Neurodiverse Love Stories: Mazey Eddings on Anxiety, Romance, and Representation ~ 1002

Tim Villegas
Meet Mazey Eddings, author and dentist.

Mazey Eddings
I’ve always loved writing. I was really active in Creative Writing clubs in middle school and high school. I’ve always been an avid reader.

Tim Villegas
But in the books she read, one thing she wanted to see more of was—

Mazey Eddings
Characters that struggled with their mental health like I was doing. I wanted to see a story where somebody was hurting but still able to learn to love themselves and accept love from other people.

Tim Villegas
And so with her book A Brush with Love, Mazey—

Mazey Eddings
Wanted people who don’t experience anxiety to have a new perspective on what living with it can feel like.

Tim Villegas
My name is Tim Villegas, and you’re listening to Think Inclusive, presented by MCIE. This podcast exists to build bridges between families, educators, and disability rights advocates to create a shared understanding of inclusive education and what inclusion looks like in the real world.

For this episode, we talk with Mazey Eddings, the neurodiverse author of A Brush with Love, a romance novel set in dental school. We talked about why she wanted to write neurodiverse characters in her books, how she sees herself in the characters of A Brush with Love, and what she hopes her readers take away from the book on how to support people living with anxiety.

Thank you so much for listening. And now, my interview with Mazey Eddings.

Tim Villegas
Today on the Think Inclusive Podcast, we’d like to welcome Mazey Eddings, who is a neurodiverse author, dentist, and most importantly, stage mom to her cats Yaya and Zedi. She can most often be found reading romance novels under her weighted blanket and asking her boyfriend to bring her snacks. She’s made it her personal mission in life to destigmatize mental health issues and write love stories for every brain. Mazey, welcome to the podcast.

Mazey Eddings
Thank you so much for having me. I always forget I have the cat part in there. It cracks me up too.

Tim Villegas
No, it’s great. Not everyone can—well, I don’t want to put down anyone else—but I’m just saying some bios are well crafted in humor. This is one of them. I really enjoyed reading it.

Mazey Eddings
Thank you. I appreciate that so much.

Tim Villegas
A little bit of a confession—when someone from your publicist reached out and said, “I have a love story for you to read,” I was like, I don’t know if I want to do this. It’s just not my typical genre. We can talk about that a little bit later, too. But I was really intrigued by the story and your mission—your mission to destigmatize mental health. So before we get into what the book is about, would you introduce yourself and the premise of the novel to our audience?

Mazey Eddings
Yeah, absolutely. And thank you for taking a chance on a romance novel. I know there are a lot of perceptions about the genre, so I appreciate that step out of your comfort zone.

Like you said, I’m neurodiverse. I have a plethora of things going on in the old noggin—ADHD, autism, and anxiety. Anxiety has always been… I got my ADHD and autism diagnoses later in life, but anxiety has been something I’ve experienced since I was very young. I remember having my first panic attack at six years old in first grade. It’s been a constant in my life.

I started dental school in the fall of 2018, and I was experiencing some of the worst anxiety and depression I’d ever had. Reading romance novels was a huge balm to that anxiety because you go in knowing there’s going to be a happy ending. There’s less fear or pressure that things will go bad.

Mazey Eddings
Then one thing I wanted to see more of was characters that struggled with their mental health like I was doing. I wanted to see a story where somebody was hurting but still able to learn to love themselves and accept love from other people. They were hurting and continued to hurt, but still had this happy ending. So I decided to write A Brush with Love. It’s set in dental school and looks at two people who have diverging passions in life.

Harper, the main character, has a very severe anxiety disorder that she hides. It’s untreated, and she has this strict goal of becoming an oral surgeon. Then there’s Dan, her love interest, who is in dental school out of a sense of familial obligation and guilt. The story looks at how they learn to love each other, themselves, and also find passion and love for a career—something they’re doing every day of their lives.

Tim Villegas
Yeah. And as I was reading the book, I saw in your bio that you’re still a dentist?

Mazey Eddings
Yeah, I graduate in May. I’m really excited.

Tim Villegas
Okay, so I was curious—how closely aligned are you with Harper? It seems like that would be the logical connection.

