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Atoosa Unedited

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by with Atoosa Rubenstein

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When your life gets bat sh*t crazy, I can help. The podcast of the Atoosa Unedited newsletters! <a href="https://atoosa.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast">atoosa.substack.com</a>

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Recent Episodes

February 16, 2026

Just Call Me Frankenboob

Hey!I keep disappearing from this space.Just as I started to integrate the new information I wrote about <a target="_blank" href="https://atoosa.substack.com/p/are-you-sitting-down">last time</a>, my scans showed (in the words of my breast surgeon), “This breast wants to make cancer.”January 28th, I had a mastectomy and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.breastcancer.org/treatment/surgery/breast-reconstruction/types/autologous-flap/diep">DIEP flap reconstruction</a>.My Frankenboob looks amazing. Almost like I went to a Build-a-Bear workshop.Except after my all-day Build-a-Boob workshop, I had a hemorrhage and lost a tremendous amount of blood. Getting a rapid blood transfusion was not fun - but I was feeling my good blood donor karma as they gave me bag after bag of O+. As they wheeled me into the OR they asked, do you have a health proxy form? Despite everything going on I asked, “Is it because you want to give them an update? Or because they may have to make a decision?” Awkward silence. “All of it,” she said.When I filled out my health proxy I never imagined actually needing it.My eternal optimist is in hiding.She got it wrong. I almost died.But I didn’t.And now I’m mostly home recovering. I watched endless episodes of Long Lost Family. (<a target="_blank" href="https://www.pbs.org/show/long-lost-family/">British</a> and <a target="_blank" href="https://go.tlc.com/show/long-lost-family-tlc">American</a> versions). My fetish was children put up by adoption by teenagers who ultimately ended up married and having families so when they are reunited they’re a full-blood intact family. Perhaps that speaks to my own <a target="_blank" href="https://atoosa.substack.com/p/are-you-sitting-down">yearning</a> for full-blood siblings and birth parents who remained a couple. I guess watching that show allowed me to sit with and nurse that interior wound along with the physical.I received TREMENDOUS support from friends - especially Anthony, David & Jackie who called/texted/came daily when I was the biggest mess. Jackie drove over a car full of “stuff” I’d need - like a one person mastectomy shower. Anthony took off work for two weeks and moved into our guest room and literally took care of me like a baby. I had decided to end the relationship just a few months before my recurrence and he still showed up in the most heroic way imaginable “milking my drains” multiple times a day for weeks. It was humbling really.Just wanted you to know this happened - that it’s happening.And as for me? I am sick of writing everything like it’s a fucking Editor’s Letter. It’s all so pat. This is what happened, this is the meaning behind it, and we all cheer in the end. I’m not cheering. I feel like I’ve been water boarded over the past few years. Every time I feel like I’m coming up for air, a big hand comes down and shoves my head under again. Divorce, Cancer, Your-father-was-not-your-father, Cancer. I don’t feel bad or scared per say. I’m just sitting in this new space now that I can’t define - Samuel Beckett called it <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unnamable_(novel)">The Unnamable</a>. I am left without language worth sharing.I am just here. I will write again if I have something worth sharing or an update I think you would want to know, like today’s letter to a friend, which is what you are. Thanks for that. Sending my love to you.xo atoosa This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://atoosa.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">atoosa.substack.com</a>

November 23, 2025

Are You Sitting Down?

