Recently I had the chance to interview Maria Mann, author of the books Verity Red's Diary: A Story of Surviving ME and Love & Best Witches. It was really important for me to interview Maria Mann and to publish her answers because Verity Red's Diary literally saved my life.
Back at the beginning of 2006 I was a complete wreck. I had been ill for over 4 years and I had tried so many treatments to get better, but I was the most ill I had ever been. I was lost, depressed, alone and just ready to give up. Then I read Verity Red's Diary and it restored my hope. I was so ill and felt like the victim of everyone's ignorance, the doctors included. Some days I felt I was insane; how could I feel so ill and yet be receiving no help or understanding? Everything felt wrong. Then I read my experiences expressed so beautifully by Maria Mann and her Verity Red became the friend I so desperately needed.
'Verity Red's Diary' is one of those books that will always stay close to my heart. I will never forget the way it made me feel or the way it resonated so exactly with the way I was feeling.
At the time, I had been suffering from severe symptoms for over 4yrs and had only been given a diagnosis of ME (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis) a year earlier. I had spent that year in denial; no way could I get ill! I would beat it the way I beat everything, so I had tried every treatment I could to get better without actually stopping to acknowledge that I had a serious chronic illness or accepting the changes I would have to make. I just wanted my life back and I was going to do everything in my power to get it back! Of course, all I succeeded in doing was getting increasingly ill. I was fed up; I was ill, depressed and almost totally socially isolated as I just couldn't handle trying to explain the inexplicable to anyone anymore. I needed to know that I was not going crazy, that there was at least one person out there in this big, crazy, scary, alien world who understood what I was enduring.
