Photo by Cretchen Hlatt
Brandi Dredge is the author of the new memoir Girl, Uncoded: A Memoir of Passion, Betrayal, and Eventual Blessings. She lives in St. Joseph, Missouri.
Q: What inspired you to write this memoir?
A: I didn’t know I was writing one, not at first.
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 inside they didn’t.
So, I began journaling and attending church to find out who I was and what had happened in my life.
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.
In the healing, I wrote draft two.
I continued to revise and to grow as a person and a writer; I kept showing up day after day 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.
I define what inspired me as a God thing.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: The original title was Evidential Blessings; however, as I began the path to publishing, the publisher suggested we come up with another title. The publishing team went into a brainstorming session and provided me with ten alternative titles.
Instantly, I narrowed it down to my top two, with Girl, Uncoded being the one I kept gravitating toward. I polled some family members as well as a few friends, and Girl, Uncoded was the winner.
What connected with me about the title was the word code because medical coding is my profession, and DNA is our genetic code. Both are spoken of in the book.
Identity is a strong theme throughout the pages, so much so that I crafted the book into 23 chapters to reflect the 23 pairs of chromosomes that make up my DNA. Girl, Uncoded was the perfect fit.
The title signifies a girl shaped by passion and betrayal, searching to be freed from the mental chains that had bound her to a life of shame. To be the woman she was created to be, she had to become uncoded from the false identity she created to survive and believe she was designed to thrive.
Q: What impact did it have on you to write Girl, Uncoded, and what do you hope readers take away from it?
A: My friend TJ once said, “What if we released the versions of ourselves we created to survive and believed who we are without them.”
That is what I hope the readers take away. The belief that no matter what they have gone through, they matter, their stories matter, and they are loved as they are.
God touches the world through us, and writing Girl, Uncoded has allowed me to see that.
There is power in our lived experiences, and when we are vulnerable with our stories as we show up from a real place of what we have come from and how we live our lives that aren’t perfect, that are messy but amazing, it gives someone else the courage to show up and see the beauty in their lives too.
Q: The writer Laura Whitfield called the book a “brave testimony to the power of a mother’s love and the longing to find our heart's home.” What do you think of that description?
A: It’s powerful! That description still makes me tear up, and the fact that Laura Whitfield, an author and woman whom I admire, not only read my book but genuinely connected with it. She captured the essence of the book in the most beautiful way. Her words are a gift that will forever be with me, and I am so grateful.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am working on a dual-timeline novel that unravels the lives of two men and the piece of land that connects them. Stay tuned.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: My poetry and other writing pieces can be found on my website, www.brandidredge.com.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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