Hey!When you title an essay, <a target="_blank" href="https://atoosa.substack.com/p/one-last-secret">“One Last Secret,”</a> I guess you’re asking for it, right? My last Substack was about how all my life I’d subconsciously been trying get closer with my family of birth. I went through a laundry list of reasons for why we may not be close. I won’t bore you with a full rehash, but you get the drift – lifetime of blaming myself, then blaming the culture then lightbulb moment: I built my own close family and dreams really do come true! Wheeee!End of story, right?Wrong.Grab some popcorn, sis.My partner at the time, Anthony, wanted to do 23andMe. (Sidebar: No, we’re not together anymore, but we’re total besties. Yes, I’m super happy. And yes, more on all that in another letter.) 23andMe sounded fun. And it was! I matched with my favorite cousin on my mom’s side. I learned I’m 99.5% Iranian… and .5% Chinese! And I also matched with a cousin who had the same last name as a family that was close with mine. Hmmm…. A cousin. I know all my cousins, don’t you? But I didn’t know this cousin. At least, not as a cousin. A quick google search revealed that this is the family I remember from my childhood. But cousins? Hm.When I wrote that last Substack, I had already matched with him. As Hilaria Baldwin would say, “What is the English word?” Ah yes. Denial. I literally stared at his name for a year.One. Year.Every so often, I’d open the site. Yep. Still there. Still my number one match.I asked my sister to do a 23andMe, telling her that I had gotten this strange connection on the site. Sure, she said. I sent her a kit and then got a notification a few weeks later from Amazon that she had returned it. I guess she changed her mind. I found out from Amazon and not her. This is the lack of closeness I’m talking about.So I just sat on my hands for months. I didn’t want to reach out to someone I don’t know and perhaps disturb them. I didn’t want to upset my 93-year-old mother or risk being rejected again by my other siblings. In my family there’s an (invisible) barbed wire fence around all uncomfortable topics. Positive news, yes! Bring. It. On. Sexual abuse, Cancer, Divorce? No, ma’am! Keep it to yourself. Mustn’t disturb anyone.Then one day I had an idea. Thanks to Instagram, I had a direct line to a very chill 20-something-year-old cousin on my dad’s side. “Hey! I’d love to gift you 23andMe, if you’re at all interested. I have selfish reasons I won’t bother you with for wanting you to take it, but if you’re up for it, I’d love to send you a kit.” He was totally up for it.And…We didn’t match.There’s obviously so much more to this story but suffice it to say, the man I thought was my father…the man I always felt guilty for not feeling connected to despite how kind he was to me…was not my father. My siblings are half siblings.And everyone either knew for sure or at least suspected this.Everyone, that is, except me.My close friends who know all this have asked me if I’m angry. Honestly? I’m relieved. Everything finally makes sense now and I’m just finally resting in the truth.Instead of making up excuses for why I don’t look like my siblings, I know why. Instead of feeling guilty that I didn’t even like the way my dad smelled, I know that no kid wants to sit on the lap of someone else’s dad and smell their smells. Instead of thinking how bizarre it was that my mother never told me (at age 16) when my dad died, I understand now that she didn’t think of him as my father. Instead of wondering why I was always treated like a guest in my home, I know now that I was. I was a guest in their family home. And, of course, stepparents and half siblings can have great and close relationships – when they are introduced as stepparents and half siblings. There IS a difference.Many years ago, in 2004, an interviewer asked about my family immigrating to America. I gave the canned answer that I’d been told my whole life. We came to America just before the revolution so we could be educated here, blah blah blah. I mean, it’s the story of many Iranians in the diaspora. But after that interview came out, a Lebanese friend told me, “You know, your coming-to-America story doesn’t add up. Based on the dates, that is not why you all moved to the US.” In that very moment, I flashed to a scene from a trip back to Tehran (1977 - 1st grade) of a tall, handsome distinguished man in a very decorated officer’s uniform twirling my mother and her laughing in a way I’d never seen her laugh before or since. He also picked me up and held me high in the air. This visit took place a few years after we had all made the big move to America. In that conversation with my friend, I thought my mom might have had an affair. Never in a million years did I think, “and that man must be my father.” Not even years later after seeing his last name on my 23andMe did I believe he was my father or that we had moved to America because my mother’s husband needed an ocean of space between that man and the rest of his family.Instead, I went through my life thinking what’s wrong with me that things in my family are so disconnected. I guess in some ways, I was right – it was me. But of course, there’s so