When my dad got sick, my world naturally started to revolve around caring for him. Between long nights at the hospital and days juggling work and home, I found myself mentally and emotionally drained. I knew I needed to find a way to take care of myself too. I needed something that didn’t require much time or energy, but could help me process everything that was happening.
For some strange reason, that outlet turned out to be writing fiction. My brain started giving me ideas at the most random times—while in the shower, in the car, or just before falling asleep after another hospital stay. A story started forming in my head and, despite my best efforts to ignore it, it refused to leave me alone. So I gave in. I opened a blank document one night and began to write.
It was different from journaling, because I wasn’t writing about my real life. But in hindsight, it became my way of coping. Writing gave me something that was entirely mine: something creative, alive, and made sense when so much else didn’t.
The story that kept me going
That story eventually became All the Ways We Stay, my first work of fiction. It follows Gelo and Cat, two people who find themselves reconnecting after years apart. What begins as a familiar yet tentative reunion turns into a story about love, regret, timing, and the ways we try to hold on to what matters.
It’s not a dramatic, movie-style love story. It’s about ordinary people, those who carry past relationships in their memory, who wonder what might have been, who are trying to make sense of love in the middle of real life.
In many ways, the book mirrors how I was feeling at the time: learning to stay grounded through uncertainty, to find meaning in in-between moments, and to accept that some connections, no matter how fleeting, can still change us deeply.
A project we built together
What made the process even more special was how it became a small creative collaboration with my husband, Ryan. I would ask him to read drafts, and after he’d offer thoughts or questions that helped me see things differently. We’d talk about character motivation, dialogue, and pacing. Somehow, those conversations would shift into reflections about our own life together.
Writing this story with his support reminded me that creativity doesn’t always have to be solitary. It can be something shared. It brought us closer, not just as partners, but as people trying to understand what love looks like in all its forms: steady, complicated, resilient.
Finding calm in creation
I didn’t plan to write a novel while navigating one of the hardest seasons of my life. But in doing so, I found something unexpectedly healing. Writing gave me a sense of calm, purpose, and connection at a time when I needed it most.
If you’ve ever found yourself drawn to journaling, crafting, or any creative outlet just to get through the day, you probably know what I mean. Sometimes, making something, anything, is the best kind of self-care we can give ourselves.
Read All the Ways We Stay
If you’d like to read the story that came out of that time in my life, you can get your copy of All the Ways We Stay, available in paperback and in digital format through camylbesinga.com or find it on Amazon.
It’s a love story, yes, but also a reflection on how we stay connected to others, to our past, and to the parts of ourselves that never stop hoping.