It didn’t begin with a business plan. It began with a quiet nudge — the feeling that the things I had lived, loved, and lost were asking to be written down.
Not to be polished. Not to be fixed. Just to be told.
So here I am, offering my story the way it really unfolded — in hospital rooms and long seasons, in ordinary days that suddenly became anything but, in love that kept changing shape and somehow stayed.
I’m grateful you found your way here.
You’re welcome to wander, to read, to linger. These pages were made for people who have been through something — even if they don’t yet have the words for it!
My name is Stacey Waterbury. I am a writer, a wife, a mother, and someone who has lived inside illness, trauma, and a life that changed suddenly and forever. I live in the mountains of western North Carolina with my husband, my daughter, and a very good dog. I have two grown children, and a long, complicated, deeply loved family story that keeps finding its way onto the page. Before all of this, I worked in medicine. Later, I taught. And for a long time, I searched — for peace, for understanding, for a way to feel safe inside my own body.
I found spirituality. I found meditation. I found meaning.
What I didn’t find, at first, was trauma — and how much of my life had been shaped by it. So even as I tried to grow and heal, something always felt out of reach. Then I became ill. After a yellowjacket sting, I developed Mast Cell Activation Syndrome. My world grew small. My body began reacting to food, air, light, and stress. Later came autonomic nervous system dysfunction — a body that could no longer regulate itself the way it once had. And while I was still trying to understand all of that, my husband had a brain aneurysm. That was the moment everything truly shifted. Not because it was the hardest thing — though it was — but because it forced me to see how deeply survival had been living inside my nervous system for decades. The books I write now come from that place. From hospital rooms and long nights. From caregiving and grief. From a body that learned to be afraid — and slowly learned how to soften. Dear John tells the story of loving someone through catastrophic brain injury. Other books in the Dear Collection speak to illness, trauma, and the parts of us that kept going when things were unbearable. I don’t write because I have answers. I write because I have lived inside the questions. And because I know how lonely it can feel to be there. So this is me — not as a guide, not as an expert — but as a woman telling the truth about the life she was given, and the life she is still learning how to live. If you recognize something of yourself in these pages, I’m glad you’re here. You don’t have to explain why. Welcome and I see you!
"Trauma doesn't disappear by being ignored. It softens when the body finally feels safe enough to let go."
"What was once held for survival can, in time, be released for peace."
