From Honey to My Reader’s2
I Never Planned to Write This Letter
An update from Honey Kasper, author of Unpredictable: The Walk In and Out of Darkness
I have been sitting with how to begin this for a long time. There is something strange about surviving so much that you lose count.
At some point the number stops being a statistic and just becomes your life. Mine has looked like this: orphaned by parents and raised by a grandmother until kidnapped at age 9 by a mother who didn’t want to be a mother, abuse in its many forms, attempted murder, and never being able to settle anywhere or finish anything because of moving twice a year. Then kidney cancer, a life-threatening semi-truck accident, eye cancer, surgeries every four weeks, and a body that no longer feels parts of itself. Over 111 procedures. And somehow, still here. Still writing to you.
“I did not expect this to be the next chapter. But then again, I never expected any of it.”
The book ended.
The story didn’t.
When Unpredictable was published, I thought the hardest part was behind me. I had survived abuse. I had survived 89 surgeries. I had written it all down and sent it into the world. That felt like a finish line.
What I didn’t know was that publishing a book about trauma has a way of cracking things open you thought were sealed. Old memories surface at unexpected hours. Your name, the very thing people use to find you, carries weight you didn’t ask for. I found myself in therapy, listening to a Christian counselor tell me that my C-PTSD was as severe as what she’d seen in combat veterans. I wasn’t prepared for that.
I wasn’t prepared for a lot of what came after.
“I did not expect this to be the next chapter. But then again, I never expected any of it.”
The book ended. The story didn’t.
When Unpredictable was published, I thought the hardest part was behind me. I had survived abuse. I had survived 89 surgeries. I had written it all down and sent it into the world. That felt like a finish line.
What I didn’t know was that publishing a book about trauma has a way of cracking things open you thought were sealed. Old memories surface at unexpected hours. Your name, the very thing people use to find you, carries weight you didn’t ask for. I found myself in therapy, listening to a Christian counselor tell me that my C-PTSD was as severe as what she’d seen in combat veterans. I wasn’t prepared for that.
I wasn’t prepared for a lot of what came after.
What survival actually looks like
People imagine that surviving something terrible makes you strong in a way that shows. That you walk differently. Speak with more certainty. Have answers.
The truth is quieter than that. It looks like volunteering even when your body asks you to stop. It looks like not driving anymore but finding ways to keep moving. It looks like waking up after another surgery and choosing, again, to reach for something beyond the pain.
Faith is a feeling. But it is also a soul that knows without a doubt that it is not alone. I have always known God is real, not as a concept I chose to believe, but as a presence I have seen, heard, and felt throughout my entire life.
After one surgery when I wasn’t sure I was going to make it, I opened my eyes to see the most beautiful white glowing cross that started at the floor of my bedroom and went all the way up the wall. I have heard angels sing from heaven. I have seen and heard friends and relatives after their passing. As a little girl too afraid to sleep, I felt a fully armored protector standing in my bedroom watching over me.
When my husband and I had the car accident, I asked God if we were alone. I didn’t hear words. I just knew. I felt two angels completely wrapping their arms around both of us, keeping us alive. I didn’t understand how I was even awake after the impact until someone tried to open my husband’s door and I saw the piece of twisted metal between his legs. If they had gotten that door open before the professionals arrived, he would not be here today.
I believe God kept us both here. I believe He wanted us to grow closer as a couple for what is still ahead. So faith for me is not a decision made in the absence of feeling. It is a knowing. A feeling. And above all, it is love.
Since my kidney cancer surgery, my left side has been partially desensitized. I cannot feel parts of my chest and back. After everything my body has endured, it has learned to protect itself by going numb in places. I understand that impulse. I’ve had to learn not to disappear with it.
“Living in survival mode has become second nature. The challenge now is learning how to do more than just survive.”
Why I am still writing to you
I wrote Unpredictable for the person sitting alone with something they cannot explain to anyone around them. For the survivor who has been told, in a hundred subtle ways, that their story is too much.
I am still that person. My story did not resolve when the book did.
And I think there is something important in that: the idea that walking in and out of darkness is not a one-time event. It is a way of life for many of us. The darkness keeps returning. So does the light. What matters is that we keep walking.
I don’t know exactly what shape the next chapter takes. But I know I want to share it with you as it unfolds, not polished and packaged, but honest. The way Unpredictable was always meant to be.
With faith and gratitude,
Honey Kasper
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