On Writing Girl, Uncoded: A Memoir of Passion, Betrayal, and Eventual Blessings
By Brandi Dredge
What inspired you to write a book?
I love that question because the answer is the perfect blend of what is known and what isn’t. What we can see, hear, taste, touch, and what we can’t. The inspiration is the physical and spiritual that melded together to create a comforting and hearty stew that needed time to simmer. By that, I mean I didn’t realize I was writing a book, at least not at first.
Much like many things in my life I didn’t or don’t initially see, that realization came with time, but the best way I can describe what inspired Girl, Uncoded would be to say it is something bigger than myself.
In 2015, I found myself still asking the same questions that had been haunting me for the past eight years: Can a wife say she’s a wife if the law identifies her as her husband’s victim? Can a mother say she’s a mother if her child’s DNA is evidence of the crime? Can a woman love the same life she pities?
Trying to make sense of my life, thoughts, and feelings in search of an answer to make sense of everything that didn’t —who was I? I knew I was a woman suffocating under the dreams of the life I didn’t get. That was clear as I watched people’s eyebrows draw up and together as I shared my story. I also knew I was the woman people would praise for my positivity and strength as they looked bewildered when they asked, “How are you not bitter? I’d be so angry.” I felt like a walking contradiction. The woman people saw and the girl they didn’t.
So, I began journaling and attending church to find out who I was and what had happened in my life. I knew what had happened, but as Andre Dubus, author of Townie, said about writing a memoir, “But really, what the hell happened?” To find that answer I had to start at the beginning. I wrote about my birth, yes, my birth! Thank goodness for editors—cut! But I wrote, nonetheless.
I wrote in detail about abuse, promiscuity, being a teen mom, criminal activity, and being a teenage bride. I wrote to understand my choices, my behaviors, and myself. I wrote for the little girl inside of me I needed to know, and the more I wrote, the more it began to unlock secrets, and, in time, the first draft slowly began to show. Writing became my therapy. I kept showing up for the three-hour-long sessions on the weekdays after work and would binge-write on the weekends. All sessions went like this:
Typing, backspacing, typing, deleting, rewriting, trying to stay in the chair, out of the chair, back in the chair, staring at the blank screen, not knowing, fighting with the thoughts, “Who do you think you are?”, then knowing. Oh, the joy. Repeat.
In the healing, I wrote draft two.
Feeling inspired to grow, I continued to revise, knowing that what Cheryl Strayed said in Tiny Beautiful Things was true: “The only thing that mattered was getting that extra beating heart out of my chest.” Then, I started to see that there was something in my story that could be of service to others. Before I knew it, I was no longer writing for myself. I was writing to give someone else the courage to release their secrets too.
In On Writing, Stephen King says, “Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work.” I understand that now more than ever and it was part of the reason I wanted to change my name in the story to Caroline. Girl, Uncoded is for the readers, for the survivors, for the “Caroline’s” inside of us.
The other part of changing my name was to honor my path of healing by using it as a creative expression to reflect letting go and the power of transformation. Not wanting to betray the genre of memoir, I spoke with my publisher about changing my name. She believed that with my story, there was a precedent for it. I agreed. I felt this was a way to honor myself, the genre, and my reader; it doesn’t have to be either/or.
Writing a memoir has been hard and complicated, but it has also been freeing and necessary. There is power in our lived experiences and our truths about the things that have happened to us. Our stories and our lives may not look anything like we thought they would, but they are ours. They are beautiful and messy. They matter, and as Brooke Warner, publisher at She Writes Press, says, we absolutely have a right to tell them.
God touches the world through us and something we write, or say, or even a smile we offer in the grocery store or on a podcast may be the very thing used to touch someone in need. That is bigger than us all and it doesn’t get more inspirational than that.
So, as I slowly turn my attention to book two, a dual-timeline novel, I look forward to writing, showing up, learning, and growing in new ways. I know challenges will come, but I also know who I am, who I am writing for, and the DNA that connects us all.
Do believe in the beauty of who you are.
Notice the blessings, even inside the scars.
Always remember you are loved. Especially on the days you want to give up.
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Brandi Dredge is the author of Girl, Uncoded. Her debut memoir is set to be published in October 2024 with She Writes Press. She resides in Missouri, where she works on her craft each day by obsessively reaching for post-its or opening an app or Word document to capture her thoughts. She is a student of her mentors and gleans all she can from the unlimited and invaluable resources they post on their websites or YouTube. She loves God, her family, the oneness of life, reframing thoughts into words that showcase their beauty, smiling, laughing when she should cry, crying when she should laugh, and pushing herself towards anything she dreams is possible.
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For fans of true crime memoir comes a gripping tale of one woman’s harrowing and spiritual journey of resilience after she learns that she was a victim of a sex crime—and her husband was the culprit.
At sixteen, Caroline longed to meet the man who owned the apartment she was hanging out at with her teenage friends. The one they said was a stripper, a fact that intrigued her. From the moment she saw Gary Richard, she craved his attention—and once their eyes met, he was all she wanted.
Months later, she was dismayed to discover that she was pregnant. But she had Gary Richard, she reassured herself, and he was all she needed to be okay. A belief that didn’t change even when, holding their week-old son, she sat in court and watched him face charges for stolen property. This was her family, her life; so when Gary Richard’s lawyer suggested a ploy to show the judge he was a changed man, she agreed. At seventeen years old, she became a wife.
Over the next nine years, Caroline’s identity and dreams of a fairy-tale life became twisted by adultery, betrayal, poverty, court cases, and lies. And then, one evening, the reality of her marriage finally became clear to her after a sergeant revealed she was the victim of one of her husband’s crimes—statutory rape—and her son’s DNA was the evidence the prosecution needed to convict him.
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