We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kelley Coleman. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kelley below.
Kelley, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Was there a defining moment in your professional career? A moment that changed the trajectory of your career?
My career has made a huge shift, and one that I never expected. I had a successfully (and quite fun) career developing talking animal movies. Yes, that’s really a job. I had transitioned to screenwriting, and was at the most successful part of my career yet when I walked away on a moment’s notice, without ever looking back. No doubt many parents can relate to this. I have two amazing boys, and they were very young at the time. When my second son’s medical and care needs outpaced the number of hours in the day, it was an easy decision to step away from the current path and to dedicate myself full-time to being his caregiver, above and beyond a typical parenting role. He has multiple disabilities, and when he was a baby, it became clear that he would need lifelong care. Caregiving is a job. It’s a huge job. We need to talk about it as a job. After years focused on caregiving, I returned to writing, this time writing books. While I had never envisioned myself writing nonfiction, it became clear that the book I was most passionate about writing was the guide I desperately needed when my son was born: a manual to how the heck to do all of the paperwork and planning that comes with parenting a kiddo like my son. My book Everything No One Tells You About Parenting a Disabled Child: Your Guide to the Essential Systems, Services, and Supports was published this year. It merges my creative background with my decade plus of caregiving expertise. Choosing to pivot to caregiving was a hugely defining moment, one that impacts every aspect of my life. Choosing to return to my love of writing is a choice that I’m proud to have found the space to have made.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
My particular brand of writing combines my unique voice with relatability and brings a sense of fun to things that seem like they shouldn’t really be fun. Insurance, paperwork, financial planning, and all those things. Boring, right? I have a weird talent for making boring things interesting. It comes from years of developing talking animal movies. I’m passionate about advocating for and supporting caregivers and individuals with disabilities. We need to talk about these things. We need to talk about them in a way that is totally accessible and not scary and real. With the release of my book, I’ve been doing lots of speaking engagements (in person, Zoom, conferences, etc) and teaching workshops, both on the practical aspects of parenting a disabled child, as well as on telling the story only you can tell. I’m out to get more folks to tell their stories, especially people with marginalized identities, whose stories have yet to be heard.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
My reputation within my market – largely parents and caregivers of disabled children – stems from me fitting squarely into that demographic. I am my audience. I write the things I need, or that I needed along my journey that didn’t yet exist. I am relentlessly supportive of fellow caregivers, and advocate for the radical sharing of information. I’m not in the space to printed everything is great and easy. I’m in the space to teach folks to work within the (often broken) systems in which I’ve been able to thrive. Because I will always be learning, my audience learns along with me. I acknowledge past mistakes and what I’ve learned from them. I advocate for real, usable, understandable information, and have a sense of humor about all the paperwork. Writing within the disability space, it has always been important to me to own my identity as a nondisabled parent of a disabled child – which can be an incredibly messy space. I often speak to the necessity of parents not erasing their own identity in the process of supporting their child’s identity, and the need for nondisabled parents to not take up space where disabled folks should be leading the conversation. It’s a tricky balance. I’ve learned from experts with firsthand experience, and I cite my sources every chance I get. By acknowledging others, recognizing my own shortcomings, radically sharing information, and learning along with my audience, folks know they can trust me. Because I’m one of them.
Training and knowledge matter of course, but beyond that what do you think matters most in terms of succeeding in your field?
Time management is everything. If you’re a writer, you’re likely on your own to meet – and often to create – deadlines. It’s easy to not do the work. There will always be other things you could be doing. You have to be incredibly intentional about how you spend your time. I schedule writing time on my calendar, with a specific location – the same place, with the same drink by my side, and the internet off. People ask how I wrote a book. My answer is: “Very slowly.” It’s not about how fast we do the work. It’s about doing the work. I need to build in loads of room for error, because life happens, and caregiving for my son will always take precedence. He’s also my WHY. But, so am I. Being so passionate about fundamentally changing how families enter into parenting a disabled child keeps me going and keeps me blocking out time on my schedule.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.kelleycoleman.com
- Instagram: @hellokelleycoleman
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kelley.coleman.56
Image Credits
JTC photography: credit for underwater photos, walking on street w laptop photo, headshot with pink background