Portfolio
I write personal narrative and ghostwrite stories that find the emotional truth behind them. My work sits at the intersection of psychology, identity, and lived experience—the places where meaning lives, waiting to be uncovered. Whether I'm writing in my own voice or shaping someone else's, I bring depth, precision, and a storyteller's instinct for what matters.
Much of my personal writing lives on my Substack, Molten Crystal, where I explore the way we see ourselves and the world through essays and fiction.
I let the words speak for themselves. Below is a sampling of my work, ranging from memoir to personal essays to ghostwriting.
Floating Through Normal
This piece is an excerpt from a ghostwritten narrative based on a long-form interview with a client. My role was to translate her lived experience into a cohesive, emotionally grounded story that captured her voice, her pacing, and the internal landscape of the moment. What you'll read below is a section of the full narrative---shaped from her words, structured by me, and crafted to reflect the truth of what she lived. Read the full piece in PDF form at the end.
"Working with Lauren on my memoir was an incredibly meaningful experience. As I revisited my breast cancer diagnosis and everything that came with it, she created a space that felt safe, comfortable, and even fun—something I never expected from such a deeply personal journey. Through her thought-provoking questions and writing talent, I was able to reconnect with my own inner strength, leaving me feeling more grounded and capable in my life today. I'm so grateful for her care, compassion, and the beautiful way she brought my story to life." — Client testimonial
She stood there silently. Listening. The sun shone in the window straight into her eyes, as if she were now standing in the spotlight for the world’s worst show.
Paul, on the other hand, fidgeted on the sofa, using both of their phones so their parents were all on the line—bringing in reinforcements without asking.
Angela heard their attempts to soothe her. Twenty minutes of:
“You don’t know what it is.”
“It could be anything.”
“Everything will be okay.”
She gave a small shake of her head. Everything was about to change, and it wasn’t going to be okay. She knew it.
“I’ll find a place to get a mammogram on Monday,” she offered in a desperate plea to get back to normal.
Apparently hearing what they wanted, the phone calls ended.
For the rest of the weekend, Angela and Paul fell into their roles. It felt safer that way.
And then it was Monday morning. She called her gynecologist’s office.
“I need to make an appointment.”
“Sure. Is this for your annual?” the person on the other line asked.
Angela hesitated. “No. I found a spot on my breast that needs to be looked at. I have a family history of breast cancer.”
“I understand. We can see you on Thursday.”
“That works. Thank you.”
Autopilot had taken her through the last week and a half; what was another few days?
Thursday arrived, and she found herself sitting on the exam chair—white paper beneath her, pink paper around her. Though the room was cold, she was sweating, and the table creaked with her shaking leg.
A sharp knock pulled her from her thoughts.
Do I Even Have a North Star?
Originally published on my Substack and later selected for republication in Grand Dame Literary Journal, this piece is an essay about choosing your life after years of letting your life choose you—of learning to tune out what you know for what is true. This piece reflects my natural voice: lyrical, grounded, and emotionally exacting with a dash of wryness at the edges. It's the kind of interior terrain I return to again and again in my work. Below is an excerpt; click here for the full piece.
I remember the first time I felt the weight of professional confusion. It was during the year before graduation.
You know, that time you’re supposed to decide your future—when you’re expected to take your first steps towards forever.
For me, it was more like: three years of college and all I got was this lousy elephant on my chest. Yes, it was metaphorical, and yes, I’m being melodramatic, but I’m pretty sure the goal was clarity, not the feeling of an animal the size of a house mistaking me for a chair.
So what do you do when you don’t know what to do?
One option is to use what other people tell you about yourself. Maybe they see something you don’t. I heard “You should be a lawyer” a lot. I finished with a minor in legal studies, so sure. Let’s go to law school.
This is not a great reason to go. 0/10—do not recommend.
I’ll cut through the super fun experience of the Socratic method and being graded on a C+ curve in almost every class. You can imagine the good times for yourself. I wouldn’t want to spoil the fantasy with reality.
What I will say is that I tried to make the best of things, working hard to figure out what I was going to be when I grew up. But in the end, it didn’t matter.
Expectant Doubt
Commissioned by Storymoir, this piece grew out of a long, vulnerable conversation about the moment my life tilted in a new direction. It is a narrowing of North Star—a zoom into the single conversation that changed everything for me. This piece is written in my natural voice: an examination of what's easily missed yet filled with the small shifts that end up changing everything. Below is an excerpt; the full narrative is in PDF form at the end.
