Michelle Ray's Blog

Thank you , , and many others for tuning into my live video with ! Join me for my next live video in the app. This was such a fun conversation; I forgot it was live!

I was in a coffee shop, so the audio isn’t the best, but here are a few good takeaways.

Takeaways:

You don’t need a traditional publisher, but invest in a good cover and formatting. Those are non-negotiables.

People don’t remember beautiful sentences. They remember how it made them feel (best-case scenario: the beautiful sentences ALSO make them feel something).

Set boundaries around your creative time, or you’ll never protect it.

The gatekeeping is mostly internal. People genuinely want to support you.

Don’t just promote the book. Tell your story as a writer. Make yourself visible, not just the book.

Highlights with approximate timestamps:

~5 min — Sherry on community:

“This platform, you can actually connect with people that you would want to be friends with in real time. I would want to meet you for coffee in real life.”

~9 min — Sherry on finding her voice at the residency:

“In the stillness is where my voice surfaced. I was writing not just to write for somebody or write for my publication or write for some deadline… it was writing just what was surfacing. And I really loved my voice there.”

~10 min — Michelle on boundaries as a creative mom:

“Find your own socks. Get your shit together. I’m doing my thing. You guys do your thing. But that’s our own fault, right? For not setting and keeping the boundary.”

~13 min — Michelle on being your own boss:

“I’m the boss. I want this done. This has been a dream for me. I have to be my own boss and I have to respect that.”

~30 min — Michelle on writing with heart:

“All of that without the heart behind it is nothing. It’s like a beautiful singing voice without the emotion behind it.”

~32 min — Sherry on why vulnerability matters:

“When someone shares something very personal and very insightful, they go, oh my God, I thought that. Oh my God, I felt that. I’m not such a bad person. That’s the connection. For me, that’s the whole reason.”

~46 min — Sherry on Harriet:

“She literally saved my life. That little girl saved my life.”

~56 min — Michelle on self-publishing:

“I wanted absolute and total control. I cannot handle somebody rejecting my memoir. This is my life here.”

Thank you for reading and watching! Check out The Story Space for writing support and ideas, or to join a community of storytellers.

Story Brunch is next Sunday, Nov. 1; come ready to write and celebrate the process. For one-on-one guidance, ask about a Story Discovery session, a perk for paid subscribers.

Upgrade by Oct. 31st to get 50% off.

Check out my memoir!

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Get more from michelle ray in the Substack appAvailable for iOS and AndroidGet the app

Hi Everyone,

I wanted to share this new perk for paid subscribers. You can also check out the perks page for more goodies.

Office Hours

An hour to show up and write. I’ll be writing too, so you won’t be doing it alone. Bring your own project or use one of my prompts. Ask a question anytime, or just put your head down and work. Come for the whole hour or …

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Dear Readers and Storytellers,

October is my favorite month. It’s my birthday, it’s fall, and it’s sweater weather! Plus, this year I accomplished a lifelong dream: I published a book. Then I celebrated with two launch parties.

The first was in Thousand Oaks, where I’ve lived for only a year. I booked a table thinking 10 to 15 people would show up. Thirty came, all genuinely interested in my writing.

The next week, I launched in my hometown in Lawrence, Kansas. One of my best friends, , knitted my book a sweater! Friends I hadn’t seen since high school bought stacks. Every single member of my family already had a well-worn copy they wanted me to sign.

We write in solitude, but readers remind us how crucial community is to the process.

So far, I’ve sold 91 copies, and I’m grateful to everyone who has supported me by reading and sharing my work.

My husband, the scientist obsessed with data, did some research and found that the average indie-published book sells 250 to 300 copies. Not in a month, or even a year. In the lifetime of the book.

So I’m starting a campaign. I’m on a mission to get 300 copies of Lesson (Un)Planned into readers’ hands by December 31.

This is more about celebrating independent authors than selling books, because our stories are more than passion projects. They’re years of drafts, edits, and early mornings, written with the same care as any book on the shelf.

