Mary coined the term The Long Middle to name the quiet, disorienting stretch of life after a crisis ends but before a new life fully takes shape. Her work gives language to an experience millions of people live through, but rarely name.

Storyteller of the Long Middle

Mary Monoky writes about The Long Middle—the quiet, uncertain stretch of life that follows crisis, illness, or upheaval, when the old life has ended and the new one has not yet taken shape.

Drawing on more than twenty-five years of lived experience with illness, along with a background in social work, Mary brings a grounded, human lens to stories often flattened by medical language or inspirational framing. Her work is less interested in recovery arcs than in what it actually feels like to live inside change.

After outliving a season of hospice, the years that followed reshaped her understanding of strength, surrender, and the slow, ordinary work of building a life that can be inhabited again. That understanding informs everything she writes—not as testimony, but as orientation.

Mary’s work blends personal narrative, presence, and narrative medicine. She invites readers into a truer account of healing: not the triumphant version we’re encouraged to admire, but the uneven, ongoing return to self that happens one ordinary day at a time.

Her purpose is simple:
to offer language, clarity, and companionship to those navigating the Long Middle.

Her writing has appeared in Brevity Blog, and she is currently completing The Compass Points Framework, a narrative nonfiction guide for life after everything changes.ass Points Framework, a narrative-nonfiction guide for life after survival.

What I Write About

Mary’s stories live where the body, memory, and meaning intersect. She writes about:

• what happens after a crisis ends, when life doesn’t return to what it was

• the body’s memory after illness and prolonged uncertainty

• the slow, uneven rebuilding of identity and daily life

• presence, stillness, and the work of staying with what is

• the quiet return of beauty after loss or upheaval

• the Long Middle — the in-between season of becoming

Readers often describe her work as a hand on the shoulder — a steady, companionable presence for the days when simply staying upright takes everything they have.

You can reach me through the contact form at the bottom of my home page

I’m Mary Monoky.

I write personal stories about what happens after life changes in ways you didn’t choose — when the old map no longer works, and the new one hasn’t appeared yet.

Much of my writing comes from lived experience with illness, but my work isn’t about diagnoses or recovery arcs. It’s about identity, belonging, and the quiet work of learning how to live again — not all at once, not heroically, but honestly.

I call this space the long middle:
the stretch between crisis and whatever comes next.

For many years, my life moved in and out of medical systems, interrupted by uncertainty and long periods of waiting. During that time, I learned that the hardest parts weren’t always physical. They were relational. Existential. The subtle ways a life can shrink, shift, or become unrecognizable — even while it continues.

Writing became the place where I could tell the truth about that experience without needing to resolve it.

I don’t write to inspire or instruct.
I write to name what’s often left unspoken.

On this site, you’ll find stand-alone essays that explore illness, identity, love, loss, and the ordinary moments that help us find our footing again. Some pieces are quiet. Some carry humor. All are written from inside the living of things, not from the other side.

If you’ve ever felt yourself living between chapters — not who you were, not yet who you’ll become — you’re in the right place.