"Starting Again, Again" by Cindy Baldwin

There is one thing that living with cystic fibrosis has taught me: No matter how well I have life figured out, there will always be a curveball. 

I’m a professional author, with five books for children published with HarperCollins. I also teach and coach other writers, including through The Salty Pen: A CF Writing Group (cfwriters.com), a support group for writers with cystic fibrosis. Between my own publishing and my work supporting other authors, I often get asked how I “do it all”—juggling writing, publishing, parenting a teen, and managing my CF and other disabilities.

My answer to these questions is usually pretty frank: I never “do it all,” and I continually have to reassess and redesign the ways I do things when life, inevitably, upends my carefully-laid plans. Last year, for instance, I went into the month of September with big dreams. I was a quarter of the way into drafting a new book that I was really excited about, and I planned to finish that manuscript, do a few rounds of revision, and send it to my literary agent to shop to publishers. After several years where my publishing schedule has been on pause due to a number of different factors, I was sure that the autumn of 2025 was going to be my comeback season.

Instead, almost immediately, I caught a virus that quickly turned serious and landed me in the hospital a few weeks later. Usually my IV courses are pretty straightforward—get sick, get meds, get better. This time, however, I had a string of unusual complications that meant that after I got discharged from almost two weeks in the hospital, I landed right back in after only a week at home. By the time I finished nearly a month inpatient, I was absolutely wrecked. I couldn’t even focus enough to read a book, let alone write one.

When the new year came around I began working to rebuild the physical and mental stamina I needed to get back to doing the work I loved. The first time I opened the file for my book, I felt overcome by anxiety. I’d had such big dreams, such big plans, for that project in 2025; what if I was never able to achieve them? What if I was going to be locked into a cycle of illness and recovery that made it impossible to truly commit to anything? What if in the four months in which I’d not even looked at the document, I’d lost the spark I needed to write it? 

It took a lot of deep breathing and calming techniques to be able to even start putting words on that page again. But, a tiny bit at a time, I did it, adding a little more each day. And with every day I worked, I got a little more confident, a little braver.

Living with cystic fibrosis has, more than anything, taught me the necessity of resilience. When I’m coaching other writers with chronic illness, I’m very honest about the fact that most of the writing advice that exists out there in the world doesn’t really apply to us. I almost never write every day—I don’t have the energy to do that as well as taking care of basic life tasks like parenting, cooking, keeping my house in anything resembling order, and doing the hours of self-care necessary to keep my recalcitrant body operating. I never write huge chunks, as so many of my colleagues do. Some of my published books were written 300-500 words at a time, each tiny contribution slowly building until, somehow, I had a book.

While dealing with the curveballs that CF can throw is difficult, I also strongly believe that the resilience and adaptability I’ve learned from growing up with CF helped to prepare me for the resilience necessary to succeed in a publishing career. Writing professionally is a difficult and mentally grueling undertaking. Having so much experience with unexpected setbacks and the need for last-second pivots due to my CF has armed me to be able to deal with the same issues in my career. 

These days, I’m feeling 90% back to normal after my difficult 2025. I’ve managed to add more words to my work in progress in the first three months of 2026 than I did for all of the previous year. I’m back in love with this book, and back to having big hopes and dreams for its future. I still run into episodes of anxiety, worrying about the unpredictability of my illness and when it will once more rear its head and force me to come up with a new plan.

But alongside that worry is assurance, because I know I’ve done this before. I’ve navigated thousands of setbacks in my life. When another one inevitably hits me, I’ll figure out a way through it once more.

If there’s anything that living with cystic fibrosis has taught me, it’s this: 

No matter what curveballs my life throws at me, I can figure them out.

I can start again, again.