Mazey Eddings
Yeah, when I told my family the book was happening, they were like, “So you wrote a memoir?” I was like, no! It’s not autobiographical. The parts of myself I see in the book are how Harper’s anxiety and panic attacks physically manifest. I was having anxiety or panic attacks every day, sometimes multiple times a day. I couldn’t sleep. I had awful insomnia. I was physically hurting so badly. I wanted to capture how consuming an anxiety disorder can be.

But no, it’s not autobiographical. If anything, I was questioning if I was on the right path with dental school more like how Dan was. Harper and Dan popped into my head pretty fully formed as unique individuals with unique voices. That’s what felt so healing or cathartic about writing their story—it was like watching a movie of people you relate to and seeing them find their happy ending. That’s how writing it felt. I feel like I’m just a scribe, and they’re telling me what to put down on paper.

Tim Villegas
That’s really interesting. I’ve never written fiction, but I love reading books about writing. That’s a very common theme in fiction writing—that the writer is just the vessel.

Mazey Eddings
Truly, that’s exactly how it feels.

Tim Villegas
I wanted to go back to what you said about your experience with anxiety and how that informed your writing—specifically what it was like for Harper. As a reader, it was very vivid and tangible. I could almost feel the anxiety as I was reading the descriptions. Was that your goal? For the reader to really experience it?

Mazey Eddings
Thank you. I appreciate that so much. Yes, it was really important to me. I wanted to capture that visceral experience. We often talk about mental health as something that happens in a person’s head, but I don’t think that’s true. I wanted to dig deep and pay homage to the physical and physiological struggles of carrying the weight of anxiety daily. It adds this extra layer of grit or white-knuckling it.

I also wanted people who don’t experience anxiety to have a new perspective on what living with it can feel like. I felt like going into a sensory discussion about that would be a good way to make it relatable. Everybody knows what it feels like when their heart’s pumping or when adrenaline prickles through. So yeah, that’s what I was trying to do.

Tim Villegas
Yeah. And you also, in the book—I think you said it at the beginning in your description—Harper hides it, right? She doesn’t want people to know. Especially from Dan when she first meets him. She’s afraid he’s going to see this and think, “Oh, she’s weird. I’m not going to engage.” What did you want the reader to learn, if anything, from how Dan and Harper interacted with each other, and how Dan learned about the anxiety and how to support her? Because there are parts where he completely messes up how to deal with it.

Mazey Eddings
Yeah, right. Of course. I think that’s true with any relationship. You learn how to love your partner in the way they need. It’s a lot of trial and error, and there’s no shame in that. You can’t automatically get it right off the bat.

There’s still a lot of shame and stigma around mental health—even just having conversations about it. People feel uncomfortable, and we internalize that as people who carry anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, or any of these things that society often tells us not to talk about. I wanted to show that internalization—internalized ableism—because it’s scary to grapple with something as consuming as anxiety and also feel shame around it.

There’s this idea that you should be able to handle your life better, or just not flip out over things. But that’s not reality. You can get triggered by things life throws at you, or it’s just out of your control. A lot of it is chemical imbalance. A lot is rooted in trauma response.

I wanted Harper’s journey to show her learning to shed that shame and be open with people. Dan is a partner who’s open to learning how to love her best. He messes up and fails, but he’s willing to keep trying. Together, they learn how to love each other that way. I wanted to highlight the shame we carry and how it prevents us from fully loving ourselves or being loved by others.

Tim Villegas
Another aspect of the book—you tackle not only anxiety but also topics like sexism and ableism, like you just mentioned. I don’t want to spoil the book, but Harper confronts a very sexist patient. Dan is with her at the time, and he also doesn’t handle it that well. I was wondering—did this actually happen? Or is it something you heard or experienced yourself?

Mazey Eddings
I was shocked by how much sexism I’ve experienced in my field. Maybe I was naive, but I didn’t expect it to be such a part of my life. Patients have told me they don’t want a woman dentist and request changes. They don’t trust women to care for them.

