Jessy Easton is a writer whose work explores memory, family, and the long aftermath of addiction. She grew up in the Mojave Desert of California and now lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. She holds a BA in Communications from Vanguard University of Southern California. Her essay “The Things We Leave Out” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net in 2022. Her work has been published in The Rumpus, Good River Review, Beacon Quarterly, Rappahannock Review, and elsewhere. She is currently serializing her memoir on Substack and working on her next book.
Join The Threshold
The Threshold is a 4-week somatic writing cohort for women who want to meet the self who can finally hold the hard story without abandoning her body, her nervous system, or her life.
Most of us were taught to think our way into stories. To push, to be brave, to override what the body is doing, but when the nervous system senses threat, writing doesn’t open—it contracts. That’s why the work in The Threshold begins before the writing does.
We slow the moment down. Through gentle somatic practices, guided writing, and intimate community, we build steadiness in the body so the story can be approached without shutting down. You learn how to feel your way into memory from a nervous-system-safe place—staying present and connected as you write, rather than pushing, dissociating, or losing yourself in the process.
This is an initiation into a different relationship with your story and with yourself. One rooted in presence, clarity, and choice. If you can feel the story pressing at the edges of your life, you already know this matters. You’re ready to step toward what’s been asking for you.
Join the waitlist to be the first to know when the spring Threshold cohort opens.
Read My Memoir
The One Who Leaves follows the time I was pulled back to the dust-bowl town off Route 66 I’d spent my life trying to escape, after my mother was facing felony charges—again. I take her out of the Mojave for a weekend in hopes of understanding the truth of our shared past. On the road, her stories unfurl like a labyrinth: a childhood of absence and violence, home invasions in the hundreds, her time in prison with Susan Atkins of the Manson cult, the meth lab my dad built in our sun-bleached house, and the slow dissolution of our family.
These two narratives—hers and mine—braid together. The story of a daughter trying to understand her mother, and a mother who loved her child but could never stay sober long enough to show it. The story of what we inherit without knowing it, what we carry, and what we spend our whole lives trying to put down.
The One Who Leaves is being published as a serialized memoir on my Substack, AFTER/WORDS, where it has become a bestseller. Paid subscribers receive a new chapter each week, delivered directly to their inbox, along with access to the full archive. Reading the memoir in this serialized form allows the story to unfold slowly, with space to sit inside each chapter rather than rushing toward resolution.
This is a raw, unflinching exploration of the ties that bind us to family, the lasting imprint of addiction, and the possibility of redemption. It’s the story of who we become both because of and despite a mother’s love.
Join My Newsletter
To read more of my writing, you can subscribe to AFTER/WORDS, my Substack newsletter where I publish personal essays, somatic writing practices, and my serialized memoir, The One Who Leaves.
The work centers on writing through the wreckage and the reconing—the time I grew up in a meth lab, family history, addiction, and the long aftermath of growing up in choas, with particular attention to how memory lives in the body and how we stay present with difficult material. I write about loving people who cause harm, about grief and responsibility, and about the contradictions that shape our inner lives.
AFTER/WORDS is also a teaching and communal space. Alongside essays, I share guided writing prompts and live sessions that offer a body-based approach to writing, focused on building enough safety and choice to approach tender and challenging stories without overwhelm. It’s a place to be in community with others who are doing the work of writing the hard thing and learning how to stay with themselves in the process.
From the Dust
From the Dust is a collaborative collection of stories and songs that explores addiction, identity, love, and the unseen interiors of family life.
The book follows a younger version of me as I return to the California desert where I grew up, chasing the shadow of my mother through the places that shaped us both. These are stories about loving someone who can’t stay, about growing up alongside addiction, and about the long, complicated work of trying to understand where you come from—and who you are in relation to it.
This work of creative nonfiction precedes my memoir. It’s not the whole story. It’s a crack in the door. An offering. A glimpse into the larger truths I later unfold in The One Who Leaves. Writing these pieces meant returning to the dust of where I came from—to a godforsaken town on the edge of nowhere—and staying long enough to look at the darker interiors of love and survival, and at how something honest, even beautiful, can be made from that return.
From the Dust is also a collaborative project that blends mediums and lives. The second edition features a new cover designed by my partner Perry Rhodes and a newly added story. The book is released alongside a cassette tape by Era Nash, Perry’s band. Side A includes three singles from his album, Wake of Dust, that correspond to the stories in the collection, along with a bonus track and previously unheard audio interviews with my mother recorded during our time in the desert. Side B features the For Her instrumental EP and an additional bonus track.
This project is an early map of my work—life, memory, and meaning-making in conversation with art, sound, and story.
Limited quantities are available.
About
Jessy Easton is a writer, memoirist, and somatic writing facilitator.
She works primarily in personal narrative, exploring memory, trauma, motherhood, addiction, and identity, with a particular focus on how stories live in the body. Her work is less concerned with what the truth is than with how we tell it—how we stay with ourselves while writing, and how we build enough safety and choice for difficult stories to emerge without overwhelm.
Jessy is the creator of The Threshold, a somatic writing cohort for women learning to approach emotionally charged memory from a nervous-system-safe place. With over a decade of experience guiding writers, she teaches a body-based approach to storytelling centered on expanding capacity to stay with ourselves as we write. Her sessions and workshops are intimate, trauma-informed, and rooted in the belief that writing hard stories is not about becoming someone new, but about remembering the self who can hold them.
She is the author of the serialized memoir The One Who Leaves, a Substack bestseller. Her Substack, AFTER/WORDS, is a space where readers engage with difficult stories through essays, live sessions, and somatic writing prompts focused on memory, lived experience, and the body. Her work has been published in The Rumpus, Good River Review, Beacon Quarterly, Rappahannock Review, and elsewhere, and her essay “The Things We Leave Out” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
Born in the Mojave Desert of California, Jessy now lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains with her husband, their son Pressley, and their four black dogs. She is currently working on her next book.
Contact
Email me at jessyeaston@gmail.com, or contact me via the form.
