Eventually, a doctor comes in and will say:
"We've never seen this before".
At some point, I started realizing this applies to significantly more than my medical records.
I've had illnesses and tumors more rare than being struck by lightning. I've been addicted to drugs. I've dated many con artists and men with double lives. Reunited with my high school sweetheart. I've been arrested. Assaulted. Hospitalized. Pickpocketed. Gaslit. Medicated. Unmedicated. I've had mental illness take over my life and medications nearly end it.
I've also been slimed on Nickelodeon.
I've dressed like a rainbow and handed lemons to strangers.
I've organized thousands of acts of kindness, built a business around happiness, written books, made art in public, celebrated absurd holidays, given awards to dogs, and spent years teaching overwhelmed adults how to have more fun being alive.
Somehow, these are stories about the same person.
Me.
And I think it's finally time I told you the whole story.
For most of my career, I've written about personal development, positive psychology, happiness, play, and what eventually became my Merriment Method.
I've used pieces of my own life as examples.
This time, I'm flipping it.
My life is the subject.
The lessons come second.
I want to write about... mental illness and addiction.
Childhood and family.
Sex, trauma, and abortion.
Con artists and codependency.
Chronic pain and rare diagnoses.
Shame. Money. Medicine. Relationships. Death. Creativity. Joy.
And all of the absolutely ridiculous things that somehow happened in between.
Some essays will be devastating.
Some will be hilarious.
Some will probably be both.
Because that's what my life has actually been.
I remember the last time I ended up face down in a field with my shoes missing and realized I needed to do something about my mental health.
I remember putting rainbow paint on my face before trauma therapy because I was terrified to say his name.
I remember the first month I went without doing ketamine.
I remember opening the box containing my first published book.
I remember the first message from someone who told me that book changed their life.
I remember asking my mother for an apology she couldn't give me.
I remember almost quitting my business. And then almost quitting again. And again. And again.
There are many montages.
Mistakes follow epiphanies.
I have yet to wake up healed.
All I've had was a life.
That I've continued to keep living. Despite all odds.
Good question.
I have more stories than I have weeks.
I haven't decided exactly which 52 will make it into this experiment yet. That's part of the fun.
But the running list currently includes things like...
The time I woke up in a K-hole on the street.
The professional con artists I've dated. Yes, plural.
Being the other woman more times than I care to count without knowing I was.
Qualifying for TMS after being considered medication-resistant.
Having a tumor rarer than being struck by lightning.
Finding a medication that dramatically helped my mental illness... and discovering I was deathly allergic to it.
Having to beg to go to therapy as a teenager.
Being diagnosed over the years with autism, OCD, Tourette's, bipolar disorder, PTSD, ADHD, trichotillomania, panic disorder, Seasonal Affective Disorder, dissociative fugue, automatonophobia... and more.
Cutting myself for years.
Working for five years at a psychiatric rehabilitation program with 100 mentally ill adults and quietly wondering why some of their diagnoses and medication lists were shorter than mine.
Being fired from psychotherapy.
Doing enough drugs to leave a hole in my nose.
Being a dancer for 11 years and developing anorexia and body dysmorphia.
Weighing more than 300 pounds.
Thunderclap migraines after sex.
Getting slimed on Nickelodeon.
Having a man break into my hotel room.
Being denied a protective order after a judge told me, "Your boyfriend can't rape you".
Getting pregnant by an ex.
Getting back together with my first boyfriend 22 years later.
Being arrested.
Getting hit by a parked car.
Botched surgeries.
Having synesthesia, which means my senses occasionally refuse to stay in their assigned departments.
Being asked to take the SAT at 13 because adults thought I might be a genius.
Going to private Christian school.
Telling my parents at eight years old that I felt bad for them because they still believed in organized religion.
Moving out of my mother's house in the middle of the night at 19. Being so desperate to leave that I ended up sleeping on a couch for five years.
Cussing out Ric Flair.
And experiencing a strange number of life's milestones earlier than my peers: mental illness, chronic pain, weight stigma, existential questions, and eventually learning to build my identity around things other than the milestones I wasn't interested in chasing.
I could keep going.
Unfortunately for me, I haven't even gotten to all the weird stuff yet.
I'm not interested in turning every terrible experience into a blessing.
Some things just fucking sucked.
I'm interested in something messier: Integration.
Looking honestly at what happened, what it did to us, what we did because of it, and what choices we have now.
I don't think adversity automatically makes us stronger.
I think what we do with adversity determines what it becomes. Who we become.
The first essay will be published Thursday, September 17, 2026.
A new essay will follow every Thursday for one full year.
Each weekly drop includes:
The essays will live together inside a private collection on Mighty Networks.
Whenever you join, you'll immediately unlock every essay and audio recording that has already been published.
Then you'll receive each new essay as it drops for the remainder of the year.
Join before Essay #1?
You get #1 through #52 as they're released.
Discover this strange little literary experiment at Essay #37?
You'll immediately get Essays #1–37, plus every remaining essay as it comes out.
Everyone receives the complete 52-essay collection.
This is not a monthly subscription.
You're getting the entire year-long project.
Before I publish the first essay, I'm opening the doors to the people willing to say:
I want to read this before you've even written it.
And I'm rewarding you for taking that chance on me.
You'll receive:
When the year concludes, I'll take what we've created together and turn it into the finished digital edition of The 1 in 10,000 Girl: Essays From A Statistically Improbable Life.
The essays may be edited, reordered, expanded, curated, or otherwise transformed into the book they were slowly becoming all along.
And because you were here before Essay #1... you'll get it automatically.
The first essay drops Thursday, September 17, 2026.
And then the price increases from $130 to $182.
New readers will still receive the entire 52-essay collection and all 52 audio recordings, including everything previously released.
But the completed digital book will not be included.
When the finished book is eventually released, it will become a separate product available for purchase.
Because I've started realizing how much of my life I've never documented.
And I don't want to forget it.
I've spent years turning my experiences into lessons, programs, podcasts, workshops, books, art, events, and ways to help other people.
But sometimes I moved so quickly toward asking "What can I do with this?"
that I skipped: "What actually happened to me?"
My memory isn't getting better. Time isn't slowing down.
And the list of stories I keep telling myself I'll write "someday" has gotten absurdly long.
So I'm giving someday a deadline: One essay a week. For one year.
I don't know exactly what this book will look like when we reach Essay #52. That's part of the experiment.
I just know I have stories I want to leave behind.
I'm still a person. I still make mistakes.
There are things in this book I've integrated beautifully.
There are things I understand intellectually and continue to fuck up spectacularly.
There are things I'm still angry about.
People I still miss who hurt me.
Questions I may never answer.
I don't want to write backward from a happy ending and pretend every chapter was secretly leading here.
I want to write from here.
As the person I am now.
Someone who has experienced enough darkness to understand why people become cynical...
and somehow still believes people are good.
Someone who has spent an enormous amount of time thinking about death...
and built her life's work around enjoying being alive.
Someone whose life could have become a tragedy...
and instead decided to wear rainbows be a rainbow.
Maybe that's the strangest part of the story.
The hope.
52 essays. 52 audio recordings. One year. One very improbable girl. And, eventually, one book.
Come read it while I'm still writing it.
Or pay $65/month for 2 months.
Get the complete year of The 1 in 10,000 Girl plus the finished digital book when the experiment is complete.
Founding Reader enrollment ends Wednesday, September 16.
Essay #1 drops Thursday, September 17th.