I’ve seen patients transferred from a woman provider to a male one, and the male’s experience is night and day—mutual respect, joking, no issues. There’s still a lot of internalized misogyny in medicine, even among people seeking care.

It becomes an ethical dilemma. You want to honor a patient’s autonomy, but also, you know you have the skills to do the job. Even in dental school, there’s a lot of sexism. Oral surgery, in particular, has a lot of gatekeeping against women. Some women high in the field internalize that misogyny and gatekeep when mentoring others.

I’ve had faculty make lewd comments while I’m working on a patient. I was taking an impression, massaging someone’s cheeks, and a faculty member said, “Not a bad way to start your morning—having a pretty girl massage your face.” I just felt so small. It was gross. It demeaned my role as a caregiver. I was really shocked by that in medicine, and I wanted to highlight it because it’s frustrating and still continues.

Tim Villegas
That’s great. I’m so glad you included it. Again, I’m learning something new. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, but that was really interesting. I wanted to ask you about ableism—how did you want to address it in the book? I’ll just speak for myself: I’ve been working through ableism for years. It feels like I still am, despite all the people I’ve talked to and despite being an educator. It’s a long road to undo all the stuff we’ve learned about ability. How did you want to portray that in the story with Dan, Harper, and their friends?

Mazey Eddings
Yeah, I’m with you on that too. There’s always constant unpacking of things we’ve internalized. That was one of the trickier aspects because, in looking at it through the lens of the story, I had to confront a lot of my own internalized perceptions—things I didn’t even realize were ableist—about how I saw myself and my own journey.

I wanted to show that in a lot of ways, we see people in medicine and assume they’re above being sick or having mental health issues. Society casts them in that role. Through Harper’s journey, I wanted to address the idea that you can hurt and still help people. You can struggle with mental illness and still be worthy of love, still be worthy of a fulfilling career.

There’s also this idea that people won’t love you or trust you if you express how deeply you’re affected by anxiety or depression. That’s why Harper was really closed off, even with the people closest to her.

Tim Villegas
When I was reading the book, it was hard because both Dan and Harper are searching for belonging. It’s so hard to let people love you. That’s very relatable—for everyone, I think. There’s always a part of you that you don’t want people to know is there. I felt like that came across really well in the book.

And of course, we’re talking about a romance novel, so let’s talk about happy endings. I honestly wasn’t sure—again, I’m not too familiar with the romance genre—so toward the end of the book, I was like, “Oh my gosh, what’s going to happen? Are we actually going to have a happy ending here?” I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that there is one, right?

Mazey Eddings
Yes, definitely. This is definitely a romance novel. There’s a lot of stigma and perceptions about the romance genre. It’s the punchline to a lot of jokes. Every February, the same three romance novels get recycled in articles—Fifty Shades of Grey, Pride and Prejudice, and something else.

That does such a disservice to what the genre offers. There are so many unique and incredible stories that follow the central theme of people falling in love and getting a happy ending. People fall in love in countless ways, and we get to see that through these stories.

So yes, this is definitely a romance novel. It’s about Harper and Dan loving each other, but also about how they love and accept themselves, and learn to accept love and get that happy ending.

Tim Villegas
What are some of your favorite things to read? As a writer, what else do you enjoy? It sounds like you’re very busy, so how much time do you actually get to read?

Mazey Eddings
I haven’t had as much time to read lately because I’ve been on a deadline for a book, and I’m dying with it. I probably haven’t read a book in about a month, which is the longest stretch I’ve gone. But before I started writing my own books, I was reading about a book a day. I needed to get as far away from my day-to-day as possible and just zoom into other worlds. It probably wasn’t the healthiest coping strategy—but I guess there could be worse.

I’m a huge romance genre reader. That’s what I primarily read. There are some amazing voices out there highlighting neurodivergence and mental health, and putting disabled characters front and center in love stories. It shouldn’t be groundbreaking, but it is. For so long, there’s been this idea that disabled characters aren’t the main characters.

Some books that come to mind—author Chloe Liese is a romance novelist who’s also autistic. She writes some of the best neurodiverse characters and love stories. Her Bergman series is amazing. I think there are going to be seven books total. She does fabulous representation.