much more. This is more than a single serving of tea. There have been so many layers to unpack – a mille-feuille – that this past year has been like a never-ending unboxing video.After finding out that I was not a match with my paternal cousin, I reached out through 23andMe to the cousin I was a match with. I kept it very light, just telling him I remembered his family fondly, so nice to connect, would love to catch up on the phone if he’s up for it. He was even warmer than expected in his response, knew my family very well, seemed not surprised at all to hear from me.I gave my mom one more chance before he and I spoke to clarify how we may be related to this family. She confirmed we are not related, just close friends. I wish I were wearing a heart rate monitor during that Christmas Day 2024 conversation. When my 23andMe cousin and I got on the phone, we exchanged polite and warm pleasantries, but then I got right into it. “We didn’t match on Facebook. We matched on 23andMe. What do you understand our family relationship to be?” Deep breath on his side. “I need you to say it,” he said. “I suspect I have a different father than my siblings.” I heard huge sigh of relief. “You don’t know what a burden has been lifted off my shoulders,” he practically sobbed. He had known for almost my whole life. He knew everything about me and had been watching my life from afar knowing that I’m the only child of his long deceased, much beloved and very famous uncle.The belonging my cousin has offered me, is what I’ve been searching for my entire life. I am not naming him here because well, naming him would name my father and I’m not there yet. Not publicly. That’s a bigger story and one I will tell in time.I will only say it’s deep how the brain will not see what’s obvious until it’s ready. I look exactly like my birth father. His picture was all over my baby album. He is well known enough that I knew exactly what he looked like. We look alike in the same way the Kennedy’s all look alike. And yet – I needed scientific proof to see it. I believed everything I was told up until the moment I could no longer refuse it.Having said all this, my dad (what I call the man who raised me - versus father - which is what I call my birth father) impacted my life in many important ways - especially after <a target="_blank" href="https://atoosa.substack.com/p/loss?utm_source=publication-search">his death</a>. And I’ve never had more respect for him than I do today knowing what I now know and what he, also, knew back then. He was always so kind to me and there’s not a moment that I don’t have gratitude for him. In fact, and this is silly, but I was able to track down, the Big Bird alarm clock, my most cherished gift he bought me as a child, on Ebay, and it sits right in front of my writing chair so I can remember his kindness and generosity every single day. And behind me hangs a picture of my father. The man, without whom, I would not exist. The man whose face and energy I inherited. The bull-in-a-china shop energy I was always ashamed of because it was so mismatched with the more discreet and formal members of my family. Now I break china with pride. 🐂 This past 18 years of digging, asking, hiding, seeking, bleeding, healing has been an epic love story - a journey, and finally, reintroduction to myself and my real story. My white knuckles are just beginning to relax and the ground beneath my feet feels solid for the first time in my life. No more searching for daddy in all the wrong places. I found him. I found him. I’ve had many moments of growth and epiphany but this one feels particularly profound. Yes, I told my mom. Yes, she confirmed it. No, she wasn’t planning on ever telling me. 🤷🏻‍♀️ More on that in the future. Like I said, this story is a mille-feuille so let’s stop here for today. I sat on this for a long time without writing about it because honestly, I was afraid of how my family would feel. This is how I felt at the magazines when I was afraid to admit I had been sexually abused and felt like a coward fraud after reading so many brave letters from girls who were in-real-time survivors of the same. It’s not that I don’t want to protect my family. It’s more that I want to protect myself. Finally. I am a speaker of the truth. And perhaps that’s because I was raised with so many lies. Let me know if you’ve had an experience like this and have wisdom to share. I’d love it. I know in the age of 23andMe, I’m not alone. And until next time, I continue to be grateful to be your pen pal. Even when it’s quiet on my side, I’m here, 24/7, as always, at <a target="_blank" href="mailto:atoosa@atoosa.com">atoosa@atoosa.com</a>.xo atoosaPS - I’m not on Instagram anymore (Being off has afforded me the quiet and space I need to process everything and make the changes I’ve needed to make in my life as mindfully as possible), but if you liked this post, feel free to share the link on your social media. Thank you!Thanks for reading Atoosa Unedited! This post is public so feel free to share it.Soundtrack of my ❤️: This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://atoosa.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">atoosa.substack.com</a>

