The Author
Kristi Wielenberg
Author. Survivor. Creator.
She didn't set out
to write a memoir.
Kristi Wielenberg is a lot of things — a wife, a mother, a crafter, a person who talks too much and feels everything too deeply.
When she was diagnosed at 28, she did what most people do: she kept going. She went to appointments, she smiled at the right times, she said "I'm fine" so many times she almost believed it. From the beginning her motto was The Only Way Out Is Through It.
She enjoyed journaling in high school and found herself coming back to it when times got hard. Eventually she found that these sneak peeks into her life could be used to help others throughout their own journeys. That realization led to The Only Way Out Is Through It.
Kristi lives in the Midwest with her family. When she's not writing, she enjoys time outdoors with her family - hunting, swimming, farming, and taking walks in nature. If the Minnesota weather is too temperamental to be outside, she enjoys making things with her hands — crafts, gifts, beautiful objects that spread joy.
"I didn't want to write a book about cancer, I just wanted to write the book that I needed when I was diagnosed."
— Kristi Wielenberg
The Story Behind the Story
Why she wrote it.
There are a lot of cancer books. But none of them looked like her story. None truly showed what she went through. The one that was raw, and real, and just felt completely un-sugarcoated.
The one about the days when you don't feel like a warrior. The one about the weird grief of losing your hair, your energy, your sense of who you are. The one about what happens after — when everyone expects you to be grateful and healed and you're just... tired.
She couldn't find that book. So she wrote it.
"If this book helps even one person feel less alone in the middle of something hard, then every uncomfortable thing I had to write was worth it."
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