This essay is part of the Between Chapters project, inspired by the book. What chapters are you between? How did you get from one chapter to another? Share your story here.
What Chapter Are You…
Leaving:
Helping others find their voices while my own work happened quietly behind the scenes.
In:
Learning that visibility requires grieving the safety of remaining unseen.
Entering:
Playing and having fun!
I expected writing my memoir to be the hardest part. I didn’t expect publishing it to feel like grief
For the past five years, Radical Return has lived quietly beside me. It has taken shape as drafts, paintings inspired by dreams and psychedelic journeys, drawings layered with memory, choreographed dances filmed in places that became part of the story, voice memos captured before an insight disappeared, and conversations with trusted friends. Long before it became a memoir, it became a way of living. The medicine journeys, artwork, and dances belonged to a small circle of people who helped me shape them with care. Soon, they will belong to anyone who picks up the book.
As my publication date approaches, people keep asking whether I’m excited. I am. But excitement isn’t the feeling that catches me off guard. Grief is.
We often think of grief as belonging to death, to illness, to losses we can clearly see. But there is another kind of grief, quieter and less visible, that arrives not only with endings but also with becoming. Radical Return tells the story of reclaiming my body after experiences that taught me silence. It also names systemic issues within my profession that too often remain hidden. Writing was an intensely private act. Publication turns that private act into a public offering. The closer October comes, the more I realize I’m mourning something I hadn’t expected to lose: anonymity.
For nearly two decades, I have worked as a psychologist and psychoanalyst. My profession values listening more than speaking. My work has been about making space for someone else’s story while remaining in the background. I am deeply comfortable being the witness. A memoir asks something entirely different. It asks me to become the one being witnessed.
What I didn’t realize is that this invitation would not end with the book. Until this year, I had spent fifty-eight years happily living under what my friends jokingly call a “social media rock.” I built a career without Instagram. My days were filled with patients, supervision, teaching, training, and writing. Recording videos of myself or thinking about algorithms simply was not part of the plan. Then I learned what every first-time author eventually learns: writing the book is only half the work. If you want readers to find it, you have to show up.
At first, social media felt incompatible with who I was. It seemed performative and self-promotional. But instead of talking about myself, I began interviewing people whose lives intersected with my memoir: psychologists, psychedelic therapists, artists, choreographers, filmmakers, energy healers, and friends with remarkable stories. To my surprise, I loved it. The interviews reminded me why I wrote Radical Return in the first place. They were not about selling a book. They were about curiosity, generosity, and creating conversations that extended beyond my own story.
Then the comments started appearing: “We want to hear more from you.” Each time, I felt both touched and exposed. I know how to ask thoughtful questions. I know how to help others find language for experiences they cannot yet name. I’ve spent my career illuminating other people’s stories. Learning to trust that my own voice belongs in the conversation feels different.
As I’ve sat with that discomfort, I’ve realized it is not really fear. It’s grief: the grief of losing anonymity, of surrendering the illusion that privacy guarantees safety, of knowing that no matter how carefully I write, someone will misunderstand me. It is the grief of wondering whether people I love will recognize themselves in stories that were never meant to indict them, and of accepting that some relationships may shift simply because I chose to tell the truth.
There is another grief I hadn’t anticipated: responsibility. Once your voice reaches beyond your own circle, it no longer belongs only to you. Readers bring their own histories, hopes, and wounds. Some will find themselves in these pages; others will not. Some may disagree with me completely. That is no longer mine to control. There is something both terrifying and tender about releasing work that was born in solitude into the hands of strangers.
As publication gets closer, I find myself thinking less about reviews or sales than about identity. The woman who wrote this memoir in private cannot accompany it into the world unchanged. She needed privacy, trusted readers, and the freedom to change her mind before the words became permanent.
The woman stepping into this next chapter is learning something different: that visibility is not the same as self-promotion, that sharing your own story can create permission for someone else to tell theirs, and that stepping forward does not mean abandoning the work of witnessing. It means becoming willing to be witnessed, too.
Maybe that’s true of every meaningful transition. From the outside, these moments look like beginnings. From the inside, they often feel like endings. We celebrate the courage it takes to answer a calling, but we talk much less about what we have to grieve in order to live it: the safety of remaining unknown, relationships that may change, identities that no longer fit, and the responsibility that comes with having a voice.
Perhaps that is the quiet work of every new chapter: not simply turning the page, but thanking the person who carried us through the last one.
As I step into this next chapter, I don’t feel fearless. I feel grateful: grateful for the psychologist who spent years helping other people find their voices, for the writer who protected these stories until they were ready, and for the woman who believed that listening was enough. She carried me this far. Now it’s my turn to trust that my own voice belongs in the conversation, too.
Follow Natalie R. Cohen, PsyD on Substack and Instagram.
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