Essays on cancer, identity, divorce, and the complicated freedom of starting over.
Unwritten Self is a personal storytelling blog about midlife reinvention. I write from a lived experience of surviving ovarian cancer, navigating divorce after more than 20 years, and coming to terms with my identity as an intersex woman with Swyer syndrome. I’m also an adoptee, a mother, and someone who’s had to rebuild more than once. These essays are where I untangle it all: identity, illness, family, grief, and choosing yourself after crisis.
Grief in One Hand, Gratitude in the Other
I signed the divorce papers. Felt nothing. Went to Starbucks. The grief had already happened—years of it. What I found in the quiet after was not emptiness. It was the one thing I never let go of.
The Weight of Loneliness
Loneliness has been my constant companion. I hid it behind a demanding job and the role of mother. Now, with neither to hide behind, I'm finally facing what's been there all along—and what I've been willing to accept from the people I loved.
Good Catholic Kids
Birthdays and anniversaries put me in a funk. I'm always missing someone. Today is my parents' 63rd wedding anniversary — and I'm thinking about the roots I come from, the ones I'm still trying to make sense of.