Jerry Griffin
She’s Dead: Rachel, the Girl I Never Knew
168 Days from First Post to Silence
The first words I heard about Rachel, after our brief meeting, were: “She’s dead.”
There was no awe in that moment — only shock. I didn’t know her well, and we probably exchanged fewer than a thousand words, none of them especially important. And yet, from the instant I learned she was gone, I could not let her story slip away.
Others knew her forever. Friends, family, people who grew up with her, people who loved her day by day. I barely knew her at all. We probably never spoke even a thousand words between us, and none of them were especially important. And yet her death struck me so deeply that I could not walk away from her story.
Rachel’s final 168 days — from her first post about her illness to her last breath — unfolded in real time on social media. She greeted her followers with “Hi guys,” even when she could hardly breathe. She laughed through tears, swore at the unfairness, thanked the few who stood by her, and pushed away those who didn’t. She drained liters of fluid from her lungs, counted out her meds, watched Golden Girls for comfort, and admitted the truth: “I’m trying not to die literally right now.”
This book isn’t about me. It’s about her.
It’s about one woman’s short, final fight with ovarian cancer — and how her honesty became her legacy.
She’s Dead: Rachel, the Girl I Never Knew is part testimony, part call to action. Rachel’s own words appear here alongside reflections on what her story reveals: the silence of ovarian cancer, the failures of late detection, and the urgent need for awareness before it’s too late.
