I’m Ashley—a paramedic trained to save lives, but mine nearly slipped through the cracks of a healthcare system that didn’t believe me. For years, I was misdiagnosed by the very hospitals I worked in, dismissed with phrases like “it’s just stress.” Spoiler alert: it was not stress, gas or extra weight. I required two brain surgeries. I am still healing. I write for those who struggle with invisible illness—people who’ve been unheard, unseen, and underestimated. I began writing not just to tell stories, but to survive and heal from them — to stitch together the fragments of a mosaic heart that had been quietly shattering for years.