That moment marked a quiet dividing line in my life: before asking for help, and after.

We closed my business, lost our home to a short sale, and made the unplanned decision to move to Temecula, California, with no guarantees and only a small trailer of essentials. The early months were lonely and uncertain. My husband traveled back and forth between the two states for work while I stayed behind with three young children, trying to rebuild stability and purpose for myself.

The turning point in that season was not a paycheck. It was a community. I joined a local Mom’s Club simply to make friends, and what I found was collaboration in its most human form: encouragement, shared resources, emotional support, and eventually connections that helped our family regain stability. At the same time, I began teaching stroller fitness and yoga classes, which helped me rediscover my voice and sense of identity after losing my business.

Looking back now as an author and writing coach, I see that season differently. What felt like survival at the time was actually the foundation of my storytelling. Experiencing shame, resilience, and reinvention firsthand gave me the courage to write my first book and later mentor aspiring authors who feel unqualified to share their own stories.

Attending the WIP Summit last year became another turning point in my journey. Until then, I saw myself primarily as a book author. Being surrounded by writers, mentors, and industry leaders helped me realize my role was bigger than writing alone. I wasn’t just meant to share my own story—I was meant to help others tell theirs. The summit gave me the clarity and confidence to step into coaching, where I am now developing a program to support aspiring authors through storytelling, accountability, and the belief that their story matters because someone, somewhere, is waiting to hear it.

My role in the publishing world today—as an author, speaker, and coach who helps others tell their hard stories—was shaped by both quiet adversity and collaborative communities that encouraged me to grow beyond authorship.

Adversity does not always look like rock bottom. Sometimes it looks like starting over quietly, gathering strength through community, and transforming lived experience into stories that help others feel seen and less alone.

The Work That Found Me After Motherhood

By Kelsey Shipman

Guest Blogger for the Overcoming Adversity with Collaboration Series 

After I had my daughter, my writing life jolted to an abrupt halt.

Before motherhood, I had built my identity around poetry. I earned an MFA, published widely, and read my work at festivals with jazz bands behind me. I taught poetry in universities and private schools, guiding students through line breaks and metaphor as if these were survival skills. Poetry was not a hobby; it was how I made meaning out of the world.

Then came the baby—a twenty-seven-hour labor, the blur of night feedings, the hormonal fog that made even simple thoughts slippery. What surprised me most was not the exhaustion, but the way it fractured my interior life. The long stretches of uninterrupted thinking that poetry required simply vanished. I would sit in the dark, tethered to a breast pump or rocking a crying newborn, and reach for language the way you reach for a light switch in an unfamiliar room. Nothing clicked on.

Without poems, a low anxiety began to hum beneath everything. If I wasn’t writing, who was I becoming? And if I was going to stay home with a baby, how would we afford it? I needed work that could bend around nap schedules and pediatrician appointments. Just as urgently, I needed to feel alive on the page again.

I arrived at ghostwriting the way many new parents arrive at major life decisions: through research, spreadsheets, and a hard look at what was possible, despite knowing that my twenty-one-year-old, poetry-obsessed self would have bristled at the idea.

At first, it felt like surrender. The work would carry someone else’s name, and my sentences would disappear into another voice. After years of straining toward literary recognition and chasing the fragile validation of publication, it seemed like stepping away from the spotlight I once hoped to stand in.

But collaboration offered something the literary world never had: steadiness.

Instead of waiting for inspiration to return, I began treating writing as work. I showed up daily, drafted on deadline, and learned to shape other people’s stories. There was relief in that shift. Rather than guarding creativity as something fragile and elusive, I used it. I built books. I strengthened arguments and narrative arcs. Writing lost some of its preciousness, but it gained power.

In the four years since my daughter was born, working collaboratively, I have published more, earned more, and built a more sustainable career than in the fifteen years I spent trying to prove myself alone.

Motherhood did not end my writing life. It stripped it down and expanded it. I am still a writer. I am also a ghostwriter, a book collaborator, and a co-founder of a community for writers pursuing traditional publication. I got here, not by clinging to the version of myself I was in my twenties, but by allowing collaboration to carry me forward.

