Deleting my Manuscript

To the Ones Who Have Walked With Me

For months, I lived inside a manuscript that asked everything of me. It was intoxicating. All-consuming. Sacred. And, at times, terrifying.

The character I created was more than a voice. She moved through my body.She shaped my days. She blurred the line between art and identity. Writing her was like holding lightning in my hands. Beautifully dangerous.

But slowly, I began to feel the cost of this creative brilliance.

Bethany was born from pain. From traumamania. From a season of survival I had not yet named. And though she carried power, she also carried weight I could no longer hold.Her voice started to echo louder than mine.I couldn’t sleep without hearing her.I couldn’t rest without writing her.I started to disappear.

So I made a choice. A hard one. A holy one.

I deleted the manuscript. 178 pages. Over 40,000 words

I didn’t walk away because I failed.I walked away because it was time.

Time to listen.

To stop bleeding for belief.

To write from the peace I have spent a decade cultivating and finally embody daily.

This is not the end of my writing. It is the beginning of a new kind of authorship. Where I can stay in my body. Where joy has a seat at the table. Where I don’t have to break to be heard.

To those of you who have supported me, read my work, believed in my voice—thank you. Your presence has mattered more than you know. Your encouragement held me steady while I wrote, and your quiet witnessing gives me courage now as I release this version of my story.

I do not regret what I made.It was necessar and it brought me here.

This Isn’t a Plot Twist It’s a Homecoming.

There was a day not long ago when I felt shaky again. A bit sad. Nervous. Unbound.

Like the world was tilting just enough to make my knees weak.

But then I looked at my manuscript—the one I thought would set me free—and I saw it.It had become a black mirror. A voice born of pain. It was sharp, aching, clever, and brilliant. And it was finished.

Not in the way books end, but in the inhale and exhale of new life.

           So I burned it.           In honor.          To release.

... because life is too beautiful to live in old drafts.

This is what it feels like to claim my life. To say yes to love without fear of losing myself inside it.

To be seen—feral, calm, ferociously alive and whole.

I am ready to begin again.

With love and clarity,

Caroline