Every book is another step forward.

Giving back

All that support made me want to give something back. So this month, Story Brunch is open to everyone. It’s usually just for paid subscribers, but it’s my birthday month, and you’re all invited.

Sunday, October 25, noon Pacific: Bring your messy writing, messy ideas, half-finished drafts, or ideas in your head. The prompts will help you find what’s worth keeping. Here is the Zoom link.

“You can’t detox your way out of grief, or yoga your way out of shame. The real work happens in the mess.”
—Lesson (Un)Planned, p. 176

Coming up:

Friday, October 16, 11 am Pacific: Link to my live with Esther Harder.

Wednesday, October 21, 4 pm Pacific: I’m going live with Oct. 21st at 4 pm Pacific time.

Join For the Love of Indie

If you’ve read Lesson (Un)Planned, a review or a share goes further than you’d think. If you haven’t, the book is here.

And if you’ve been thinking about upgrading, now’s the time. For the rest of October, annual memberships are 50% off. New paid subscribers get:

25% off a hard copy of Lesson (Un)Planned

The Lessons I Didn’t Plan, a free companion journal. Thirteen prompts for finding meaning in the mess.

Every Story Space event and workshop, including Story Brunch each month

Get 50% off an annual membership

If you’re new here, check out this welcome post, or browse craft essays, memoir, and the story space.

Thank you to subscribers, new and old. I’m so grateful for your support and, of course, your stories.

Best wishes,
Michelle Ray

I’ve lived in four countries, and I still don’t know if you can really get inside a culture that isn’t yours. In Ecuador, I spoke the language and thought I was assimilating, until a boyfriend commented, “You act like you don’t even live here.” That was over 25 years ago, but it stung (still does). I tried harder, lived with local families, had a long-term Ecuadorian boyfriend, and yes, things improved. But looking back, I had unrealistic expectations. I was never truly going to be Ecuadorian, but I didn’t realize how my position as a teacher gave me incredible insights into the community. For example, when I saw students outside of school, they called me by my first name, and it wasn’t awkward, because their culture valued relationships above formalities. In Bahrain, I wanted to connect too.

Photo credit: Michelle Ray

But the stakes were higher because the language and culture weren’t as accessible, and a distinct expat community let you disappear and never engage with the culture beyond everyday life. That is not why I moved away from my country. I was curious about other cultures and wanted to experience life within them. Years had passed since my Ecuadorian days, and I had outgrown my naive assumption that I could assimilate. So I opened myself up to new experiences in Bahrain, participating in Ramadan events and interacting with the Bahraini teachers at my school, but dating was another story entirely. This is perhaps the last frontier of cultural connection, and certainly the hardest to overcome. It’s a major theme in my memoir, and this early excerpt shows a culture clash.

Khalid was my neighbor, and Ellie was my dog.

I liked some things about Bahrain, but it felt like an island, a fishbowl. The expat community was small; even if I didn’t speak to or know the other Westerners, I still saw the same people at the same bars and restaurants. I wanted to delve into the culture rather than mingle with other foreigners on the fringes of the community I tried to understand. But I didn’t feel like cultural immersion was an option here, or maybe I didn’t know how. It had been so much easier in Ecuador once I learned Spanish, made local friends, and even had an Ecuadorian boyfriend. Learning Arabic may have helped, but Bahrain was a British protectorate, and English was widely used and accepted—poor, but true, reasons I never tried Arabic.

At that point, my cultural explorations were mostly inadvertent and showed up in dating, like Damon, the Ghanaian-Saudi I met on the first night at JJ’s Pub. He should have been a one-night stand, but I convinced myself he was more. I needed him to be more, or I would have to admit that he was just a hookup, and I was probably less to him. We had a few more dates, and I even invited him to dinner, probably a maneuver to legitimize our connection.

