Statistically speaking, when women are diagnosed with a terminal illness, men are six times more likely to leave their partner. But when Molly Kochan, a podcaster, writer, and blogger from Los Angeles, was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer in 2015, she was the one doing the leaving.
Her unique journey was turned into a gut-wrenching television series titled Dying for Sex, in which Michelle Williams plays the late Kochan and Jenny Slate plays her best friend, Nikki Boyer.
Kochan noticed a lump on her breast at 33, but doctors insisted that she was ‘too young’ for it to be anything serious.
Six years later, she was diagnosed with breast cancer that had spread to her bones, brain, and liver. Although she underwent intense chemotherapy and radiation, the illness could not be defeated. So Kochan took total control of her life, beginning with leaving her husband of 13 years.
In her writings, she revealed that she and her husband had been in counseling long before their separation, citing “difficulties” in the bedroom and a lot of stress on both sides.
“For a long time with sex—and this is why I had a problem in my marriage—I was really, really, really good at figuring out what other people liked, and then I could simulate that like an actor for them,” she reportedly wrote. “But I never really knew what I liked.”
Thus, her journey began. According to The Daily Mail, the decision to explore her body during her time of illness helped her reconnect with herself. She documented the experience on Instagram under the handle “Dying for Sex,” where she posted raunchy lingerie photos.
In her posthumous podcast, she mentioned that it was likely due to the hormone therapy she received, which increased her libido instead of shrinking it.
Kochan’s best friend Boyer, who became her primary caretaker after Kochan left her husband, told Time that Kochan really did meet with several of the men she met online and that the series portrayed some of her actual escapades, including dominating a man who liked to pretend to be a dog.
“When Molly felt out of control, she did really, really fun stuff with men,” Boyer shared.
Kochan died at the age of 45 on March 8, 2019, and released a blog post posthumously.
The post reflected on her time spent exploring and her raw, real take on what it is like to have to exit this mortal plane so soon.
The post just before her death, however, really captured her feelings about not “beating cancer” in an eloquent and poignant way.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love life, but I don’t feel this grand attachment to mortality,” she wrote. “In some ways, I believe we are all immortal and mortal at the same time. Our bodies are mortal. The rest of us…I have my beliefs but I’ll find out at some point. As will you.”
