I didn’t set out to be a writer—it’s something I came to in adulthood mostly as a product of compulsion versus intention. But writing is most of what I’ve been doing the last few years as I completed my second memoir, Men, Myself, & I: Revelations of an Opened Marriage (A Memoir and How Not To), which will be available via Substack from April 2023.

Several years ago, I was so embarrassed to write about sex that the first time I tried, I gave the document a fake name and hid it on my computer. Somehow, something like three years later, I started writing a whole memoir about my foray into nonmonogamy and the somewhat disastrous consequences. It turns out, if you follow the muse, you never know where you’ll end up. In the course of writing this memoir, I gained more self-awareness than probably could have in years of therapy. All because I allowed myself to write about the thing I wanted to—needed to—but wasn’t supposed to.

Though it may sound like I’m being precious, writing freed me…of old narratives, of shame. Lately I have realized: the gift is not in the outcome, but the process. Keep going.