Famous poet Molly Brodak had a secret life as a ‘serial cheater’ who had affair with a student days after her wedding to author husband – and he only found out while preparing slideshow for her funeral after her suicide

Famed poet Molly Brodak's secret life as a serial cheater was only exposed by her grieving husband when he sought photos to use at her funeral, he has revealed.

Brodak, 39, an award-winning writer and star of the Great American Baking Show, committed suicide in March 2020 after battling a brain tumor and mental health issues for years.

Her stricken widower, thriller author Blake Butler, 44, wrote catharsically about dealing with the tragedy in his new memoir 'Molly', which he told DailyMail.com was the result of a 'brain dump' in the aftermath of his crushing loss.

In a devastating revelation, Butler wrote how he discovered his wife had cheated on him with a number of men when he used her phone to search for photos to use in a slideshow to honor her funeral.

He said the phone contained lewd images of Brodak posing in lingerie with sex toys while moaning the names of other men, in addition to evidence that she had an affair with a student just five days after their wedding.

“This couldn't really be what I had imagined, I kept thinking, despite the evidence before my eyes,” Butler wrote, unable to free himself because he had “somehow been forced to hurt myself by to look longer'.

He discovered that his late wife's deception went beyond sharing photos online, finding receipts for secret trips and tearing out his heart just days after Molly's sudden suicide.

“The secrecy only doubled the ensnaring shame and morbid pain that racked my insides and scraped its claws across my shattered memories as they were redefined,” he wrote in “Molly,” published this week by Archway Editions.

In the horrific aftermath of Brodak's suicide, Butler told DailyMail.com that the graphic lyrics poured out of him while he was filled with “a lot of anger.”

“The early drafts of the book were personal, much more like a brain dump,” he said, snidely admitting in the memoir that Molly had quietly justified an affair “because I had cheated on her — let alone that we had one.” to forgive. another long time ago.”

Brodak won numerous awards and legions of fans for her poetry and writing Daily Mail's You magazine – including sharing her experiences growing up with a bank robber, a fugitive father and her struggles with depression.

Despite her success, she struggled behind closed doors, as Butler gave a heartbreaking look at Molly's final days as she struggled to even get out of bed.

“Molly in the front looked like she had her shit together, and she was almost afraid to face parts of herself because she didn't think anyone would like it in her anymore,” he said.

As young published authors, Butler and Brodak were seen as something of a power couple in the literary world, and her death sent a wave of shock and sadness through the industry.

But for the first time, the details of her suicide were revealed in profound detail by Butler, which he believes was because his cathartic thoughts about her death 'mutated into something that I realized had a public purpose.'

“I consider Molly's story a tragedy. I felt her story needed to be told and that it had a purpose in the world for others who are in a similar situation to her.”

On the morning of March 8, 2020, Butler jogged out for his daily morning run, leaving Molly at home as she sank into a depression that had been eating her up for some time.

He said she was reading quietly in their bedroom, in a distant stupor, and barely responded when he held one of their chickens in her window in an attempt to cheer her up.

Instead, she looked at him blankly, “her eyes were hidden like dents against the glare in the dimness of the room.”

As he took his normal running route around the neighborhood, Blake had no idea that his wife left her suicide note in the front door for him to find when he returned.

In her opening lines, he reveals, she told him, “Blake. I have decided to leave this world.'

Molly decided to shoot herself to make the act as quick and painless as possible and told him that she had gone to a wooded area where they were going for a walk together.

The discovery sent Blake on a frantic chase to find her who he described as “moving through something so far beyond adrenaline that it felt like the world had finally gone flat, my blood replaced with poison, swept away.”

Butler, the author of several thriller novels, uses gripping, visceral language to describe the moment his life was destroyed, a decision he says he made because he was solely focused on telling the brutal truth.

“There are definitely things in the book that are difficult to talk about, but I trusted that it felt like the right thing to say, even if it was extreme to others,” he said. “It had to be extreme, it was an extreme situation.”

Nowhere was this uncompromising view of tragedy seen more starkly than in his own struggle to stay alive in the days after Molly's death, which he wrote as “at once obligatory and impossible.”

'Like the only thing I could ever expect again was to be treading up to my neck in blood that looked like water, with a black bag over my head, the fabric of which was lined with mural-style dioramas of the scene of Molly's suicide engraved in it, laced with miles of smoke,” he wrote.

Blake said the early days were “chaos” in his mind, and as an author he did everything he could think of: writing.

After the shock of her loss wore off, he said one of the most valuable lessons was learning to accept help from others, even though his trust had been shattered.

“When Molly died, it wasn't just something I could figure out on my own,” Butler continued. “I had to let people into my house and I had to trust people with my emotions.”

While he initially wrote about the tragedy for the catharsis, Butler said he hopes the long journey to the final decision to publish the book could help others who may relate to his struggle.

“Tragedy and trauma are completely disorienting for everyone and it takes time,” he said when asked for advice for others who may be in a similar situation.

'You may have to lay low and just eat cr** for a while, but you will get better and you will adapt.'

Looking back, he said there were signs that Molly had a darkness inside her, including a time when she remarked that “if there was ever a gun in this house, I would end up using it on myself.”

“That would be shocking for most people to hear, but for me, because I had read her poetry and how she processed things… it wasn't a threat,” he said, adding that they bonded over their shared “morbid situation. Humour'.

“We shared an intimacy about the darkness of the world,” he said.

Despite her success as an author and award-winning poet, Molly's tragic suicide letter describes how she “never came close to achieving what I wanted in my heart” and felt she “just wasn't good enough.”

Blake said he wished he had told her about her genius more often, as she “never gave herself a rope,” and “everything good that happened just went in one ear and out the other.”

In an unwavering look into the darkness that consumed her, Butler made the difficult decision to publish her final diary entries to reveal how she secretly struggled with their normal-seeming lives, a sign that anyone can struggle in secret.

'Took a bath, said goodbye to my body. We ate grilled halloumi and made love after dinner and watched our favorite things on TV,” the clip reads.

'I feel like I can see everything so clearly this morning. I've been pretending all my life.'