In her memoir, Squatter, Yolanda DeLoach takes readers along on her path to self-discovery and reflection while trekking Wisconsin’s historic Ice Age Trail. She began the yearlong journey on April 30, 2020, following the pandemic shutdowns. During months of global uncertainty, DeLoach logged both her progress on the trail and the retrieval of her spirit. She releases and protects herself from a toxic relationship, writing, “Never again will my soul be for lease.”
What inspired you to write this memoir, to document such a personal experience?
I just felt driven that this was a story I could tell. I also knew that it was going to be a very vulnerable and personal story, and at times, I don’t look very good in it. But what made me ultimately decide to be that open – I just realized that I’m not special. Sometimes, we think to be special, we must be doing great things, but when we’re at our worst, we feel very isolated and alone. I thought, “I’m not special.” That means other people have felt this way and have maybe done these things, so why not share? We don’t talk about these things, and everybody feels like they must be the only ones. That drove me to be open and honest, because other people are feeling this, too.
You begin the book quite vulnerably, writing, “I’m emotionally not in a good place.” What was that place like?
In a fog. The relationship I was in just left me in this confused fog. I could understand things intellectually, but emotionally, my heart was in another place. I knew there was an addiction, and it just felt dark.
Chapters one and two familiarize readers with some of your past relationships. Why were these people, or their impact, important to include in your story?
Part of what I learned from taking writing courses, memoirs and my writers group is that in order to get people to root for you, to be for you, they kind of have to know where you’ve been. How did you get here, to this spot? I guess I learned you have to let people know where you were and who you are, and then they can understand a little bit more about how you got here.
It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year!
You have a full-time nursing career – when did you decide to start writing?
I have liked writing for my entire life. I always dreamed, “Maybe someday I’ll write a book,” and when this event happened that kind of correlated with the trail, I thought, this is it — this is what I’m going to write a book about.
What was your writing process for Squatter?
Before I started writing the memoir, I took classes on memoir writing. I read a book on memoir writing and joined a writing group. I work as a nurse, and I’m at the hospital for 13 hours at a time – they say, “write everyday,” but that really didn’t work for me. I wrote on the days I didn’t work. I wrote for a few hours in the mornings, and then I went on with my day. I had a writers group every 2-3 weeks. I read memoirs as well. They always say, “Read what you want to write.”
There are areas within your memoir that deal with heavy themes. Were some writing days more emotionally taxing than others?
Yes. I know there’s a benefit to distance from situations, and I see that, but I guess I wanted to write this while I was still feeling it. I thought maybe I’d forget and wouldn’t be able to go back and recall how I felt. I do feel that it was, sometimes, harder and taxing to go through some of those things again and knowing that it was going to be on paper for other people to see.
Did anything surprise you while writing Squatter?
While I was writing, I was also doing therapy and a lot of personal work, too, so that kind of correlated during the writing process. I started seeing my history differently. I started having more compassion for myself, realizing sometimes, when we come out of childhood events, we grow up thinking there’s something wrong with us. I started to have more compassion for my younger self, saying, “No. There really wasn’t anything wrong with me. This is someone who just wasn’t seen or heard, a young person who didn’t have that in their life.” I gained more compassion for the young person I was.
What do you want readers to take away from your experience?
That they aren’t alone in these kinds of experiences, and there’s nothing wrong with them. I think so many people carry that kind of feeling, that there’s something wrong with them, instead of looking at how trauma, childhood trauma and developmental trauma play a part if we don’t recognize and heal from it. It can continue to replay itself in people’s lives and in the relationships they get themselves into.
And what did you take away from this experience?
That I could do it. I could be a published author. I could reach for a dream, and I could get there.
