A love letter to sleep, guilt, and getting through the damn day Some mornings it takes dynamite to get me out of bed. Not drama — just the slow, heavy, body-aching kind of dread where you stare at the ceiling and try to negotiate with time. Five more minutes. Ten. Just enough for the aches…

Home Matt met me when my life was already fully unhinged. Single mom, unprocessed trauma, chaos as a default setting, baggage I hadn’t even inventoried yet. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t try to fix me or make me easier to love. He just stepped in and stood there — quietly, patiently, without needing to be the…

The New Molly I hear it a lot: I miss the old Molly. Well, I don’t. She was exhausted. People say it like I’ve slipped away somewhere and they’re just waiting for me to bounce back with glittery party invites and an armful of Jell-O shots. But that version of me is gone. And if…

The Biggest Man in the Room My dad grew up in a tiny town in central Illinois that nobody’s ever heard of. His dad was a state representative and a farmer. His mom was a teacher. He wrestled at Southern Illinois University, flew little planes, sold designer suits, and had a NASCAR champion as one…

I left him when she was two years old. Not because I suddenly found my strength. Because she deserved better. There was a time when I didn’t recognize myself. I was hollowed out by a relationship that chipped away at me little by little. The damage went beyond words — it left marks no one…

Borrowed Strength Let me tell you about the people around me for a second. My aunt — one of my biggest caregivers through all of this — lost her daughter. A rare genetic disease. Young, long, devastating. And she still showed up for me. Still sent food and checked in and sat with me in…

Still Running I think people assume I’m on the other side of this by now. That I’ve healed up, moved on, turned the page. And yeah — I’m alive. I’m lucky in real ways and I know it. But lucky and okay are not the same thing, and I think I’ve let people confuse them…

Seven Let me back up. After sepsis — or “after,” in the loosest sense of the word, because I don’t think my body ever actually fully came back from it — the expanders had to come out. My surgeon decided my body was rejecting them. So back into the OR. New expanders in. That lasted…

The Part Nobody Saw December 2020. Diagnosed with breast cancer. I didn’t fall apart. I made a plan. By March 2021 I was having a double mastectomy — both breasts removed, expanders put in the same day. I thought that would be the worst of it. I thought that was the scary part. It wasn’t.…

The Weight of It Today feels heavy. Not dramatic-heavy. Just the quiet kind — the slow ache that shows up when you’ve been holding it together for so long you’ve stopped noticing the weight. My best friend just had a mastectomy. She’s in the beginning of it — everything raw and new and terrifying. She…