There's a version of me that lives in my notebooks.
She says everything. She names names. She doesn't soften the edges or choose her words carefully. She doesn't wonder how it will land or who will feel uncomfortable when they read it. She just writes — raw, unfiltered, and completely free.
For a long time, that version of me never made it to the page. Not the public page, anyway.
I would write something honest — something that cracked me open — and then I would read it back and start editing. Not for grammar. Not for flow. I was editing myself out of it. Smoothing down the parts that felt too exposed. Replacing the real words with safer ones. Until what was left was still beautiful, but it wasn't mine anymore. Not fully.
I told myself I was protecting people. Being responsible. Considerate.
But the truth? I was protecting myself from being seen.
There is a particular kind of terror in letting someone read something that is actually true about you. Not a version of the truth. Not truth wrapped in enough metaphor that you can always say "oh it's not really about that." I mean the kind of writing where you finish a sentence and immediately want to delete it — because it's too accurate. Too close. Too you.
That's the writing I was afraid to publish.
And that's exactly the writing that needed to exist.
I think about the reader who picks up one of my books at 2am, unable to sleep, feeling like nobody in their life could possibly understand what they're carrying. I think about what it would mean for her to find a sentence — her sentence — written by someone who was brave enough to leave it on the page. Someone who didn't edit it out. Someone who felt the fear and published it anyway.
That's the contract I made with myself when I started The Ink.
Not to be perfect. Not to be polished. But to be present — fully, honestly, without the safety net of ambiguity. Because the women who need these words don't need another carefully curated version of someone else's healing. They need the real thing. The messy, unfinished, still-figuring-it-out version.
I used to think being a writer meant having all the answers before you sat down.
Now I know the writing is how you find them.
So if you've ever written something true and then deleted it — I see you. I was you. And I want you to know that the version of yourself you're most afraid to show the world is probably the one someone out there is desperately waiting to meet.
Don't edit her out.
— Kaminski 🖤