One afternoon, I scrolled back through the titles of everything I had published on Midwest Mimi and started counting.

There were 132 posts.

Some were about living in a body that no longer did what I asked of it. Some were about raising and educating neurodivergent children while learning to understand my own brain. Others wandered into grief, faith, relationships, art, nature, survival, and the strange work of learning how to live inside a life you did not expect. I looked at all those titles and realized I had built something much larger than the blog I originally imagined.

I’m Molly Riexinger, the writer behind Midwest Mimi. I am a disabled, neurodivergent mother of three who returned to writing after years when survival consumed almost everything I had.

When I created Midwest Mimi, I thought I knew what it would be. I planned to write about chronic illness, homeschooling, and the balancing and grounding power of nature. I wanted to talk about what being outside does for our neurodivergent bodies and why a trail, a campground, or a quiet place near the water can sometimes help a family regulate when almost nothing else does.

Those things are still here, and they still matter deeply to me. As I kept writing, I discovered how many other things I had opinions about.

The more questions I had, the more I wanted to peel them apart layer by layer and put them back together with words that made sense. I wanted to understand why I believed what I believed. Writing gave me a way to slow down my thoughts long enough to examine them, challenge them, and turn them into something another person could hold. Somewhere along the way, the personal essays became the center of Midwest Mimi.

That probably should not have surprised me. I have loved words for as long as I can remember. I love to read, write, and talk. My wife can confirm the talking part. My father could tell you I was exactly the same as a child, probably while wondering whether I ever needed to stop for air.

Words are how I understand myself and how I make meaning from what has happened to me. They have become the bridge between the life I lived and the life I am still learning how to build.

For a long time, I thought my future would look very different. I had a bachelor’s degree in organizational communication, worked at an auction house, and was completing prerequisites for a graduate program in physical therapy. I believed I could build the life I wanted if I worked hard enough and kept moving.

Then a spontaneous spinal fluid leak marked the beginning of years spent searching for answers. My health deteriorated. There were long stretches when I barely left bed, struggled to separate dreams from reality, and had little energy for anything beyond survival. Eventually, I experienced respiratory failure. The career I was preparing for disappeared, and disability became part of the structure of my daily life. That history is the ground this writing grew from.

Midwest Mimi is where I take experiences people often struggle to explain, examine the simple stories we have been told about them, and try to find language that fits. Sometimes I begin with something I see online that does not sit right with me. Sometimes I begin with a memory, a question, an ordinary family moment, or a belief I have carried for years without examining closely enough. I write until I can see what I actually think.

That process has taken me into subjects I never expected to explore publicly, from faith and forgiveness to disability, relationships, art, and the complicated work of making a life.

These may sound like separate topics, but they belong to the same human life. We all reach moments when we must grieve, rebuild, question what we were taught, or make peace with a future that unfolded differently than planned. We arrive from different directions and still recognize pieces of ourselves in one another.

That recognition is what I hope to create here. I want someone to read an essay and feel seen. I want them to find words for something they have felt but could not explain. Maybe they will send the piece to a spouse, a parent, a friend, or a therapist and say, “This. This is what I have been trying to tell you.”

I know how powerful that can be because it happens for me first. A half-formed feeling becomes a complete thought. An experience that seemed disconnected finds its place inside a larger story. I leave the page understanding myself a little better than I did when I arrived.

My life is still in progress. I am disabled, raising children, managing pain, making plans around limited energy, and figuring out how to remain ambitious without burning myself down. Some days I write from a desk. Some days I build Midwest Mimi from my bed with a phone in my hand.

This site holds all of it: the difficult parts, the funny parts, the questions, the contradictions, the things I have survived, and the life I am creating now. It is grounded in nature and grown through struggle, but it is also sustained by curiosity, creativity, and the belief that our stories can help us understand one another.

However you found your way here, you are welcome to start anywhere. I hope somewhere in this growing catalog, you find a thought that feels familiar, a sentence you needed, or a story that helps you feel less alone.

This wasn’t the life I planned. Midwest Mimi is what I made from it.