I’d started this journey because I wanted to not be a lawyer anymore. I had to believe there was something buried in a LinkedIn job description that would set me on the road to “not working a day in my life.” Yet every time I thought I found something worth exploring, I almost immediately felt a pit in my stomach at the idea of actually doing the work… including being an event planner.
Now I’m nearly six months in, and I knew a whole lot of what I didn’t want to do. In fact, I had an entire notebook filled with potential occupations—the physical manifestation of possibilities immediately becoming God, no.
Sighing, I leaned back on the couch, panic and hopelessness buzzing through my head in equal measure. This was why I’d been a lawyer for twenty years despite never feeling particularly invested in it.
What else would I do?
It’s not that I hadn’t thought about it before. The question was always there, like a whack-a-mole, popping up quickly and leaving just as fast before I could even think about lowering the mallet.
“What if there isn’t anything?” I asked her.
Fortunately for me, my career coach was more of a career therapist, so she wouldn’t let me get away with that.
“Let’s look at this in a different way. What are the things you enjoy doing?”
The question felt lighter. Still heavy because I understood the meaning behind it. I mean, I could see the mole half out of its hole, ready to spring into action—staring at me with a knowing smirk.
No. I’m too deep into this to not at least take a preemptive swing.
Feeling What You're Seeing
Originally published on my Substack, this essay is about living with aphantasia, or the inability to picture an image in your mind. It explores what it means to move through the world without a functioning mind's eye, and how emotion becomes visual compensation. This piece is written in my
natural voice: reflective, slightly amused, and curious about how neurological differences quietly reshape our relationship with imagination, memory, and meaning. Below is an excerpt; the full essay is available in PDF form at the end.
But then later, I was told I use too many adjectives. Really? Did I overcorrect somehow?
As soon as I got home, I looked through several of my essays and stories. It didn’t seem like there were a whole lot, but that was based on my perspective, and maybe I like a lot of adjectives now? Time to put my obsessive research skills to work! Down a rabbit hole I went. I went so deep that even my daughter told me I needed to let it go. I believe her exact words were, “Mommy. Get over it.”
I didn’t. Instead, I researched the average adjective count in similar length essays. Then I ran several of my pieces through AI and asked it to count my adjectives. I learned that not only do I not use a lot, my writing actually contains half of the lowest number in the average range.
That was helpful but I wasn’t done yet. I fell further down the hole. I needed to understand what was at the root of this feedback because clearly my writing felt atmospheric and adjective-y, or I wouldn’t have received the comment.
How many of you are now thinking what my daughter was thinking? I won't be offended. It's a reasonable conclusion. Jokes on you though, my rumination gave me an answer.
It's my aphantasia. In compensating for the lack of imagery, I (over?)developed my analytical and emotional processing. And experiencing my inner world rather than seeing it gave me a different vocabulary for descriptions. One that relies on metaphor, emotion, and concepts to describe the visual world. One that permeates my writing and brings you, my dear reader, into my world where imagination doesn't rely on the mind’s eye. And that holds just as much value as a paragraph dedicated to exactly what shade of green the grass is under the warm glow of the rising sun.
My Two Brains
Originally published on my Substack, this essay blends personal narrative and accessible science to explore why "trust your gut" isn't just a cliché but a biological reality. Through stories about wedding florists, medical decisions, and the nervous system's hidden architecture, I look at how the body's second brain shapes instinct, pattern recognition, and the choices we make. This piece reflects my natural voice—curious, lightly irreverent, and using a fun metaphor to explain complex ideas. Below is an excerpt; the full essay is available in PDF form at the end.
The gut isn’t the irrational one in the room. It’s not some “crunchy” idea based on wishful thinking. It’s a biological fact that, in certain cases, the gut is better to rely on than your thinking brain.
In short, if you take away one thing, it’s this: if you’re making a decision that uses your own internal experience or emotions, let your gut do the talking. If you’re making a decision that involves someone else’s lived experience or emotions, let your brain take the lead.
Now when I meet a doctor and something feels off, I’m out of there and never return. When I need to do business with someone and something tells me, there’s a problem, it’s a hard pass, even if I can’t articulate why.
I know now that “something” is my gut, and my gut is smarter than me when it comes to this stuff. So instead of ignoring it, I’m going to say thank you and maybe give it a slice of carrot cake.