Jessica Woodville | Memoir & Musings

“I write to turn pain into purpose, to give voice to the silence I once lived in, and to offer others a map through the dark that once swallowed me whole.”

I didn’t set out to be a writer—

not in this way.

I thought I’d be building fantasy worlds, not documenting the wreckage of real life. I thought I’d be writing about dragons and destiny, not medical gaslighting and missed diagnoses. But life had other plans. And somewhere along the way—between ER visits and unanswered prayers, between the aching hollow of grief and the chaos of a body that no longer obeyed—I started to put words to the things no one else could see.

To the childhood bruises you couldn’t photograph.

To the trauma echoing long after the screaming stopped.

To the medical notes that mislabeled me.

To the nights I stayed awake, terrified my daughters would wake up without a mother.

Writing became the way I stitched myself back together.

Not neatly. Not quietly. But truthfully.

Every word I’ve ever written has been a breadcrumb back to myself. A resistance to erasure. A reclamation of identity. When the systems failed me—medicine, education, family—I learned that language could be both weapon and balm. And sometimes the only thing that reminded me I still existed was the scratch of my own pen.

I don’t write because I want attention.

I write because I want connection.

For most of my life, I didn’t have a voice. Not really. I had whispers. I had trauma responses mistaken for personality. I had survival strategies mistaken for strength. But I didn’t have a place where I could speak without flinching.

So now, I write for her—the little girl inside me who still wonders if anyone cares. Who sat quietly in rooms where her truth would’ve made people uncomfortable. Who believed that being lovable meant being silent. Writing is how I show her we were never the problem. It’s how I give her back what the world tried to take: her voice, her wonder, her power.

And the wild thing is—I always knew I’d be a writer.

I just thought it would be fiction.

Not this raw, unfiltered truth I once tried to bury.

But maybe they’re not so different.

Maybe healing is its own kind of fantasy—one we fight to make real.

If you’ve ever felt unseen, if your pain has ever been dismissed, if you’ve ever wondered if anyone could possibly understand—you are why I write.

This is more than storytelling. This is survival alchemy.

This is how I transmute isolation into belonging, how I gather the scattered parts of myself and hold them out to you, palm open, saying: Me too. I’m still here. You can be too.

And maybe—just maybe—if enough of us speak,

the silence will stop echoing.

💬 Want more?

If this piece spoke to you, my memoir Smoking in Garages tells the fuller story of how I survived a system built to forget girls like me—and how I found my way back to myself through writing.

And if you prefer your healing with a little fire and poetry, Fury & Grace is a collection written for every woman who’s ever been called too much, too loud, or too broken.

You can find both here: Fury and Grace and Smoking in Garages

Every book sale supports me and my daughters as we continue building a life rooted in safety, softness, and fierce truth.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for seeing me.