AboutWhen I was thirteen, I was given a small journal covered in blue denim with orange stitching and a tiny brass lock.
About Shari Caudron
Inside the safety of those pages, I wrote the truth of my life without censorship or shame. I wrote about the crushing insecurity I felt among friends, the strange mix of pride and embarrassment I felt upon becoming a cheerleader, and my complicated, often angry feelings toward my mother.
That diary was the start of a lifelong hunger to understand more about the complicated realities of being human—and to use writing as a way to look more closely at our inner lives.
That curiosity has taken me to some unexpected places.
I once spent three years researching Barbie collectors, storm chasers, pigeon racers, and other people with unusual passions. I wanted to understand not only what they loved, but what those passions gave them.
I spent more than fifteen years helping memoir writers uncover the emotional truth behind the experiences that shaped them. Again and again, I saw how the stories we carry influence our view of the world.
Most recently, the same fascination with truthful storytelling led me inward. My current book, The Second Story, is a memoir about the stories that shaped my own life—and what happened when the identities and strategies I had long relied on stopped working.
Over the years, I've been a journalist, magazine columnist, restaurant critic, memoir coach, university professor, and author. My work has appeared in national publications, been featured on NPR, and received honors including a Colorado Book Award and several first-place national magazine awards.
The roles I’ve held may have changed, but the question driving them has always been the same:
What’s really going on beneath the surface of our lives?
These days, I’m still interested in that question—only now, I’m asking it more openly in my own work. Through my Substack newsletter, On Second Thought, I write about identity, aging, uncertainty, and what it means to live with greater emotional honesty.