Hey y’all, I’m Jul Kelley.

Some stories are whispered. Some are buried. Mine are documented.

I write about domestic violence, addiction, mental health, grief, adoption, motherhood, and the complicated work of breaking generational cycles while still healing from them in real time. My work lives at the intersection of personal narrative and cultural reflection — exploring what survival looks like for women who learned resilience before they ever learned safety.

I became a teen mother in 2003. In the years that followed, I navigated instability, homelessness, adoption, marriage, divorce, and rebuilding. Alongside those chapters came profound loss: since the early 2000s, I have buried dozens of friends and loved ones, majority to overdoses. Their absence is not background detail — it is a defining undercurrent of my work. I write from within a generation quietly carrying cumulative grief while trying to parent differently than we were parented and build a healthy relationship with our parents.

Living with Complex PTSD has also shaped my storytelling. Parts of my own history are fragmented, and much of my process involves reconnecting with lifelong friends and family to reconstruct memories from traumatic years I cannot fully recall. This layered narrative approach — memory, witness, hindsight — forms the foundation of Unfiltered Unhealed, a developing nonfiction book series and a podcast series launching June 1, 2026.

The platform blends memoir with conversation, often including close friends who represent different eras of my life. Together, we examine survival, accountability, growth, and the long-term impact of silence. At its core, the work asks a central question: How do we stop repeating what nearly broke us?

My writing speaks to readers navigating trauma recovery, complicated motherhood, addiction loss, and generational healing. It is honest without sensationalism, reflective without self-pity, and rooted in the belief that healing accelerates when stories are told publicly rather than carried privately.

Silence preserve these cycles.
Truth will disrupt them.

— Jul Kelley 🌪️☕

🎙️ Unfiltered Unhealed