When Molly Kochan learned her cancer was incurable, she made a choice that would shock everyone who knew her.
She left her husband — and set out to live a life filled with every pleasure she had ever denied herself.
When Molly Kochan first felt a lump in her breast in 2005, she was told she was “too young” to have cancer. Six years later, after the lump had grown, she was diagnosed with breast cancer — and it had already spread to her lymph nodes.
Despite surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, Molly’s cancer returned and metastasized, eventually reaching her bones, liver, and brain.
By 2015, it was incurable.
Most people, faced with a terminal diagnosis, retreat into fear or despair. Molly Kochan did something entirely different. She chose joy. She chose freedom. And she chose to live her last years fully, on her own terms.
At 42, Molly made the bold decision to separate from her husband of 13 years. “Though there was love between us, our marriage had long struggled under the weight of control issues, intimacy challenges, and stress,” she later reflected.
After parting ways with her husband, embarked on a final, daring journey of her own. Her mission? Seeking pleasure, connection, and absolute authenticity.
And in Molly’s world, that meant exploring her sexuality without limits. Over the next few years, she slept with nearly 200 men. To her, this wasn’t just about sex. It was about reclaiming freedom, healing old insecurities, and experiencing her body before she no longer could.
The opposite effect
Many might understand her, even empathize – after all, who hasn’t wondered what they’d do if their days were numbered? But what set Molly apart was her fearless openness about the journey she chose.
After undergoing surgeries and radiation, Molly had began hormone therapy, which was intended to dampen her libido — but it had the opposite effect.
“I literally wanted to hump everything and everyone that I saw,” she revealed in one episode of Dying For Sex.
“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,” Molly said on the podcast. “But I never really knew what I liked.”
With her close friend Nikki Boyer, Molly co-hosted the unflinching and deeply personal podcast Dying For Sex, where she laid bare the intimate details of her sexual journey.
After her diagnosis, Molly spent a few years exploring her sexuality, eventually tracking 188 sexual partners with Boyer. She avoided penetrative sex due to a past traumatic experience and the menopause-inducing effects of her medication.
Yet her encounters were often unconventional: a man who dressed as a dog and wanted to live in a cage in her home, a man who wanted to be urinated on, and another who wanted to be kicked in the genitals.
Final days
Molly also wrote a memoir, Screw Cancer: Becoming Whole, and her posthumous blog entry, “I Have Died,” further immortalized her journey.
“I don’t have those kinds of life lessons to share,” she wrote. “I know what I did at the end of my life. I know what brought me joy. But my list would surely not affect you.” She reflected on friends who faded away after her diagnosis, acknowledging that cancer is a disease many don’t want to witness. “Through the drop ins and outs, I realized that people are going to do whatever they’re going to do regardless of what they want to want. Even me,” she wrote.
Her final days were a quiet rebellion against expectations. “Wasn’t that freeing? I didn’t have to buy tickets to Bora Bora, I could spend days in bed, even though I wanted to want to be productive.” She left her readers with no grandiose moral, only the truth of her lived experience: choice, joy, and freedom in the face of death.
Molly’s story has now reached a wider audience through the Hulu miniseries Dying For Sex, starring Michelle Williams as Molly and Jenny Slate as Nikki Boyer.
Williams told Good Morning America that she was deeply moved by Molly’s bravery:
“Her bravery to take the worst news, which is going to be news we all receive, and continue to view her life with creativity and joy… that is truly inspiring. The diagnosis wasn’t going to define her.”
As Dying for Sex earned glowing reviews and generated Emmy buzz, Nikki Boyer believed Kochan was watching from above, beaming with pride.
She felt certain her late friend had been proud — not just of the show, but of the journey they had shared together.
“I think she’s blown away. I think she’s proud. I think she is proud of herself. I think she’s proud of me,” Boyer said about her late friend.
Molly Kochan passed away shortly after midnight on March 8, 2019, with Nikki by her side, caring for her until the very end. Her life and legacy are a reminder that life’s final chapters can be written exactly how you choose.
“I know what I did at the end of my life. I know what brought me joy,” she wrote. And for Molly, that was more than enough.
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