I cleaned my villa and made pork-free lasagna. I don’t remember exactly what I wore, but I do recall high heels, which I wore to answer the door when he finally arrived (he was an hour late). I jumped up from the kitchen table and noticed the crust that had formed on my dried-out dinner. Ellie barked and rushed the door, but when I opened it, instead of her usual rote sniff-spection, she sniffed and stood her ground. She didn’t growl or bark, but stood before him as if to say, “What are you doing here?”

Damon said, “I didn’t know you had a dog. Why is it inside?”

Khalid had told me that animals, even pets, were unclean and not allowed inside, but Khalid loved his Dalmatian and had built her an air-conditioned doghouse in his backyard. Damon was not Khalid.

“Yes, this is Ellie. Ellie, meet Damon.” She glared, and he ignored the introduction. I smiled graciously, expecting the apology he would surely offer for being late. But he just smirked and gave me the once-over. His gaze finally landed on my sexy heels, and he said, “Why are you wearing your shoes inside?”

“I don’t know. Why are you so late?” My righteous irritation sounded more like pettiness or stupidity. I was off my game.

“Am I late?” He took his shoes off and walked inside.

“Well, I told you to come over at seven, and it’s now almost eight, so I think that makes you late.”

“Why are you Americans so obsessed with time?” he asked casually, wandering into the kitchen. I slipped out of my heels and followed him. Was he seriously attempting to gaslight me with some lame culture-clash excuse?

“My lasagna is Italian, and it even knows you are late. It just dried up waiting for you.” I said, trying to be cute and possibly avoid this argument; he was right. In his culture, what was happening at the moment took precedence over anything else. In theory, I liked and agreed with the idea, but in practice, I was getting stood up. I let it go and at least tried to salvage the evening. I knew his behavior was terrible, and he was probably using me. Taking advantage of the “easy Western woman.” But in a way, I was using him, too. He was my insight into a culture I knew nothing about.

Excerpted from Lesson (Un)Planned: A Decade of Teaching, Travel, and Transformation

It’s probably obvious to the reader that Damon and I were both tripped up by stereotypes. We also used stereotypes to excuse bad behavior: his lateness and my defensiveness. Of course, there is no simple answer to whether it is truly possible to connect across cultures, but I have realized cultural connection is a relationship; it’s like a marriage. You have to wake up every day committed to communicating, seeking understanding, and giving grace, and above all, looking for commonalities rather than differences.

Have you ever been the foreigner in the room? Tell me about a moment you felt you got inside a place, or one where you realized you never would.

Leave a comment

If you want to hear more about this topic, check out this live interview, and I encourage you to read my memoir, Lesson (Un)planned.

Thank you , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with !

This was probably the most fun live I've done. It was actually a bit mental, how excited I was. I guess you have to know me to understand that my level of excitement here is unprecedented, because despite my RBF and cool exterior, I'm actually just Ren and Stimpy bouncing around singing "Happy Happy Joy Joy." So happy because I did the hard thing and finished a mother f'ing book, and so joyful to have so many people to celebrate with.

Here are some of the highlights!

The trifecta
“I’ve had a baby, I’ve run a marathon, and I’ve published a book. I’m a badass, pretty much.”

Writing your past self
“It’s hard to know when to add retrospection and when to let people just experience this dumbass woman who was making the same mistakes over and over again, but still was having a good time.”

Show ponies and the closet
“Some versions of ourselves we trot out like a show pony. But there are these other versions I just had locked in a closet. I let those poor versions of myself out and let them have their day.”

The Dubai grocery store
“It was just so mean, how rough I was on myself. There’s no reason to do that.”

Writing for your son
“My son’s only 11 now, but he might read it someday. I wanted it to be something he could read and understand and be proud of.”

The reading
From Chapter 15, “Rock Bottom”: “So many stories like this. Humiliations recycled into pithy adventures.”

The title fatigue
“I apologize if this is the 657th time you’ve read about my book.” David: “You’re probably going to get a 658th too, so buckle up.”

Read my last post, The Un-moments of LIfe and help support an Indie author by sharing these links.