July 7, 2024

One Last Secret

hey!For the last three years, together, we have picked through my dirty laundry.Did you see it all?Believe it or not….No.But I think you will agree that you’ve seen puh-lenty.In fact, maybe it was more period-stained undies than you wanted (or needed) to see.I am reminded of a line from Forrest Gump:“My momma always said, you got to put the past behind you before you can move on. And I think that’s what my run was about. I had run for 3 years, 2 months, 14 days and 16 hours. I’m pretty tired now. I think I’ll go home. And just like that my running days was over.”That’s what this column was about. Putting the past behind me. 3 years, 3 months and 21 days. All of my stories shared privately in deep dialogue with my closest friends on the phone and over long walks. And almost all of it shared with you, dear reader.You may wonder why I opted to share it with you. It was not my catharsis. I have always been well supported by my friends and therapist of 23 years. I shared it with you because I have loved you since you were a teenager and now as I have teens of my own, I wanted to model for you (and them…and their future children, my grandchildren) what I wish I had known when I was a teen and a younger-than-50 adult: Truth telling. Hard truth telling.You do not have to be a good girl.I told you about my abortions. I told you about the worst things I’ve done and some of the worst things done to me. I told you…and many, many people in my life who previously only knew me as this always friendly, shit-together upstanding member or even leader of their community. In other words, this project wasn’t just a letter that went out to former teen magazine readers that I’ve never met and would never meet. Anyone could read it. And did. Including people I have a more formal relationship with. This part was for me. I was sick of having an image that felt discordant to who I really am. No more costumes for me. No more perfect performances for people on the outside. No more showing up to some event I’m dreading because “it’s the right thing to do.” No more overriding my comfort to assure someone else’s. It took three years to break the pattern of living to feed some external perception of me. Like many of you, as a child, I was programmed to perform for my parents. I’m not sure if we are naturally supposed to evolve to simply stop being led by external approval, but I suspect not. Look at the success of Instagram. But after this project, there are no more shoulds in my life. I am here for me.The only way I found to truly put the past behind me was to look it in the eye. To sit with it. Like a big box of trash that requires the same love, attention and care as a big box of family heirlooms. You explore each piece. And no, it’s not easy. I had many (very close) friends say about my Substack, “I just don’t know if I can read this one.” Picking through trash is not for the faint of heart. But we, my sister, are not faint of heart. We are brave beyond measure. Pick your people…even your one person. (Not your romantic interest.) It can be a therapist, a true long time best friend, or even your journal. But tell someone EVERYTHING. And not everything except “that.”Say THAT.Let me say it again.You do not have to be a good girl.What I know for sure: Exploring the depths of our interiority, our sometimes bloody and oozing interiority…the parts of us that are decidedly not ready for Instagram, is integral to living our best life.Like, I cringe when I remember telling Charlie Rose about my AMAAAAAAZING childhood living with my various relatives as one big happy immigrant family (leaving out the part about how two of them sexually abused me) and my easy breezy life as an Editor-in-Chief. I had taken every bit of ugliness and shoved it way down below the surface of my being. The world at large certainly didn’t need to know what I was hiding in my basement. Except, well….you can’t keep bags and bags of oozing, foul garbage in your basement without it eventually stinking up your living room. At the very minimum, I needed to acknowledge, accept and clean up what was in my own basement.Listen, we all have garbage aka trauma. Sure, some people more than others. And it’s all relative. But our true strength comes from what we have endured….not whether or not we can pretend it never happened. In my experience, pretending it never happened keeps the trauma alive, and so in some ways, it’s still happening to us. By trying to ignore it, we are adding to what we need to endure instead of ending the difficult chapter and beginning to process it so we can move forward.The true difficulty is not in the sharing.The true difficulty is in the NOT sharing.Case in point: In my last <a target="_blank" href="https://atoosa.substack.com/p/i-want-to-give-up">Substack</a>, I was sitting with my anxious back and forth pacing about my next step. What will it be? Why isn’t it coming to me? Who AM I, if not Someone Important?I felt like a hunter with nothing to hunt. If you have a cat, you know how they sometimes wildly stalk some unseen prey in our homes. It was explained to me that it’s left over in their nervous systems from when they were wild. The hunt still thumps inside them.Through the process of sharing with you, I finally understood what I was hunting for.My single biggest epiphany of the past three years.My unspoken secret…that was even a secret from me.And YOU, dear reader, helped me unearth it in the comments section of the