Unorganized Territory 2.0

Maine voters on election 2026 and America's political moment.

I first launched Unorganized Territory shortly after my son Sam was diagnosed with leukemia at age 17. Storytelling—through writing or audio, professional or personal—has been source of solace in my life. I thought a Substack newsletter would be a good way to update family and friends on Sam’s progress. I also thought it could help me process what I was feeling as I supported him through the grueling treatment required to save his life.

My intention was to write here semi-regularly. Maybe twice a month. But the deeper into cancer caregiving I went the less bandwidth I seemed to have. It was as if my right-brain creativity was pushed aside by a desperate, brawny, left-brain dominance: the logic, facts and executive functioning required to organize and dispense daily medications, deliver home chemotherapy infusions and monitor and treat side effects and fevers. I used whatever right brain capacity I had left to bear witness to Sam and soothe his pain and fear. I managed to write a few updates. I tried not to be too hard on myself.

It’s impossible to know, in advance, how a health ordeal will change a family. Sam is in the middle of his freshman year now at the University of Maine. He’s finished with his treatment, cancer free and has a great long-term prognosis. His sister, now a thriving high school junior, navigated her own struggles early on in her brother’s illness with her trademark mixture of self-advocacy and resilience.

When Sam got sick, I had just left a start-up company where I had worked since 2019 in communications and marketing. The gig was my first long-term one since leaving public radio journalism in 2016 to be a full-time custodial parent. Throughout Sam’s treatment, I did part-time communications work for my former employer, the start-up, and figured, initially, that the logical next step for me was a consulting business providing similar services.

I had every intention of hard charging it into this next phase with barely a wink and a nod to what I’d been through with Sam. But this past summer, a bunch of things happened in rapid succession. I moved to a new place—our second move during Sam’s treatment. My long-term relationship ended. And both kids went off to school in August.

The empty nest just gutted me. There’s no other way to put it. A stream of delayed grief—many months of caregiving, followed by the breakup, followed by the empty nest—overtook me.

It’s scary staring at the blank page. My uncertainty and anxiety, though, felt relative compared to what I’ve watched Sam go through with so much courage and so little complaint. His example has created a well of family strength, one that I was able to draw on to ask the right questions about my own immediate future.

What do I love to do?

What fears are holding me back from going all in on the thing I love doing?

Here’s my truth: I’m a journalist and a storyteller. I’ve missed this work more than I realized. A real crisis has a way of sharpening focus. Time is finite. So, with that in mind, I’m excited to share the news of my return to reporting and storytelling with the relaunch of Unorganized Territory.

A bi-weekly podcast on Substack, Unorganized Territory tells the story of the 2026 election in Maine, and our American political moment, through the voices of voters in the towns, villages and small municipalities at the heart of community life in the nation’s most rural state.

In the process, Unorganized Territory seeks to encourage active listening across cultural divides at a time when shouting, intolerance and vitriol are dominating American political discourse.

Maine voters follow elections closely and take the franchise seriously. Hard work, resilience and resourcefulness have been woven into the fabric of family and civic life in Maine for generations and have shaped the state’s historically independent-minded approach to politics.

Next year, Maine voters will make choices that will directly influence which party controls both houses of Congress.

Unorganized Territory believes there’s space and an important need in the media landscape for coverage of this consequential election through the real lives, experiences and voices of those doing the actual voting across Maine. Weekly stories and audio diaries of differing lengths, touching on community pride and sense of place; the roots of voters’ personal engagement with politics and choices in elections; economic uncertainty and affordability concerns; rising health care costs and housing insecurity; President Trump and his policies and the often-stark divide between the realities of rural life, and the way rural voters and their communities are often represented, perceived and stereotyped far away in the country’s urban power centers.

Unorganized Territory will be free at first, as I work to build a following.

A trailer for the show will be released tomorrow.

Listen in beginning March 10th on Substack, Apple, Spotify and other major podcast platforms.