Written by Lauren Smyth
From Chicago to Hillsdale and back again, Emily Benz Holewczynski’s journey through chronic illness and a successful career in freelance writing is an enduring example of Hillsdale’s motto: Strength rejoices in the challenge.
A 2010 graduate, Holewczynski first heard about Hillsdale through friends in her Catholic church group. Although she had already made it onto the waitlist at the University of Illinois, a visit to Hillsdale’s campus convinced her that this was where she hoped to spend her next four years.
“I went to a really big high school, so I liked the smaller, more intimate nature of the [Hillsdale] classrooms,” Holewczynski said. “The campus was beautiful, and I ended up falling in love.”
Drawn by her love for reading and writing, Holewczynski immediately set out to earn her English degree. Classes felt overwhelming at first, but she quickly found her stride, made lasting friendships with her professors, and began to thrive as a young writer.
“The unique thing about Hillsdale is they really teach you critical thinking skills,” Holewczynski said. “It’s not only the writing skills—which you definitely have to hone—but also how to read for substance, how to read for themes, how to annotate, how to deconstruct what you’re reading and apply it to your life or apply it to other works. Even though it feels like a million years ago, I still think about a lot of my classes all the time.”
Holewczynski also discovered an unexpected interest in Spanish language classes. This led her to spend a semester studying abroad in Seville, Spain, where she stayed with a host family while completing the coursework required for her Spanish minor.
“I ended up having the best time and made lifelong friends that were in my wedding, that I still talk to every day,” Holewczynski said. “It’s definitely one of those cool, life-changing things that if you can do it, you should.”
Holewczynski secured her first two post-graduation jobs as a curriculum creator, then transitioned to a position as a marketing manager for a law firm. Though all three positions came with different expectations and responsibilities, Holewczynski said her Hillsdale education was applicable to each.
“There’s a lot of versatility in your degree because you learn how to be a fully functional, critically thinking adult,” Holewczynski said. “You might have a specialty, but [you] graduated with a great set of skills that can be applied in a lot of different areas.”
Writing as a Career
After the birth of her first child, Holewczynski’s career shifted again. Busy with family responsibilities and excited to become a mother, Holewczynski left the office and focused on developing her freelance and creative writing skills, which she could apply on her own time.
“I always knew that I wanted to be a mom,” Holewczynski said. “But I also knew that I wanted to build on what I saw as the gifts God had given me.”
The constant urge to write and create led Holewczynski to write six book-length manuscripts and accumulate publishing credits from across the industry, which now notably include Business Insider, an interview with Huffington Post, and McSweeney’s.
“If I’m not writing something, I’m very antsy,” she said. “When your agent has your book and she’s submitting it to different editors, you just sit there and wait. And that’s the worst. So I would just [wonder], all right, well, what can I do to move the needle a little bit?”
As she experimented with different genres and styles of storytelling, Holewczynski became inspired to create her own novel-in-verse, a story told for middle- and high-schoolers through unrhymed, free verse poetry. The style quickly became her favorite, but as Holewczynski explained, it was also one of the most difficult to sell.
“Sometimes you convince yourself [that you] just have to write what everyone else is writing, but it doesn’t come out as naturally,” Holewczynski said. “There’s a kind of push-and-pull there …. You want to make money eventually.”
One of Holewczynski’s most beloved projects is a novel-in-verse she crafted based on her childhood as the oldest sibling in a foster family. One of the 19 children her parents cared for was a young boy with a serious illness, who was hospitalized for a heart attack and told his foster parents that an angel had protected him.
“The story is called And Another Thing about Loops, and it’s a lot about Fruit Loops because my brothers and sisters and I were always fighting over Fruit Loops,” Holewczynski said. “But [it’s also] about the loops in our life that keep us all connected.”
A New Challenge
The first symptoms of her chronic illness hit just after the birth of Holewczynski’s fifth child. At first, she wrote off the dizziness and weakness as normal postpartum changes. Then, one day, she woke to discover that her right arm and face had gone numb.
Holewczynski alerted her doctor, who became her first stop on a tour through medical specialties. Doctors in obstetrics, otolaryngology, cardiology, and neurology had no answers besides more invasive, sometimes painful tests that all came back normal.
“I started to panic and wondered if I was going crazy,” Holewczynski wrote in a Business Insider article that chronicled her journey toward diagnosis. “I was losing my mind and feeling sicker than ever.”
It wasn’t until a second neurologist reviewed her MRI that Holewczynski finally received an answer. For years, she had been suffering from multiple sclerosis, a chronic and incurable disease in which the body’s immune system attacks the protective coating of the central nervous system.
“[The diagnosis] changed everything,” Holewczynski said. “I immediately had to start these pretty heavy-duty drugs, and I was dealing with symptoms that were hard to manage.”
Despite the sudden onslaught of health issues that left her disoriented, nauseated, and sometimes unable to drive, Holewczynski persevered and continued raising her children while pursuing her dreams as a writer.
“Any challenge in your life makes you tougher, right?” Holewczynski said. “It makes you push harder for the things that you want, and little by little that builds up your mental muscles. And so as crazy as it sounds, I think I’m grateful at this point for all of it because I think it’s made me a tougher mom. It’s definitely made me a tougher writer [in a field that’s] filled with rejection and chaos.”
While the escapism of writing refreshed Holewczynski’s mind, the tenacity she uncovered in fighting her illness gave her the push she needed to keep writing even through the hardest days—the ones plagued by illness, frustration, rejection, and distraction.
“[Writing] refocused me, while also giving me a mental break from the drama,” Holewczynski says. “As much as [writing] has driven me crazy over the last few years, now I know I can do it. Because if I can get through all this nonsense, then I know I can eventually break through.”
Now that she’s welcoming her sixth child, Holewczynski’s creative pursuits are on a brief hiatus. It’s been a while since she last picked up her pen, but Holewczynski says she’s excited to reenter the writing world soon with fresh ideas and creativity.
“I’m sure I’ll be a little bit rusty,” Holewczynski says. “But … you just have to push through all the cobwebs and keep going.”
Lauren Smyth, ’25, is an economics major and journalism minor. Outside of starting arguments in philosophy class, she enjoys curling up on a bench outdoors (sun, rain, or snow) to write novels or articles for her blog, www.laurensmythbooks.com.
Published in August 2024
