Writer. Educator. Debut novelist.

I know what it costs to stay small. I spent years making myself small to stay safe. I changed everything about myself to fit in at my lunch table in 7th grade, and I never stopped. I performed versions of myself for decades: the good wife, the good teacher, the good daughter. I was living someone else’s story and calling it my own. At 55, I stopped. I write for the woman on the gerbil wheel who can’t stop long enough to ask what she actually wants. For the woman who looks successful on paper but still feels completely adrift. For the woman who changed everything about herself to fit in and never stopped. I write unbecoming stories. Stories about women who dismantle their performed lives to discover who they actually are. Like kintsugi, they are remade into something stronger and more beautiful than before. Not despite the cracks, but because of them. These women claim their pleasure, own their power, and live their purpose, because those are the things we are taught to give up for someone else’s comfort. Every time I put a woman on the page who refuses to shrink, I am practicing my own power. I am constantly unbecoming, and I am writing about the woman I aspire to be. What would you do if you stopped performing and started unbecoming?