How The Cherished Woman Was Born

After my first memoir came out, I honestly felt like I had purged something out of me.

 

I Was the One I Was Waiting For felt raw and necessary. I think I needed to write it. I needed to release the grief, the confusion, the attachment, the unraveling. It felt like an awakening in many ways — the beginning of seeing myself and my patterns clearly.

But almost immediately after it was finished, something inside me started shifting.

I remember thinking:

I don’t want to stay here forever.

I didn’t want my life to become a permanent home inside the wound.

And that’s really where The Cherished Woman began.

Not as a finished idea. Not even really as a plan. More like fragments. Glimpses. Feelings I couldn’t quite put language to yet.

I started the document months ago. The last time I had opened it before recently was October. At the time, it was mostly scattered thoughts, unfinished reflections, little pieces of writing that would arrive late at night or after an emotional moment. A few paragraphs here. Voice notes there. Pieces of blog posts. Journal entries. Fragments of becoming.

Around that same time, I also started trauma therapy.

And instead of forcing the book, I let myself disappear into the work of healing.

I let myself rest.

I let myself slow down.

I let myself go deeply into EMDR and trauma therapy without needing to immediately turn every realization into content or productivity.

I’m still in that work now.

But during those months, things kept arising.

Through my writing.

Through my movement.

Through dreams.

Through late-night voice notes whispered into my phone.

Through the things I shared online that unexpectedly opened conversations with women who saw themselves in me.

Quietly, without fully realizing it, I was gathering material.

Not just for a book.

For a new version of myself.

Then in April, I attended a goddess gathering, and something cracked open inside me while one of the women was speaking.

She talked about how people project onto anyone who challenges the status quo — especially women who are deeply embodied, expressive, sensual, or fully themselves. Women who stop asking permission. Women who create lives outside of conventional expectations.

And suddenly, so much clicked into place for me.

I understood more clearly why embodied women are so often judged, misunderstood, sexualized, or rejected. Why authenticity can make people uncomfortable. Why visibility invites projection.

But more importantly, I stopped making it so personal.

Something shifted in me energetically after that gathering.

Around the same time, I was also on a pause from EMDR, allowing myself space to integrate everything that had surfaced emotionally over the previous months.

And then the book came.

Not suddenly.

Not magically.

But organically.

I sat down and started gathering everything I had been carrying quietly behind the scenes — Google notes, journal entries, blog posts, voice notes, fragments of writing scattered across months of healing — and I shaped them into something whole.

What emerged was not another book about survival.

It was a book about becoming.

About embodiment.

About self-respect.

About women witnessing one another.

About sensuality, grief, boundaries, creativity, nervous system healing, and learning to trust yourself with your own life.

And maybe most of all, it became a book about no longer waiting to be chosen.

This book didn’t end with me finding someone who cherished me.

It ended with me becoming a woman who cherishes herself.

And honestly, that feels like the beginning of everything.

 

If you feel called to explore the memoir, you can find it here: