Growing up with a heart older than my age and a voice nobody wanted to listen to.
The Girl Who Could Read the Room (Too Well)
Even before I could spell my name, I could tell when someone didn’t want to talk to me.
It wasn’t their words—it was the tilt of their shoulder, the breath that caught before they smiled, the smile that didn’t quite reach their eyes. Some people call that emotional intelligence. I called it exhausting.
I was still in pigtails, still slipping picture books into my backpack, and already I was working overtime just to exist. My brain ran ahead of me like a dog without a leash, dragging my body through hallways it wasn’t ready to enter. I was five years old in a classroom full of girls who liked finger painting, and I was wondering why my teacher hated me for talking like I was fifteen.
They called me mature. Gifted. Bright. But those were just shiny wrappers around a truth no one wanted to open: I was a child doing the emotional labor of an adult, and nobody knew what to do with me.
Living on the Inside, Misunderstood on the Outside
At home, I was the eldest of many. That made me both the prototype and the cautionary tale. Every bump in the road of my behavior was marked in red, every failure quietly folded into whispered conversations at night. My siblings adored me. Sometimes they copied me. Sometimes they fought me like warriors in a holy war for who gets the shower first.
My parents loved me too—fiercely, even—but they also didn’t know what to do with a girl like me. Especially when teachers called, or neighbors whispered, or I came home sobbing with a crumpled detention slip and mascara smudged across my cheeks (even when I wasn’t wearing any).
I was never the girl who snuck out or cursed in the hallway. But I was loud. Opinionated. I didn’t fit neatly in the soft, obedient mold expected of girls in my Orthodox Jewish school. That made me… suspicious.
“Rachel, just keep your head down,” my father would say. “Stop giving them reasons.”
But I wasn’t giving anyone reasons. I was just giving myself.
Faith, Fire, and the Fights You Don’t Talk About
Where I come from, faith isn’t something you wear—it’s something that wears you. It wraps around your days like tefillin, tight and sacred. It tells you who to love, how to eat, when to rest, and what to hope for. And in many ways, that saved me.
When everything else cracked—the school, the friendships, the community gossip—I still had God. I talked to Him like He was sitting at the edge of my bed. Some nights I begged Him to make me smaller, easier to like, more invisible. Other nights, I asked Him why He gave me such a big voice if everyone else wanted me to be silent.
God didn’t answer in English. But he showed up. In unexpected kindnesses. In the courage to keep walking into classrooms where I wasn’t wanted. In the miracle of one friend who saw me, even when no one else did.
Still, faith doesn’t make the fire stop. There were nights the pain was so hot it blistered. The kind of pain that doesn’t bleed—but burns from the inside out.
When You’re the Storm and the Shelter
Some people say they love being “the main character.” I didn’t. I wanted to be the sidekick, the best friend, the invisible one in the back of the room.
But I couldn’t hide. Charisma doesn’t whisper. I was always the one who got noticed by teachers, by principals, by girls who said I was “too much.” I could feel their stares like pins in my skin. I never wanted attention, but I kept attracting it like metal to a magnet. Even when I tried to be quiet, something about me made people nervous.
They didn’t understand me. And when people don’t understand, they isolate. They punish.
My life became a loop: Speak. Get silenced. Shine. Get scolded. Cry. Get called dramatic.
Eventually, I learned how to do both: be the storm and the shelter. Loud enough to be heard. Soft enough to survive.
What They Don’t See When They Say You’re Strong
“You’re so strong.”
It sounds like a compliment until you realize what it really means: “I don’t have the capacity to help you, so I need to believe you don’t need help.”
But I did. I needed someone to hold the weight with me. To say, “This isn’t normal,” when I was being blamed for things I didn’t do. To say, “You’re not crazy,” when teachers made me sit alone in the dark for hours. To say, “I believe you,” when I felt like my own family didn’t understand the depth of my hurt.
No one said those things.
So I said them to myself. And to God.
And then I wrote them down.
When Your Voice Becomes Your Victory
I never wanted to be an author. But writing If Only You Knew became the only place where I didn’t have to apologize for existing. I was tired of choking on everything I couldn’t say out loud. Writing became the only place where no one could interrupt me. Where I didn’t get punished for speaking.
Some people will read what I’ve written and think I’m angry. And they’re not wrong. But beneath the anger is something else. Grief. Hope. And a fierce, clawing love—for my family, for my community, even for the people who hurt me.
I’m not here to expose anyone. I’m here to introduce the world to “Rachel Calista Stone”—the girl I was never allowed to fully be until now. This is my version of existing, finally.
The Kind of Girl You Don’t Forget
If you met me, you’d probably remember me. I talk fast, laugh loud, and feel like I’m walking in a thunderstorm and a summer breeze at the same time. I’m the kind of girl who makes a joke while crying. Who says “I’m fine” while writing a whole book about how not-fine I’ve been.
I’m not trying to be a hero or a victim. I’m just trying to be real.
Because maybe, if one other person out there feels what I’ve felt—too different, too deep, too dismissed—they’ll know they’re not alone.
They’ll know someone else made it through. Not perfect. But whole.