🎉 Lesson (Un)Planned, a travel memoir with a twist. Please read, review, and/or share it so it can reach readers!

📖 Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HHXW95J8

📱 Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HC8GGQL5

🌎 More about the book: https://bymichelleray.com (https://bymichelleray.com

Thank you for helping this book find its readers! ❤️

Get more from michelle ray in the Substack appAvailable for iOS and AndroidGet the app

Dear Readers,

My memoir is officially published, and I just want to thank you—for the support, the likes, the comments, and for generally keeping me sane and motivated as I completed this journey.

I apologize if this is the 657th time you’ve heard about my book, but I’m just so damn proud of it and excited for you to finally read it.

I wrote Lesson (Un)Planned in part to recognize the “un” moments of my own life: the unplanned, uncomfortable, unfinished parts; the lessons that were hard-won and slow to arrive. Without writing about them, I’m not sure I would have fully understood what they taught me.

My hope is that somewhere in my story, you recognize something of your own.

Thank you for reading, for being here, and for helping me send this book out into the world.

If you’re curious, keep scrolling. You can watch the trailer, read a little of the book, peek behind the scenes of writing it, or—finally!—buy yourself a copy.

Michelle

Sometimes the longest journey takes you home.

Buy on Amazon

About the Book

When I left Kansas at twenty-six, I wanted a bigger life. I hadn’t planned on the Middle East, but it was big, different, and best of all, far, far away.

For the next decade, I taught and traveled across Ecuador, Bahrain, Dubai, India, and beyond. What began as an adventure eventually became something else: a reckoning with the person I’d been carrying with me all along.

Lesson (Un)Planned is about travel and teaching, cultural blunders and complicated relationships, sobriety and yoga—and what happens when the life you planned doesn’t happen, and you have to figure out what to do with the one you actually have.

Read Reviews

Watch the Trailer

Lesson (Un)Planned — Book Trailer

Praise for Lesson (Un)Planned

“Michelle Ray has a stunning ability to paint her settings with immersive detail and put the reader into the journey alongside her... Her travels and lessons gave me pause to reexamine so much of my life, in all its ups and downs. A beautiful, stunning, heart-squeezing first book.”

— Sarah Reichert, Colorado Book Award and Pencraft Award Winner

“An irresistible voice that balances irreverent humor with raw, honest storytelling... This rare, humane, and unvarnished memoir tells the story of a transformation properly earned.”

— Christian Sia, Readers’ Favorite ★★★★★

Read Lesson (Un)Planned

Want to try the book before you buy it? Start here.

Prologue: Invisible Ink

“These pages are either a blur of mistakes I shove back into a box or a portal to reclaim my complete story: the beauty, the recklessness, the moments of transformation.”

READ THE PROLOGUE →

Chapter One: Reinvention

Twenty-six, restless, and ready to get as far away from Kansas as possible. This is where the journey begins.

READ CHAPTER ONE →

Behind the Book

There’s the story on the page, and then there’s the story of writing it.

Why My Husband Needed a Trigger Warning to Read My Book

What happens when the person who knows you now meets the person you were twenty years ago?

READ THE STORY →

Bashing Through Boundaries

A look at what happened when the book I thought I was writing started pushing against the boundaries I’d created for it.

READ BASHING THROUGH BOUNDARIES →

The Parts We Write Around

Sometimes the most important part of a story is the part we keep avoiding.

READ THE PARTS WE WRITE AROUND →

This Book Might Be for You If...

You’re a traveler, teacher, late bloomer, or someone starting over.

You’ve ever gone somewhere new hoping you might become someone new.

You’ve watched everyone else’s life move forward and wondered if you somehow missed the map.

Or your life simply hasn’t followed the expected itinerary.

Sometimes the detour is the lesson.

For Book Clubs

Lesson (Un)Planned is built for conversation. The memoir is structured like a lesson plan, with four units that begin by asking readers to reflect on their own experiences before entering mine.

Think about a time when you thought you were prepared but realized you weren’t. What happened?

