It’s funny to think that I first started writing this blog post a year ago.

I’d just barely published my second book in my fairytale series, Cracks in the Tower, and was gearing up to start promoting it. As arguably my favorite book I’ve ever written, I was really excited to get to share it with you.

But little did I know—or any one of us, really—that we were actually on the precipice of a major worldwide plot twist that would turn everyone’s lives upside down. Before I had the chance to click ‘post’ we were thrown into what felt like an alternate reality of some kind. While the vocabulary has become routine by now and we are used to masking up, social distancing, and quarantining, the pandemic still affects us all in heartbreaking and scary ways.

Crazy timing for a book launch, right? Even crazier, Cracks in the Tower was insane (and in some ways extremely creepy) at how well it fit into the situation. After reading it a few weeks into quarantine, my friend messaged me and jokingly asked if I was a witch. The story is a Rapunzel retelling about a girl named Rosalind Corona (yep, you read that right) who locks herself in her room for years after a magic accident that nearly killed her younger brother.

Look, I have proof that I came up with this before Covid, okay? Rosalind is actually first introduced briefly in the first book of the series, Pieces in the Cinders, which came out two years ago. Funny enough, Corona is actually the name of the kingdom in the Disney movie Tangled, and I thought having the easter egg as her last name would be fun. Little did I know we’d all be living a version of Rosalind’s story just weeks after I finally put it into the world.

Like it did everyone, Covid took its toll on me and my family. My sisters and I are considered high risk, and especially for the first few weeks the fear of the unknown ate us up. I’m grateful I have amazing parents who let me move back home with them as everything went down. We tried our best to just enjoy all the time we now had together and do what we could to stay safe.

As the weeks turned to months, though, I found myself not able to do anything. Here I had all this time to write and it seemed as though all my creativity and love of the art just dried up into nothing. On the few occasions I forced myself to work on something, each word felt like a chore to cough up and nothing went together. I decided trying to force it wouldn’t help anything, and just let myself take a break for a while.

Cracks in the Tower was already a very personal story, but it took on a whole new meaning as things kept on spiraling. So much hate, fear, and hurt filled the world, and I found it seeping deep into my bones and making me a person I didn’t want to be. It all felt so overwhelming that most days I just let it overtake me—especially being separated from my fiancè and Covid cancelling our wedding. There just didn’t seem to be any good anywhere, and I lost myself in the darkness that enveloped everyone.

When writing Rosalind’s story, she forced me to examine my own tower and the chains that I’d often put on myself. I took an inventory of which were actually protecting me and which were holding me back—or doing both, in some cases. I studied them with even more scrutiny during quarantine. And I asked myself the same question posed in episode four of Cracks in the Tower:

Are you really going to let fear control your life? And to a further extent, are you really going to let all this hate and anger and hurt change you into something you don’t want to be?

As Rosalind discusses in the book, the idea of fear and the reality of fear are often two very different things—it’s so much easier to talk about besting your fear than it is to actually do it. Sometimes the fear is so intense, there is nothing to do besides feel its paralyzing effects take over. Sometimes being ‘brave’ as we would like to just isn’t an option.

I’ve struggled with anxiety for many years. If I think about it too much, I get so frustrated and sad about how much it has affected me, at how many opportunities I wasted, how many chances at peace were thrown away. And it’s worse to think of how many people I love so much whose anxiety disorders are much more debilitating than mine. It’s isolating and cruel, and my heart aches for anyone whose life has been touched by it in any way. You can be doing just fine, working so hard to be okay, and then out of nowhere, suddenly you’re not. Suddenly the fear takes over, the panic and overanalyzing that’s so exhausting, and the moment is now a fight. Suddenly you are a lost princess locked away in a tower, so far away from home. And so very unreachable.

Pre and post-Covid, Rosalind taught me that most of the time fear isn’t something you can just outrun. It’s part of me, something I have to learn to live with and manage. We all have things that we loathe about ourselves, the things that have happened or choices we’ve made or characteristics we possess that we wish we could just cut out. And it’s so incredibly difficult to realize that we can’t scratch them out or run away from them. We can’t always erase our mistakes, our monsters, our tragedies. Some are nearly unbearable to carry.

Cracks in the Tower is a reflection of the journey I’ve been on the past couple years to truly face my own story. To work on owning up to it all, even the chapters I wish I could erase. Especially those ones. Rosalind showed me that there is so much more to life than our prisons, and while it’s easy to forget, while it’s incredibly hard to push against the chains of the past, our minds, or circumstances, it’s worth it. That we can’t always choose our story, but maybe we can help write it—if we are brave enough.

Nearly a year into quarantine, a year of creative blocks and emotional turmoil, and I’m finally ready to come back again. I couldn’t completely rewrite the story of my life, but Rosalind and some very special people I know helped me find the bravery to pick up the pen and write what I could. To put on my favorite coat and have a small wedding ceremony on my parent’s deck because the point was I had the privilege of promising myself to the man I love. To create stories that are hard to hear but help us face our truths. To grit my teeth and clench my fists and demand a change in my narrative as I build a life that isn’t perfect and makes me happy anyway.

So here’s to every one of us locked in our towers, thinking our stories are over. They aren’t. There is life through this pandemic, life through our heartaches, and life through our fear. And it’s always worth fighting for, even if it takes a few chapters to get there.