My Ovaries, My Dog, and My Target Dream Walk Into a Bar

"Raw and honest gets you in the room. Clarity gets you on the shelf."

Dude. Dude

Having a lubed up ultrasound wand in your vajayjay is very… phallic. And painfully awkward. Like do you just make small talk with the tech like it's completely normal that someone is snapping pictures of your ovaries? Bless her though — she was a total pro and made it somehow un-weird, and for that I am genuinely grateful.

For the overshare record: one ovarian cyst, one small fibroid, and a UTI for good measure. So fun. So glamorous. This is the life.

And because apparently the theme of my week was urinary systems — my fat Frenchie was also on the struggle bus in the urology department. Bladder stones. Emergency surgery. $2,600 that was absolutely not on the agenda. She's home, she's fine, she's wearing a pink Coban wrap like the dramatic little queen she is. We survived.

This is real life, people. Nobody tells you that building something — a business, a book, a life — happens inside weeks like this one. Not the clean, productive, green-juice-and-morning-routine weeks. The wand weeks. The vet emergency weeks. The weeks where you're just trying to keep all the humans and animals alive long enough to get back to the work.

Speaking of humans — Josey and I talked until 11pm this week. If you have a teenager you know that is basically winning the lottery. She opened up more than she has in months, and it happened because I put down the mental checklist long enough to actually be in the room. No water bottle logistics. No dinner agenda. Just present. It was one of those moments that reminded me why I'm writing this book in the first place — because the real stuff happens when you stop managing and start listening.

Small group did the same thing this week. We threw the outline out completely because a few people needed to be heard more than we needed to follow a plan. So we stopped. We listened. Someone got a hug that lasted longer than normal. It was the right call every time.

Okay. The Book.

I'm officially in Part 4 of the manuscript, which means we are deep in the home stretch of enrichment. And I'll be honest with you — I thought these chapters would be easier because they're recent. 2024. I lived every minute of it. The details are right there.

What I didn't account for is that I already edited these chapters once, and somewhere in that process I stripped all the good stuff out. The texture. The feeling. The mess. Partly because I wanted to finish and get to the end. And partly — if I'm being real — because I didn't want to sit inside the cancer chapters any longer than I had to.

Turns out that's exactly why they need the most attention.

The cancer journey is in this book because women build through hard things. We build companies and raise kids and show up for clients and friends and small groups and we do all of that sometimes while our body is doing something terrifying and we just keep going. Not because we're superhuman. Because we don't know how to stop. That story deserves every detail I stripped out of it, and I'm going back in to put them back.

I Dream of Target

I want this book on Target shelves. That's the dream and I'm not making it smaller.

So I've been researching. Agents. Proposals. Positioning. What makes a memoir marketable versus what makes it a really good story that lives on your hard drive forever and helps nobody. And what I keep landing on is this. It can't just be my story. It has to be a mirror. The reader has to see themselves in it, feel something shift, and walk away differently than they arrived.

Raw and honest gets you in the room. Clarity gets you on the shelf.

I'm not Oprah. I know that. But I also know that the right person is going to read this book and go oh shit, me too — and that's the whole point. After enrichment wraps I have real work ahead sharpening who this book is actually for and what it's promising them. Not changing my voice. Just getting precise about where it lands.

That part excites me more than it scares me. Most days.

Manuscript update: Words: ~45,400 and climbing Chapters enriched: 1-12 Chapters remaining: 13-19 Status: In it. Not done. Still becoming.