The Terror of Being Seen

In just 16 days, my first published book will be for sale.

In just 16 days, I will cross the invisible line between “wannabe writer” and “actual, legit, published author.” Being a baby author might be one of the most emotionally tormented journeys I’ve ever taken as a human.

I’ve known what it is to be surrounded in a foreign land, to taste fear thick as dust in the back of my throat, to walk away breathing and still wonder what parts of me didn’t make it out. I’ve stood in blood and loss on our farm, witnessing death in its rawest, most visceral forms.

Because the vulnerability of publishing a book—of offering something shaped from your whole heart to the world—is a different kind of brutal. It’s not life-threatening, but it threatens everything else: your sense of self, your faith in your voice, your quiet hope that what you’ve written matters—and that you’ve given it words worthy enough to carry its weight.

Creating art and pushing it into the world is a fragile, holy thing. And yet—even more dangerous is the idea of never creating at all. I’m about to turn 42. And for as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be an author. Not just a person who writes, but someone who finishes. Someone who can hold their story in their hands and offer it to strangers.

It took me this long to actually do it. Why?

Part of it, of course, is time. When you’re raising kids, working multiple jobs, running a farmstead goat dairy, making cheese, and packing gear into the mountains with horses, the hours you can call your own are few and hard-won. The careers that have called me to task are not exactly the kind that come with quiet mornings on my laptop. But time wasn’t the only barrier—although it was the easiest to blame.

The truth is: committing to a dream means you’re giving yourself the chance to fail. And failure never feels good. Not when it’s something that matters. But eventually, I reached a point in my life where the thought of not trying felt worse than the risk of rejection. I knew, with bone-deep certainty, that on my deathbed I would regret never having a book in the world with my name on the spine.

So I did it. I committed. I allowed myself to start building a world that inspired me. Eventually, the characters in my head became so real I was left with no choice but to let them out. Writing the book was an emotional roller coaster of extreme highs and extreme lows. So I did it. I committed. I allowed myself to start building a world that inspired me. Eventually, the characters in my head became so real I was left with no choice but to let them out.

Writing the book was an emotional roller coaster—one day I’d finish a chapter and feel lit from within, like maybe, just maybe, I was writing something that mattered. And then, for a week straight, I’d hate everything that came out of my brain. The voice would feel off. The sentences clunky. The plot too thin or too strange. I'd find myself staring at the page wondering who I thought I was, daring to write fiction when the world was already full of better books.

But I kept going. Because even on the worst days, I knew: not writing felt worse.

No Road but the Wild is my first book. And now I’m about to publish it.

Not because I think it’s perfect. It isn’t.

Not because I think everyone will love it. They won’t.

I’m publishing it because I made a promise—a sacred pact with the younger version of myself who dreamed in stories and carried notebooks like armor. I told her we would try. That we would dare.

Of course, the fear still lingers. For every reader who loves it, there will be others who don’t. Who don’t get it. Who would have written it differently. Who might say it’s boring, or too strange, or not what they wanted.

And to those readers, I say—go write your own book.

Because this one is mine. It’s the book I needed to write, the way I needed to write it.

And for anyone else out there trying to birth something into the world, please hear this:

You are allowed to be scared. You are allowed to feel joy and terror in equal measure. But don’t let fear be the author of your story.

We don’t write because we’re certain. We write because we’re called.

Because deep down, we know the fragile triumph of finishing—and the terror of being seen—are worth it.