In her recently published memoir, Behind the Tapestry: My Discovery of God’s Grace Amidst Chronic Pain and Loss, Maryanne Rose Peluso tells the story of how she entered a Catholic convent at age 32, and spent eight years trying to balance the demands of religious life with the limitations of chronic pain.
The following is a condensed interview with the author.
Why did you decide to write a memoir?
I definitely didn’t do it to make money, or to become an author!
I was hoping to help people with my story. I have this unique perspective on things – there are memoirs about the religious life, and there are memoirs about chronic pain. But I didn’t know of any books about both. I figured I could offer a perspective that nobody else could, or at least that nobody else has.
My condition, pudendal neuralgia, is rare. Unless you’re part of a group in the know, you don’t hear about it. It’s not in fiction, on the radio, on TV, on medical shows. I feel like nobody knows about it or is talking about it. People who have pudendal neuralgia feel so alone, like they don’t know who to talk to.
I struggled myself. I know what it’s like to be new to the diagnosis. You can get really down, and wonder how you’re going to live your life. I’m hoping that readers with pudendal neuralgia, or chronic pain in general, can read my book and think, well, she suffered a long time, and she’s still suffering, but she came out the other side. She didn’t let it crush her.
I also felt like it was important to create a physical book. You can find stuff online, but – maybe it’s just me – I wanted to read a physical book. I’m on Facebook, and I’m okay with using a computer, but I prefer the physical experience of a book. I wanted to go to Barnes & Noble and find something about pudendal neuralgia.
Tell me about the process of writing this book.
I’m still amazed that I pulled it off!
After I left the convent in 2007, I had all these stories I would tell, and after I heard the millionth person say, “You should write a book,” I started thinking, what would that look like? I knew the story, but what steps do I have to take to write a memoir? I didn’t even know the difference between an autobiography and a memoir, I had to learn.
In the early part of 2018, I took on online class on memoir writing. The idea was, you were supposed to write a book within a year. That got me to actually sit down and start putting words on paper. The class discussed writing an outline, and figuring out what you’re going to say.
The thing about a memoir is, you have to pick a theme. It’s not about the whole of a person’s life. I’ve had a lot of experiences, obviously, but I couldn’t include all of them in the book or it would have been 5,000 pages long! I had to pick out stories that were connected to the theme.
The first draft I wrote was over 550 pages. I had a lot more stories, and way more detail in that draft. These stories flowed out of me, but they didn’t really need to be told. With the second draft, I got it down to 400 pages. Then I had a friend edit it, and she got it down to 346 pages, which is what I ended up with in the final, printed version.
What is the significance of the title, Behind the Tapestry?
I talk about this in the book. When I was getting my master’s degree at the seminary, I took a class on the meaning of grace. The teacher – who I loved – compared existence to a tapestry, and that analogy stuck with me. Here, in our physical lives, all we see is the back of the tapestry. We see all the frayed edges and loose ends. We ask all these questions: Why did this happen? Why didn’t that work out? Why did I have this illness?
But after we pass on from this life and go to heaven, we’re shown the front of the tapestry. We see the beautiful picture.
When you’re suffering through a loss, like I experienced when I left the convent, or suffering from any chronic illness, you have a sense that your life is very small and empty. You get caught up in that. You can let that swallow you. But that’s because we’re looking at the back side of the tapestry, and we’re not always going to be here. We’re being outfitted for heaven. Remembering that helped me through my darkest days.
Did the process of writing change how you look at your own history?
Writing this book was cathartic in a lot of ways. That was another reason for writing it. In my class, they said that you don’t necessarily have to do anything with the book once you’ve written it. You can just print it out, and maybe share it with your family. It can be therapeutic.
I actually wanted to publish it, though, because I thought my memoir had the potential to help other people. And it can’t help them if they don’t know about it.
My perspective didn’t completely change when I wrote the book, but did see the Lord’s hand at work more than I did at the time.
When I was in the convent, I experienced a sense of isolation. I was dealing with this invisible, chronic illness, and at the beginning, I didn’t even know what it was! I felt like some of the sisters weren’t being sympathetic, or didn’t understand what I was going through. I didn’t feel the Lord at work at the time, but looking back, I realized I wasn’t as alone as I thought.
Writing the book also helped me see some of my own mistakes more clearly. When you’re going through a difficult period, there’s always a sense of self-righteousness. When I wrote this story, I realized that in some places I was a victim because I made myself that way.
I came away with more compassion for the other people who were going through this. You hear this from other chronic pain sufferers, that their condition affects the people around them too. The people around them are also figuring out how to deal with something they never signed up for.
What advice would you give to other people with sitting disabilities who are thinking of writing their own memoir?
Don’t do it.
No, I’m kidding! But, I realized when I did it that writing a book was a more difficult project than I had bargained for. It was physically challenging – I can’t sit down for that long, so it took a lot out of me. And because of my chronic pain, I don’t have much stamina in the first place.
It’s a lot of work, even for an able-bodied person. For someone with a chronic condition, it’s almost impossible. There were so many ups and downs. At times, I didn’t think I’d ever finish. My friend who edited the book was dealing with her own issues, and it took over a year for her to finish editing.
Now that the book is published, I don’t regret writing it. Had I known when I started how much effort it would take to finish, I don’t know if I would have embarked on it.
Are you still in touch with the sisters at Coconut Grove?
Yes and no. I’m Facebook friends with a couple of Coconut Grove sisters. I’ve been in contact with them for the last thirteen years, and I’ve been back to the mother house. But I can go years in between seeing them.
In the book, I mentioned a sister who had cancer. She passed away a few years later, and I went back for the funeral. Some of the sisters had parties to celebrate the anniversaries of their vows, so I went back for those. A few of the sisters came back for my father’s funeral.
By the way, most of the names I use in the book are pseudonyms. I used my own name, and the names of a couple of family members, but the names of the sisters, and the convent, and even some of the towns are made up.
You mentioned that you were in therapy during much of your time at the convent. How did your mental health struggles affect your physical pain?
There’s definitely a correlation between my mood and the pain. When the pain got really bad, the depression got worse. They kind of fed off one another. From a physiological perspective, the pain didn’t necessarily get worse, but I perceived it as worse.
I was treated for interstitial cystitis for about two and a half years before the doctors admitted it wasn’t working, and they didn’t know what was wrong. That plunged me into despair and darkness. And then, I felt like I was just pain trapped inside a body. There was nobody I could talk to who would understand. The loneliness and depression made it worse.
I was pretty bold in the convent, way more so when I got out than when I got in. A lot of that came out of therapy. It was very helpful to have someone outside the convent to talk to, someone who could be objective and serve as a sounding board. The only other real people I talked to outside the convent would have been my parents.
A lot of females on my mother’s side of the family had depression. I’ve always had a melancholy personality, but I didn’t go into a full-blown depression until I left the convent and was dealing with chronic pain.
If you could go back in time to the day before you entered Coconut Grove as an aspiring, knowing what you know now, would you do anything differently?
I really don’t know. I never had any regrets about going, and I wouldn’t have wanted to miss out on my time in the convent. There were some really wonderful times, and I wouldn’t have wanted to miss out on that.
But if I knew how things would end when I went in, if I knew I wouldn’t be able to take my final vows, would I have gone? I honestly don’t know.
Behind the Tapestry is available from these retailers:
I enjoyed reading this interview.
Ms. Rose Peluso, congratulations! I really admire your effort to write and publish despite of struggling with your health and pain. What an accomplishment. I really liked the tapestry analogy, beautiful. I will remember that. Hope this memoir and your compassion will reach and help lots of people.