Another author is Talia Hibbert. I actually have one of her books right here—Take a Hint, Dani Brown. It has really great ADHD representation for one of the main characters. She explores love, neurodivergence, and other disabilities. Her characters always come through and get their happy endings.

Outside of that, I’ve been reading a lot of poetry lately. It’s kind of easily consumable—you can read a short poem and then sit and think about it. I’ve been reading a lot of Audre Lorde’s work and Margaret Atwood’s poetry. I wish I read more nonfiction, but I can’t focus on it very well. My brain just wanders away.

Tim Villegas
I’m curious—what started you on the path to writing? It sounds like you’ve been an avid reader for a long time, but how did you get onto the path of writing while also pursuing dentistry?

Mazey Eddings
It was a really weird divergence from what I expected my life to be. I’ve always loved writing. I was really active in Creative Writing clubs in middle school and high school. But those were all short stories or little snippets of scenes. I tried writing books, but I didn’t understand how someone could figure it out.

So I didn’t pursue it or make time for it as much as I wish I had in undergrad. I took literature analysis courses when I could—those were my fun classes. When I got to dental school, I was overwhelmed and immersed in the “teethy” world. I needed an escape.

Mazey Eddings
That’s when I was reading a book a day—just consuming romance novels at a rapid rate. I was desperate for an escape. I even took up marathon running and listened to romance audiobooks while running. That’s how I finished those books.

I wanted to write a story that reflected my own struggles—the consuming nature of anxiety—and also the world I was so ingrained in. I wanted to see people win, get their happy ending, and find passion and success in their lives. That’s how it started, and then I just couldn’t stop writing. Now I have five books coming out over the next two years. I’ve been really busy, but I’m so grateful for the opportunity to write. Nothing has ever felt more fulfilling than getting to tell stories. It’s been a real joy.

Tim Villegas
So you’re still planning on graduating as a dentist?

Mazey Eddings
Yeah, I’m going to do both.

Tim Villegas
That’s great. Love it. Where can people find your book? I don’t remember when it comes out—does it come out in March?

Mazey Eddings
March 1. It’s coming out anywhere books are sold—Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Book Depository (which does free shipping worldwide). The audiobook is also coming out on Audible, Libro.fm, and other platforms. If you want to follow along on this wild ride, my website is mazeyeddings.com. I’m on Twitter pretty frequently—@foxygrampa27, which is very nonprofessional.

Tim Villegas
Is that an inside joke or something?

Mazey Eddings
No, it’s from a SpongeBob episode where he wears a hat that says “World’s Foxiest Grandpa.” It just cracks me up. I made it back in college, and that’s how I started connecting with other authors. I can’t change it now.

Tim Villegas
Foxy Grandpa.

Mazey Eddings
Yeah, every time I think about changing it… Anyway, on Instagram I’m @mazeyeddings.

Tim Villegas
Okay. Not Foxy Grandpa.

Mazey Eddings
Yeah, someone already had that handle. I was devastated.

Tim Villegas
Do any of your future books feature Harper and Dan, or is that story over for now?

Mazey Eddings
They’re not central, but they make little cameos. The next three books follow the friend group. The second one follows Lizzie, and that comes out September 6 of this year. She has ADHD and gets wrapped up in an underground erotic baking scheme that spirals out of control. I couldn’t believe they let me get away with that one—but they did.

Tim Villegas
Erotic baking? Like underground erotic baking?

Mazey Eddings
Yeah, like back-alley. It was really fun. The third one I’m finishing up now. Harper and Dan will make little cameos, and maybe one day I’ll write something more for them. But right now, I’m really happy with where their story ended and the little progress we see in the other books.

Tim Villegas
Mazey Eddings, it was a pleasure to have you on the Think Inclusive Podcast. Thank you for your time.

Mazey Eddings
Thank you. That was so fun.

Tim Villegas
Think Inclusive is written, edited, and sound designed by Tim Villegas, and is a production of MCIE. Original music by Miles Kredich. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. If you did, one way you can help our podcast grow is to share it with your friends, family, and colleagues. And if you haven’t already, give us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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