last Substack.The very first comment was from <a target="_blank" href="https://substack.com/@lexibarib">Alexa</a>.No-Atoosa-Comeback - I think it’s already happened. Not in the traditional overachiever business way but in the you came back as your true authentic self way. The real you, with your new values and priorities, is the comeback!And <a target="_blank" href="https://substack.com/profile/135956563-francis">Francis</a>So funny… I (a business owner that can now be absent/successful) has these thoughts every day. I also am divorced and cook dinner for my kids every night cause it’s our time together. Yet, I was yearning for more even though I also burned out from overworking in the past. The overachiever in us isn’t comfortable yet we are thankful in many ways for the privilege to be present mothers. A week ago I finally got my answer.. we are EXACTLY where we are supposed to be! I made peace with the constant voice that is always searching and just embraced being a full time mom to twins that are in their junior year of high school. They will both be leaving for college in a year and a half and I will be an empty nester. I have faith that life will show me the way when the time comes. We just have to quiet those voices that make us think that time is running out. Atoosa, you are just getting started and you are blessed!Until I read these two comments, I may have been unconsciously aware that I am at my destination. But there was a very old part of me – I think of it as a remaining splinter from the original wounding of not being “enough” that had me still pacing back and forth trying to architect My Worthiness.In that time since I shared with you….and some of you generously shared back with me in the comments and via private messages, I have relaxed into my truth:What I had wanted my whole life…My. Whole. Life….is closeness with my family.I have a very nice family of birth. There isn’t a person on earth who would say a bad word about any of them. But we were not a close family. As many children do, I wordlessly assumed the blame and responsibility for this lack of deep connectivity. And so, with the maturity of a small child, I made decisions as an adult. It never occurred to me that there were cultural and ancestral reasons for this lack of intimacy and closeness. My child’s mind thought that if I was impressive, I would finally earn this mythical unconditional love and connection. This hidden desire drove my early success. The child within me kept recalibrating each time I would achieve the milestone that I thought would SURELY bring the closeness I wanted…and yet, didn’t. And it wasn’t all career related. It was marriage, my children, my home(s), my hostessing of various holidays, my generosity, on and on and on. I kept feeding this small child’s yearning for closeness. Over time, it felt like feeding a ravenous monster. I tirelessly fed this bottomless pit… unaware of its existence.I had NO conscious idea closeness with my family was what I was seeking.We can make as many vision boards as we like, but I found that despite our best intentions, we tend to organize our lives around what is unspoken. And as long as it’s unspoken, our actions are unconscious and our choices are not coming from our known values, but from what’s hidden. As such, our lives can feel like an enigma to us.I have learned that a family is not close because we always make a point to get together for holidays, special occasions or have an active group chat. A family is close when we can hold space for each other when it’s most difficult and inconvenient. When we love and accept each other unconditionally. And loyalty. Blood is thicker than water. I really understand this now. I realized that while I love my family of birth, I will likely never have a close family. And yet, I DO have a close family. I have these three magical human beings I birthed. That I love unconditionally. And who love me unconditionally. I choose them first, always. I finally unconsciously created that closeness. I am here. Right now. The chase is over. And it’s been over for years. My family unit is a living breathing thing and I want to tend to it with loving care for the rest of my life. That is my most important calling.Today, I love my life. I have peace. I have freedom. Even with some very difficult emotions during the past few years as I have cycled through dating various people, divorce and cancer…to write about it with complete honesty? Girl, that can ONLY come from a place of freedom and empowerment. But it’s also bizarre. I had to live through so many versions of what I THOUGHT having my best life looked like, until I had my big lightbulb moment.Living your best life is not about what it looks like.It’s about what it feels like.Duh. xo atoosaSoundtrack of my ❤️ : This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://atoosa.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">atoosa.substack.com</a>

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What is Atoosa Unedited?: When your life gets bat sh*t crazy, I can help. The podcast of the Atoosa Unedited newsletters! <a href="https://atoosa.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast">atoosa.substack.com</a>
How often does this podcast release new episodes?: This podcast updates weekly.
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Does this podcast accept guests?: Yes, this podcast regularly features guests.

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