I did not build this because it sounded good. I built it because I lived it.
Jessica did not build this brand from theory, branding, or some neat version of healing. She built it from shock, caregiving, widowhood, survival, and the brutal question that comes after loss: who the hell am I now?
Why she is the right woman to hold this space
She is not talking about this from the outside. She is talking about it from the middle of what she survived.
Jessica has lived through the kind of before-and-after that rips your life in half — early trauma, devastating loss, caregiving, and the death of the husband she built her life with. She is still here. And this brand was built for the women sitting in that same aftermath, asking who they are now and how they are supposed to keep going.
Jessica’s voice hits because she does not dress grief up to make it easier to look at. She talks about love, shock, caregiving, anger, identity loss, widowhood, and the gut-punch of having to keep living when the life you knew is gone.
Founder truth
“I have loved hard, lost hard, and I am still here.”
This is the center of Jessica’s story and the center of this brand. Not performance. Not polished healing. Just truth, pain, grit, and the refusal to let loss be the end of her story.
The full story
This life was shaped by deep love, repeated loss, and the decision not to disappear after any of it.
Chapter 1
The first fracture
At twelve, Jessica learned how quickly life can split into a before and an after.
Her father’s life-altering accident was the first moment that taught her how fragile normal can be. It was the beginning of understanding that life can change in an instant and still expect you to keep going.
Chapter 2
The men who carried more than themselves
After her father’s brain injury, her grandfather and Uncle Mike were two of the men who stepped in and helped hold things together.
Jessica’s grandfather and Uncle Mike were not background characters in her life. They were two of the men who showed up after her father’s brain injury and helped steady what had been shaken. Losing her grandfather in a tragic car accident while her oldest son, Tristan, was only nine months old was devastating. Losing Uncle Mike later, in their arms on Thanksgiving Day, ripped open another layer of grief tied to the men who had helped carry her family when it needed it most.
Chapter 3
The life she built
Then came the kind of love and partnership that changes what home means.
Jessica and Eric built a full life together, and their sons, Tristan and Trent, became the center of that world. It was not a half-lived life. It was deep friendship, real partnership, family, laughter, pressure, purpose, and the kind of love most people spend their lives hoping to find.
Chapter 4
The unraveling
Then came the devastation of losing her husband.
Eric began having strokes, and what followed was fear, chaos, a fight for answers, and a fight to be heard while the life they had built together was slipping out from under them. Jessica fought for more time and for the man she loved, but she still lost her husband on hospice in their dining room on the Fourth of July. That kind of loss does not just break your heart. It destroys the shape of the life you thought you were still living.
Chapter 5
What remained
There was no neat meaning to make out of it. But there was a woman still standing.
Jessica does not tell this story because it is polished or because it makes people comfortable. She tells it because it is true. She has loved deeply, lost deeply, and lived through the kind of aftermath that changes a person forever. Not untouched. Not unchanged. But not broken either.
What that life looked like
These are not brand photos. They are receipts.
They show the life that was real, the love that was ordinary and alive, and the devastation that followed.
The life we built
This was our life. And then it was gone.
Us in our natural habitat
This was us before everything broke.
And then the story stopped being about the life we had. It became about surviving what it took to lose him.
Devastation
This is what it cost me to lose him.
What she believes now
This is not about moving on. It is about taking your life back.
Jessica believes women deserve spaces that tell the truth about grief without asking them to live there forever. She believes beauty and sorrow can exist in the same room. She believes honest connection changes people. And she believes widows deserve spaces where they do not have to over-explain their pain before they can finally exhale.
Why this work exists now
Still Here. Unwritten was built for the woman sitting in the wreckage asking, “Who am I now — and what the hell do I do next?”
The retreats are Jessica’s answer to that question. They are for women who want truth, connection, honesty, beauty, and the kind of momentum that helps them step back into their lives with more clarity and more trust in themselves.
This work is her battle cry turned into a room other women can actually walk into. It comes from surviving what she never would have chosen and deciding that none of it gets to be for nothing.
What I know about widowhood
These are the truths widowhood taught the hard way.
Not polished quotes. Not something pulled out of a workbook. Just the kind of truth you end up knowing when life splits open and you are forced to keep living anyway.
Widowhood is not a chapter theme. It is an amputation.
People get uncomfortable fast when you stop making your pain easy for them.
You can miss him with your whole body and still want a life that feels alive.
A lot of women are not falling apart because they are weak. They are exhausted from carrying the unthinkable.
Grief does not make you less of a woman. It just burns off what is fake.
Some people want the tidy version of your story. Too bad. The truth is the only version that helps.
What comes next
If this story feels like your life, stop reading it like it belongs to someone else.
Join the retreat waitlist. That is the next step. It puts you first in line for the rooms built for women who are done surviving in silence and ready for truth, connection, and a life that still belongs to them.
Why join now
This is for the woman who knows she cannot stay here forever. If you are ready for something real, the waitlist is where you start.