Cari Fund
Author. Essayist. Host of Surviving Roots.
Stories about family, identity, survival, and what happens when you finally stop being who you were taught to be.
Debut essay collection, publishing October 2026. Amazon link live soon.
Shameless Essays on Cutting Ties, Keeping Receipts, and Rebuilding a Life on Your Own Terms
Autopsy of a Good Girl
Autopsy of a Good Girl is what happens when a woman finally swims to shore.
Surviving Roots
Examining the stories we inherit. Finding the courage to rewrite them.
Hosted by author and essayist Cari Fund, Surviving Roots explores identity, family dynamics, people-pleasing, estrangement, motherhood, resilience, and what it truly takes to reclaim a life that feels like your own. Through candid conversations with psychologists, bestselling authors, researchers, creators and people with extraordinary lived experiences, the podcast examines the roles we inherit, the stories we tell ourselves, and what happens when we decide to rewrite them.
Cari Fund is an author, essayist, and host of the Surviving Roots podcast whose work blends dark humor with unfiltered storytelling about family, identity, shame, resilience, and the hidden cost of survival.
Raised on a horse ranch in the hills of West Virginia, shaped by nearly two decades in New York City, and now based in Miami, Cari has spent much of her adult life examining the stories we inherit and what it takes to rewrite them.
Long before family estrangement became a cultural conversation online, Cari was quietly living it. Nearly two decades later, those experiences inform her writing about complicated families, cycle breaking, motherhood, identity, and becoming the person you were always meant to be.
Her essays have appeared in Motherly, and through Surviving Roots, she speaks with psychologists, bestselling authors, researchers, creators, and people with extraordinary lived experiences about the stories that shape us.
Before becoming a full-time writer, Cari earned a master's degree in Clinical Nutrition from New York University and a Bachelor of Science in Human Nutrition & Foods from West Virginia University. She spent more than two decades building brands, creating content, developing her own skincare line, and working across the beauty, fashion, and hospitality industries.
Today, she lives in Miami with her husband, two children, and two dogs. Most days you'll find her writing, recording, cheering from the sidelines of a tennis match, or eating lunch in her car somewhere between all three.
She isn't a therapist or a coach. She's a storyteller who believes the stories we inherit shape us, but they don't have to decide who we become.
Cari Fund