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.
Just Give It Time
I was almost 18 when a doctor patted my hand and said 'just give it time.' I was still waiting at 28. This is the story of a teenage girl who built her whole life around hiding what she didn't yet have words for.
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.
Am I An Outsider?
For most of my life, I assumed I was missing something essential. An episode of We Can Do Hard Things with Gillian Anderson cracked something open: maybe what I thought made me an outsider is more common than I believed.
Where Shame Begins
I knew I was different long before I understood why. No puberty. No explanation. Just the slow, quiet certainty that something was wrong—and the shame that took root in that silence.
I Am Many Things
October 26, 2024 is Intersex Awareness Day. I am many things. I am intersex. And today, I'm saying it out loud.
Why I’m Really Doing This
Everyone loves a cancer survivor. But who loves a hermaphrodite? That question—the one I couldn't answer—kept me silent for 25 years. This is why I'm finally telling my story.