I Believe in Everything
A Memoir of Illness, Motherhood and Magic
I Believe in Everything is a tribute to the space where the terrible and the beautiful meet, where trauma gives birth to connection, spiritual exploration, and purpose.” —Lisa Congdon, Artist and Writer
At thirty-five, Jen Dary's life flipped upside down when a routine MRI uncovered a lemon-size brain tumor. A stressed Silicon Valley coach and mother of two, she closed her business, weaned her youngest, and braced for brain surgery—all while calling forth the dead, chasing psychics, and digging for old Bibles in the attic.
What followed was a wild journey of healing, humor, and unexpected magic. As spiritual forces stirred in the hospital and beyond, Jen found herself confronting everything she thought she knew about life, faith, and fate.
From the chaos of brain surgery to the challenges of parenting, from building a coaching business to leaning into a newfound spiritual safety net, this is a story of resilience and revelation. I Believe in Everything is a sincere, smart, laugh-out-loud memoir about the mysteries that shape us, the love that sustains us, and the courage it takes to believe in the impossible.
Advance Praise for I Believe in Everything
What if your head cracked open and poured out a mythology? Sapphire necklaces with exactly twelve stones. Russian grandmothers who arrive mid-seizure. Blurry photographs of trees that don't want to be seen. A Viking helmet on the doorstep. In I Believe in Everything, Jen Dary turns a brain tumor into an antenna, a diagnosis into a dispatch. She prays to "Grandma God," weans a baby off poisoned milk, and finds that sometimes the most faithful thing you can do is believe the weird stuff. This is not just a memoir. This is a sacred transmission from the place where mystery lives, and where an entity called the Bigness shows up uninvited, sits too close, and tells you the truth whether you're ready or not." —Matthew Vollmer, author of All of Us Together in the End
While reading I Believe in Everything by Jen Dary one word kept running through my mind: wonder. This memoir, this writer, this person, this life—it's all a wonder. This isn't just a memoir about a brain tumor and its aftermath, it's a memoir about hope, about grace, about being open to the possibility of something bigger than yourself. Dary's story is compelling and compulsive—once you start reading you won't want to stop. It's worth repeating: this book is a wonder." —Courtney LeBlanc, author of Her Dark Everything
In I Believe in Everything, a young mother's seismic diagnosis sets in motion a profound personal transformation. By turns witty and devastatingly serious, Dary's chronicle of a health crisis and its aftermath steadily deepens into an interrogation of that most vital of questions: what it means to live a good life." —Emily Ruth Ford, winner of the Royal Society of Literature's V.S. Pritchett Prize
An inspiring, humorous, and captivatingly honest account of one woman's journey navigating the realities of a brain tumor diagnosis, and the self-discovery that comes when one starts to ask the big questions." —Shannon Duescher, MSPAS, PA-C, Department of Neurosurgery, MedSTAR Georgetown University Hospital
About the Author
Jen Dary is a writer and leadership coach whose work explores the intersection of identity, belief, and personal transformation. She has worked with hundreds of tech leaders through her coaching firm, Plucky, and travels widely to teach professional development workshops. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and sons.