We’re looking forward to introducing you to Juliet James. Check out our conversation below.
Hi Juliet, thank you so much for joining us today. We’re thrilled to learn more about your journey, values and what you are currently working on. Let’s start with an ice breaker: Have you stood up for someone when it cost you something?
Absolutely. A few years back, my childhood best friend was getting remarried. She hired a small business owner to make custom robes for her wedding, someone I knew on a professional level. She and her bridesmaids were told by both me and the owner that they needed to take measurements to know what size to order. No one listened. Unsurprisingly, the robes didn’t fit. But the owner wanted to make it right, even though she doesn’t typically do that on custom orders. She was bending over backwards to try to help my friend, knowing she was stressing as a bride-to-be. It wasn’t good enough, and my friend tried to file a claim against her with PayPal – without telling me.
I was so upset. This business owner really was trying to do everything to help, but my friend (likely at the behest of one of the other bridesmaids) went behind my back and flat out lied about the situation. Worse, my friend was refunded (accidentally, it turned out). Thankfully, PayPal has good policies in place on custom items, and the store owner did not lose money.
Standing up for the store owner cost me my friendship, but it was 100% the right thing to do. I was so disappointed in my friend’s bridezilla like behavior, but it also forced me to really look at and examine that friendship in ways I hadn’t, so I think, while painful at the time, it was for the best.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I am the author of the novel Cravings: A (Mostly) Fictional Memoir. I’m also a freelance writer. Currently, I’m in the Creative Nonfiction MFA program at Bay Path University. Sadly, the University has decided to end this program, so it is no longer enrolling new students. I am about halfway through the degree, so I’ve decided to stick it out and finish, but it was really disappointing to learn about.
I’m a bi/queer, fat (a word I use in a neutral way) writer with an activist streak. I am a vehement supporter of LGBTQ+ rights. I have ADHD, which wasn’t diagnosed until I was in my 30s, as is far too common for women (especially Gen X women, like myself, and older). I write poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and sometimes blur the lines between the two (as is the case in my novel, which is mostly fiction, but based somewhat on actual events in my life). I also occasionally write product reviews, when something speaks to me. I publish on both Medium and Substack, and have written multiple essays for HuffPost Personal.
I write about things that matter to me, things I hope will matter to, or help, others.
My hobbies include painting, photography, houseplants that I name and try to keep alive, buying stationery, gaming (particularly The Sims 4 and Baldur’s Gate 3), traveling with my husband Thomas, playing Dungeons & Dragons with Thomas and our daughter, and cuddling our dog Yogi.
Okay, so here’s a deep one: Who were you before the world told you who you had to be?
I was a wild child. I ran naked outside as a toddler. I wore a bathing suit fearlessly without a cover up, when much thinner girls around me were wearing t-shirts and feeling self-conscious about their bodies. I refused to wear pants for over a year because I found them constricting, and I would only wear dresses or skirts. Even in 20 degree weather, walking home from school in second grade, I was steadfast in my commitment to hating pants (this, it turns out, was a sensory issue, one of many I’ve had over the years, courtesy of having a neurodivergent brain).
I grew up in New Jersey, the so-called Garden State, and while people tend to associate it with overcrowding, oil refineries, stupidly high car insurance, and industry, it really is true that so many people have (or had, when I was growing up) beautiful backyard gardens. At the time, my great-grandmother did, and so did my grandparents (mostly maintained by my grandfather). They lived next door to one another, and I had the run of both large (for NJ suburbs) yards as a kid. I grew up eating raspberries, tomatoes, green beans, cherries straight from the garden, and I lived in my grandfather’s above ground pool for as many hours a day as I was allowed. I was a water baby from the start. These are some of the best memories of my childhood., some of the only good ones, actually.
Until I was about 12/13, this was my identity. Wild, feral, free… even when I shouldn’t have felt free, those summer months (at least) gave me that. Ironically, summer is (and always has been) my least favorite season.
When did you stop hiding your pain and start using it as power?
The day I finally worked up the courage to pitch a story to HuffPost Personal. It was deeply personal, explaining what my life is actually like in my fat body. It was raw and vulnerable, and it changed my life in many ways. It was originally published just before the pandemic hit the US hard, but also just before my 44th birthday.
(link: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/infinifat-fat-life-over-400-pounds-fatphobia_n_5e4ad05bc5b64ba297534c7c )
I knew I would be the victim of plenty of hatred, as fat bodies are utterly vilified (and even just 5 years later, it’s gotten worse again). I was right about that, but what I hadn’t expected was that I would have so many people I admired contact me and share my story. I was also contacted by so many other people in larger bodies who related to what I wrote, who told me it made them feel seen, sometimes for the first time ever.
It was this essay that led to me really embracing writing for myself, as opposed to anyone else. I went on to write multiple other essays for HuffPost Personal, and ultimately, it was this experience that led me to my graduate program.
I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. Is the public version of you the real you?
Yes and no. The public version of me is authentically me, but that said, I think it’s very important to hold certain things back, to remember that you don’t owe anyone every part of yourself. I think this is something that’s much harder for famous people, but just being a public figure on any level, it can be tempting to feel like you have to explain or share every single thing about yourself.
This was something I would’ve done, too, if not for Noah Michaelson, the director of HuffPost Personal, who edited my first essay. He strongly advised me to take out a certain bit of information, something deeply personal, and told me that the story didn’t need it, and that I didn’t owe it to readers to share it. That really changed how I approached my writing moving forward. I was absolutely not actually ready to share that part of my story at that time, and I think it would’ve done me more harm than good if I had.
Okay, so let’s keep going with one more question that means a lot to us: What will you regret not doing?
I’ve never traveled abroad, and it’s extremely unlikely I ever will. I have had fibromyalgia for almost 25 years. Chronic pain is utterly exhausting, and air travel is extremely hard on my body because of this. There are so many places I wish I could visit, and even if I were healthy enough to travel, I’d never see them all. I wish I had done more when I was younger and healthier, but I was only 25 when my symptoms began, and it was 7 years before I knew what it was, and another two before my diagnosis was confirmed. This is, sadly, all too common for young people with chronic pain or illnesses, but that is extra true when you add in being a woman and being fat. I was told for years to “just lose weight,” and believed that’s all it was myself. But even when I did lose weight, which was never easy, I never felt better. Sometimes , in fact, I felt worse because I would resort to overexercising, which caused injuries. But those experiences showed me it’s important to really respect my body’s limitations, because not doing so causes me to pay a price. So, I know I’m unlikely to ever go to Paris or Venice. I’m not going to make it to Fiji or New Zealand. But I have been to 48 states and hope to get to Alaska next year. Maybe a cruise to Hawaii someday.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.iamjulietjames.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamjulietjames/
- Twitter: https://x.com/IAmJulietJames
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/iamjulietjames
- Other: https://www.crookedcirclepress.com/product-page/cravings-a-mostly-fictional-memoir
https://iamjulietjames.medium.com/
https://substack.com/@iamjulietjames
https://www.huffpost.com/author/juliet-james
https://bsky.app/profile/iamjulietjames.bsky.social
https://www.threads.com/@iamjulietjames
https://amzn.to/3HAEocg (this is an Amazon Influencer link, so I earn a small commission. If that’s not allowed, I totally understand, and I will put the regular link below)
Image Credits
All photos by Juliet James, except the one with Yogi on the picnic table, which is by Thomas James, used with his permission.