The questions invite readers to connect the book’s larger themes: reinvention, belonging, relationships, identity, recovery, and finding your way home, to their own lives, making them natural starting points for a book-club conversation.

Reading Lesson (Un)Planned with your book club? I’d love to join you. When possible, I’m happy to drop in virtually for a short author Q&A.

Come CelebrateONLINE LAUNCH

September 22, noon Eastern

Substack Live

NEWBURY PARK, CALIFORNIA

October 6 · 6–8 PM
Harvest Moon Clubhouse

LAWRENCE, KANSAS

October 11 · 2–5 PM
The Lawrence Beer Company

Drop by and grab your signed copy.

About Michelle

I’m Michelle Ray, a writer, teacher, and yoga instructor, and the author of Lesson (Un)Planned: A Decade of Teaching, Travel, and Transformation.

At States of Matter, I write about memory, identity, travel, writing, and the strange material we accumulate as we live our lives.

READ STATES OF MATTER →

Help This Book Travel

Lesson (Un)Planned is independently published, which means word of mouth will bring most of its readers.

If it makes you think of someone, or you just loved the read, I hope you leave a review, shout it from the rooftops and/or recommend it to a friend, or even gift a copy or two.

After spending six years writing this book, the idea of it traveling from reader to reader feels pretty fitting.

Thank you for helping me send it on its way.

Make my Dreams Come True

Thank you from the bottom of my heart and the very last word. Please share this post and/or this book with someone who needs to laugh, cry, and armchair travel.

Share

When I started writing my book, I kept writing around parts of my life.

Relationships, mostly.

Um, because how humiliating to dissect and display some of my most destructive relationships for the world to see.

I kept telling myself that’s not what the book is about. So, I found myself skipping over the relationships and treating them like minor details, even though they shaped entire years of my life.

This is when I discovered that the parts of your story you least want to tell are often the ones you must tell.

So, with the support of my mentor, who once told me, “Every time you go inward into yourself, I find myself reading breathlessly.” I started trying to do exactly that.

The wedding in Goa was one place I had to go inward.

It would have been easy to stay on the surface of that day: the vibrant wedding rituals, the beautiful Goan culture, the spectacle of it all. But I knew another story lay underneath. Watching my friends move forward with their lives had unsettled me more than I wanted to admit.

I felt like I was stuck in a relationship Groundhog Day, reliving the same destructive patterns on repeat.

How would I get that onto the page? What was I really afraid of?

I didn’t know yet. So I went back to the day itself, looking at photos and talking to the bride, hoping the details would trigger something I had forgotten, or maybe something I hadn’t fully understood in the first place.

We got into a conversation about the wedding's symbolism and why the bride and groom circled the fire. I didn’t remember, or maybe never knew, that it is a ritual called Saptapadi, where each revolution is a vow to one another: Together, the couple will build strength, provide sustenance, create joy, among other commitments. Agni, the sacred flame, witnesses all of this.

And suddenly, the memory was visceral again: the heat, the bright saris of the guests, and my own fear of questions flaring inside me as hot and insistent as the flames.

So I wrote the scene, and the questions and answers became clearer.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published“I could have watched them make a hundred revolutions, even with the heat of the Goan afternoon plus the massive ceremonial fire. Sweat soaked through my dress. Somewhere behind me, a guest fanned herself with the wedding program. I could smell the smoke: sandalwood and ghee, sweet and ancient. The fire crackled and spat. But the heat felt right. It condensed the power of the moment and pressed it into something dense and real.”

Something about the heat and the symbolic circling brought me back to what I had felt that day. The memory was present, but remembering the emotion wasn’t enough. To reconstruct the scene, I had to look more closely at the fear and resentment that had kept me stuck.

I wasn’t simply reliving the moment anymore. I was trying to understand it well enough to let someone else see it.

And that’s when I realized the true value of writing about the past: you get to go back into the story from another perspective. You’re no longer just the person who lived it. You have to understand the experience well enough to prepare it for someone else to see.

