By Stephanie Carey
Photos by Travis Young

What if you could sit down with your younger self? What would you say? What warnings would you give? After an agonizing break-up, I found myself wishing I could do just that—give myself all the wisdom I learned the hard way. Since time travel gummies don’t exist, I did the next best thing: I wrote a novel about it. 

Writing this story was a personal journey of distraction and healing after a rough breakup. Yes, I, a 46-year-old woman who has been married and divorced twice, found myself boo-hooing over a man I wasn’t even married to. I did not have “monumental heartbreak” on my 2024 BINGO card, but that’s where I found myself in March of last year. I honestly dismissed the validity of “just dating” breakups, thinking I had my battle scars from two divorces. Nothing could touch me. 

I’ve always been proud of the strength and resilience I found to dig myself out of the crater left behind by the meteor that took out my first marriage in 2008. It was more like a Lifetime Movie plot than anything I never want to experience again. Yet, at 30, I rebuilt my whole entire life and even found love again with my second soon-to-be husband.

I would proudly tell other women going through a divorce that they could do this because, queue the high pitched self-entitled tone “I survived it myself and found love again.” I even documented my wedding planning adventure for the world to read on a WordPress blog. It was an era when mommy bloggers my age were blogging about the trenches of motherhood. Meanwhile, I felt youthful and unique blogging about my second wedding. How very 2010 of me.

I skipped right back into online dating thinking, “I’ve got this. I did it before. I can do it again.” Spoiler: It was not the same. 

Making my life and marriage public only made my divorce in 2021 even more humbling. I can also say divorce at 44 is a different ballgame than divorce at 30. I wish I didn’t know this. The second divorce was less sudden and less heartbreaking than the first. The biggest mistake I made was thinking I had the playbook to survive. 

I skipped right back into online dating thinking, “I’ve got this. I did it before. I can do it again.” Spoiler: It was not the same. 

When I did meet someone, it was a meet-cute situation at a live music show. The chemistry was unmatched, and I found myself falling hard and fast for a guy I would never live with, but I would date for two years. I haphazardly threw around “soulmate” with too much certainty, and I genuinely believed this person was someone I had known in past lives. I became a cliche of a person in love, and I didn’t want to stop the train as it barrelled forward, powered by all my hopes and dreams. 

While my head was in the clouds, I didn’t really pick up that he did not match my enthusiasm for the relationship. We tell ourselves what we want to hear. We see what we want to see. I leaned into the fact that he entertained my every thought shared in our daily exchange of text messages. He always said good night and good morning. Sheesh, I don’t think my ex-husbands and I always shared such niceties. He also seemed to really want to spend time with me, always initiating dates and making future (but not too far into the future) plans. But I, so caught up in blind love, missed the big things, like he never said he loved me. He didn’t talk about a real future together. He joked about ghosting me someday. (They always tell you who they are.)

Fresh off a lovely business trip to La Jolla, California, I was buzzing to tell him all about my California adventures and how equally cute and stinky the sea lions were. He texted me to call him, where he ended things abruptly. Not suddenly to him. I know this. He is a contemplative man who likely had a pros and cons list running about our relationship for months, if not years. 

And here is where it, or rather I, went off the rails. I did not know how to cope with the sadness of this breakup. I did not know what to do with the unexpectedness of it all. Middle-aged women don’t get heartbroken by a boyfriend. 

The only thing I could remotely compare it to was the breakup of my 20s. The one that ripped my heart out and then defined all future relationships. I was crashing out hard. 

I remember closing my eyes and trying to recall what I did in my 20s to get over that pain. And then I remembered, I wrote. I was the Lifestyle reporter at a daily newspaper, and after I scooped myself off my bathroom floor, I wrote straight through the pain. 

And that’s when the concept came to me, and I can only describe it as a new mission in life. I had to write a time travel novel. I didn’t just need to write to get over him—I needed to make sense of it all. The main character would start time traveling back to her 2001 self, and it would be a story of an older self and a younger self. I knew this with certainty. I also knew I had to publish it on Galentine’s Day, one of my favorite non-holidays. I love everything about it—from excessive pink and red to all the hearts and a lovely no-pressure dinner out with your girls. This novel would be my love letter to the broken-hearted girlies of all ages. 

Only I hadn’t really written since those blogging days of yore. I even owned The Pitch, an alternative news magazine in Kansas City, and served as publisher for four years. While at the helm, I only wrote a few marketing letters and letters from the publisher until another publisher friend said that was kind of gauche, and not the best use of valuable print space. He was not wrong.

I had an outline and partial draft of a memoir, but that remained mostly untouched. I had it in my head that I wasn’t a great writer. Years of writing for marketing purposes and not flexing any creative muscles tried to talk me out of this. My self-talk was working overtime to tell me I could never.

And then Taylor Swift dropped The Tortured Poets Department. Mind you, I was not a Swiftie. Prior to this album, I can only describe myself as lukewarm to the phenomenon of Taylor Swift. I loved how happy her music made many of my favorite people, including my young niece. But at 46, I felt a little too old for her songs about heartbreak. Until I wasn’t. What can I say? The album changed me. 

The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived was not just a song I related to. It was an anthem. So, I took inspiration from one of the greatest lyricists of our time and I began writing my own heartbreak anthem, Blindsided. Actually, most of the time when I was writing it, I was listening to songs from 2001. I later compiled my favorite songs from the era into a Spotify playlist that coincides with the book. 

I was more than halfway through my first draft, and I knew I needed help if I was going to publish this thing. First, I am not an editor. I asked a few respected writer friends, but no one had the bandwidth. So I posted on Facebook a vague “I need an editor” post. 

That’s how I was introduced to Cynthia Fails, the brains behind Launch Crate Publishing. Cynthia has taken her experiences in self-publishing and helps other authors navigate the process. She also offers services such as editing, pagination, and cover design. 

Our first Zoom meeting took place in August, 2024 where she loved the concept for my book, but warned that publishing by February 13, 2025 was a pretty aggressive goal. But here’s the thing. I needed an aggressive goal. I needed to push myself because I felt like I had nothing left but to show up for myself. So I signed the contract and was off to the races. 

I also deleted all dating apps. My book became my boyfriend. It could never break my heart. And on my 47th birthday, I turned in my first draft. By December, I was working on my final rewrites, and in January we put the finishing editorial touches on her. 

On February 13th, I stood in front of a gathering of friends and family, wearing copious amounts of pink and red, at Bliss Books & Wine and presented my book to all the heartbroken girlies. That’s all I ever wanted. In the end, I didn’t need to time travel to my younger self. She was with me all along, reminding me that heartbreak isn’t just for the young. And neither is healing.

5 things I learned while writing Blindsided

• I apparently do not like contractions. During the editing process, there were so many instances where I could have used a contraction but chose not to. 
• My mom is a comma whisperer. In a bold move between any mother/daughter, my mom asked to help edit my final draft. This was oddly bonding in a way I could have never expected, and one of my favorite outcomes of writing Blindsided.
• I’m an all-or-nothing person. In 2005, I trained for a marathon after my longest run prior being a 10K. In the same way, I dove into my novel and bypassed short stories. 
• Everything related to self-publishing. From ISBNs to all the options available for self-publishing. (I went with IngramSpark.) It was all new to me!
• I have more stories to tell. I can’t stop thinking about what I’ll write next. This will not be my last novel. 

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