No One Does It Alone

By MeiMei Fox

Guest Blogger for the Overcoming Adversity with Collaboration Series 

People think of writing as a solo activity. You lock yourself up in a room, sit yourself down at your desk, and go deep into your head. 

The problem is, you may end up like Jack Nicholson’s author character in the movie The Shining: going mad.

The truth of the matter is, you’re far more likely to succeed in finishing your book if you do it in community. And have more fun. 

When Toan Lam joined Your Bestselling Book, my online book authoring course taught in a cohort with other high achievers, he thought he was writing an interior design book. He had expertise as a TV host and interior designer. But every time he opened a blank document to write, he froze.

During our very first group session, I gave the simple instruction: “Write a Movie Moment scene from your life.” A moment when a tragedy or triumph opened you to new perspectives. 

Toan wrote, and as he did, tears began streaming down his face. Later, he read his writing aloud, sharing how as a twelve-year-old, he’d saved every dollar to purchase a pair of maroon penny loafers he had spotted in a store window. The day he finally bought them was one of the most exciting of his young life. But the next day at school, his classmates mocked him mercilessly for his unique style, and he threw the beloved shoes in the trash. For the next twenty years, he buried that memory.

The room fell silent after he finished reading. Then one of his cohort members spoke up with encouragement, and another shared how deeply his story resonated with her own childhood wounds. Surrounded by people who saw his pain and reflected back his power, Toan healed a wound he hadn’t even known he was carrying.

After that breakthrough, his book practically wrote itself. Glimmer: 12 Simple Ways to Elevate Your Style and Spirit evolved from a straightforward interior design guide into something far more meaningful: a celebration of what makes each of us an original. 

I have spent over twenty-five years in the publishing industry as a two-time New York Times bestselling co-author, ghostwriter, and book coach, and the single most important lesson I have learned is that we cannot write our most vulnerable truths in isolation. We need witnesses to our stories, people who can see the cathedrals in our experiences when all we can see is the rubble. Community provides the gentle pressure that self-discipline alone cannot match, along with the safety to explore our subconscious and the encouragement to keep going when doubt creeps in.

At my WIP Summit session on the power of community, I will share research, stories, and practical strategies that have shown me why finding your people is just as essential as finding your voice. I hope you will join us.

Catch MeiMei during her session at the 2026 Women in Publishing Summit.

Blog Post Submission Opportunity

The Women in Publishing Summit Presents:

The Overcoming Adversity with Collaboration Series 

What began as a common theme surrounding the Women in Publishing Summit’s focus on collaboration has grown into a blog series for our website. Our first submissions came from speakers in the 2026 Summit, but we quickly realized what powerful messages we were receiving and decided to open submissions to our larger community.

WIP presents:

Overcoming Adversity with Collaboration Blog Series

Guidelines for Submissions:

Please submit 300-500 words on how you overcame adversity in your life to get to the place you are in the publishing world. Who or what helped or inspired you along the way? What were your biggest lessons along the way? How has your role in the publishing industry aided in your journey? If the Women In Publishing Summit or community has played a role in your story, we’d love for you to incorporate your experience.

Include your name as you would like it to appear with your post, along with any titles, and a brief bio with one link. You may also attach a professional headshot (png or jpg).

How to Submit:

Email your submission in the body of an email to support @ womeninpublishingsummit . com.

Use the subject line:

ATTN: Joy Blog Post Submission

Deadline:

We’d like to make this an ongoing weekly or monthly series, so this submission has a rolling deadline through the end of 2026.

More Details:

Your submission allows us to use your post on our website and to use portions of it on social media, in newsletters, and in other media to drive people to the post and to more information on the Women in Publishing Summit community and programs. No monetary compensation will be given, but your name and bio will appear with your post. We encourage you to share your post in your own media and link to it from your website or social media accounts. Posts must meet our editorial standards and fit the series guidelines and will be edited as necessary. If your post is chosen, we will contact you with the publish date and a link.

Be Inspired By Previous Submissions