Maybe that’s the difference between remembering a story and writing one.

Memory lets us return to what happened. Writing asks us to look again.

I’d love to hear your stories. How have new or different perspectives changed your understanding of what happened and/or why?

Leave a comment

Check out my last post on why my husband wanted a trigger warning for my book.

Please consider upgrading to help support my writing and get a copy of my upcoming book! Annual membership is 50% off all month to celebrate my memoir launch!

Thanks for watching our Live Chat…here are a few highlights.

From Emmett

“I started writing just to find this character, like watch his journey.”

“I loved him, respected him. And then I realized I’m no longer him.”

“Writing the manuscript is like, in my eyes, about 10% of the actual work involved.”

“Always lean back into the person that you know you are and be honest with yourself.”

“If I can connect with one individual, one person, I feel like that’s worth it to me.”

“I want to free people’s mental cages.”

From Michelle

“No writing is wasted writing.”

“I didn’t want anyone else to have control of my story.”

“Who the fuck is this woman? This is not who you are. You’re funny. You’re irreverent.”

“There’s no way to look at your own writing objectively. It’s completely impossible.”

“It took me such a long time to get the tone right, so people could see what I was seeing.”

“The most effective trait of a writer, of a true author, is just persistence.”

Takeaway

Two very different books, same discovery: the draft isn’t the truth yet, and neither is the person you were when you started writing it.

Getting both right is the actual work.

All the Best,

Michelle

My dream of publishing a memoir is finally coming true on Sept. 22, 2026. Annual subscriptions are 50% off and include a copy of the ebook. In addition to the other perks. A paid subscription supports my work and helps me keep pursuing my dream of writing.

Get more from michelle ray in the Substack appAvailable for iOS and AndroidGet the app

Thank you , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with !

Coming soon! My interviews with and

A few takeaways from my live conversation with Deborah Speck-Carstens

and I met almost a year ago; I think I commented on her post, or vice versa. Eventually we figured out we were both writing memoirs. A few months ago, I commented on her post again, thinking, Wait, this is familiar, and we realized we had encountered each other before; only now we were both about to launch our memoirs into the world. This live is the inevitable conversation after reading each other’s memoirs and realizing we shared more than a book launch date.

Here are a few moments that stuck with me.

The hardest scene to write, and knowing when it’s done. Deborah didn’t tell her own writing group what her book was really about for months; the assault scene took longer than anything else to write. I talked about the rugby club scene in mine, the one where a cry on a friend’s shoulder turned into an emotional vortex that left my soul hanging by a thread. I rewrote it so many times that I finally wrote it to the point where I cried again. That’s how I knew it was right.

On imagery you don’t plan. I didn’t set out to build a motif around buses in my book. It came from one memory, being three or four years old, getting on a bus with a social worker, separating from my mom. Once I had that as a touchstone scene, I started noticing how many other moments in my life were literally about buses. I also pointed out how Deborah’s bat imagery carries so much meaning in her book, building dread without ever naming it outright.

On the fear that comes with launching. I talked about the tension of being a teacher who wrote about having an affair and getting arrested. Deborah described the same push and pull of excitement and terror, and how reading her own assault chapter out loud for the audiobook meant warning her producer first because she hadn’t expected the emotional weight of revisiting it.

On why these books had to be out in the world, and what we hope readers get. Both of us know that on the deepest level, our books are spiritual memoirs. They trace an arc of self-reliance and grit that eventually leads to finding, and surrendering to, a higher spiritual calling. We hope readers, women especially, discover not just how and why their life falls apart, but the power of self-forgiveness and compassion to create a rebirth.

Thank you for watching and supporting us. Both books are available for preorder.

Toward the Light by Deborah Speck-Carstens — launching September 15
Lesson (Un)planned by Michelle Ray — launching September 22

Keep an eye out for details on launch events and upcoming giveaways.

All the Best,

Michelle

Get more from michelle ray in the Substack appAvailable for iOS and AndroidGet the app