Hi, I’m Alyse Keller Johnson. I’m a writer, professor, and mother living in the Connecticut suburbs with my husband and daughter. Since 2023, I’ve been reshaped by profound loss.

I write about the moments that unmake and remake us: losing a parent, miscarriage, traumatic birth, caregiving, illness, and identity shifts. All the things we’re ultimately burdened to carry alone, and that quietly rearranges your soul.

These stories aren’t abstract for me. In just over a year, I lost my mother to complications from Multiple Sclerosis, had a miscarriage, became a mother myself, survived a traumatic birth, faced a cancer scare, and unraveled into postpartum depression.

It was a lot. It still is.

But writing helped me find the language for what felt unspeakable, and to start asking better questions about how we often fail (and occasionally care for) women in pain.

When I’m not writing, I’m an associate professor of communication at CUNY Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, NY. I also lead narrative medicine workshops for healthcare professionals, students, and caregivers, drawing on nearly a decade of experience as a standardized patient, someone who roleplays clinical scenarios to help train doctors and nurses.

I’m currently working on a longer project that weaves together personal narrative and cultural critique about grief, caregiving, motherhood, and the systems that fail us when we need them the most.

I believe humor belongs in hard places.

I believe in questioning systems that silence people.

And I think that writing, at its best, is one way to survive it all, and remind each other we’re not alone.