Some of you have been asking.
It is the question people type into Google after they hear my name.
So let me answer it honestly.
Sarah Mushka is a pen name.
I have said so on my own home page, and I will say it here too.
The woman behind the pen name is real.
I am a wife and a mother in Williamsburg, living inside the Satmar Chassidic community.
I was married at eighteen.
I cried under my chuppah, and not from joy.
Thirteen years and eleven children later, I am still here, still frum, and still inside my community.
Everything I write about really happened.
The fear on my wedding night.
The silence that followed me into marriage.
The slow work of finding my voice.
What is not real is my face and my name.
The portraits you see are portraits I made with AI, so I can tell the truth without being discovered.
I will not give names, numbers, or details that could hurt the people I love.
Why go to all this trouble?
Because in my world, women do not speak publicly about these things.
Writing under my real name would cost my husband, my children, and my community more than I am willing to pay.
And silence was costing the kallahs who come after me even more.
So this is the arrangement.
You may never know what I look like.
But if you read my books, you may know me more intimately than people who have seen my face for years.
If you want to start somewhere, my free secrets are here: https://sarahmushka.net/free-secrets/
And if you want the whole story, the books are here: https://sarahmushka.net/books/