Love So Fierce: Available Now

Today is the big day. The publication day of my book Love So Fierce. It came two days early thanks to the vagaries of Amazon publishing!

Love So Fierce is a collection of poetry exploring themes of mental illness, self expression and discovery, the dichotomous nature of motherhood, and the tempestuous pulls of passionate love.

It has been a hard decade; almost ten years of pain and grief, loss and doubt. It has also been a decade of love and growth, challenge and acceptance. A lot of joy has come out of this past decade, but it also germinated a lot of despair. I am happy to close the door on this chapter and that is what the publication of Love So Fierce means to me.

By finally putting these words into print, I am giving myself permission to acknowledge them and feel them, while moving on from them. And in sharing them, I hope that, as they say, my story can become part of someone else's survival guide. If you are going through struggles like the ones in these pages, know that you are not alone. If I made it through, you can too.

Buy Love So Fierce

To My Book

I made you

crafted you from beginning to end

poured over your being

and breathed life into you

through long nights 

endless days

I laboured over who you would become

and in becoming, the time has come

for you to leave me.

You will fly free from this nest of creation

this safe haven is a place of beginnings

not living

you will have a life beyond me

out of my reach 

outside my control

and I don't know what the world will make of you

will they love you as I have loved you?

Impossible.

But some of them may love you more than I

We cannot know

until you fly.

Love So Fierce will be available one week from today on Amazon.

On Publishing

Publishing: the act of letting words flow from my fingertips to be read by anyone who cares to see them.

It's a difficult thing - letting go. Relinquishing control over your creation and releasing it into the wild to be seen and possibly misunderstood. Many of these poems were written with no thought of anyone reading them, let alone everyone. They belonged to private worlds of thought and emotion coalesced into words to make them clearer to myself, to organize my wayward mind and pull sense from sensibility.

And now they will be public access. In anyone's hands, living in anyone's home. It's a strange feeling and it's an interesting journey I've taken from hoarding my most private, terrifying thoughts to publishing them for anyone to read. For people to sit and leaf through my grief over a cup of coffee. To peruse my trauma as entertainment. But it is a good place to be sitting, where I am now, wanting to share and finding that people are ready to listen. Validating, yes, but more than that, it closes the circuit of connection and brings us closer. Whether we are friends, family, acquaintances or strangers, we will have shared understanding between us and a spark of acceptance. 

It's beautiful and I love that I now have a piece of work, a creation of my own, serving such a purpose in the world.

Snake Skin

I'm itchy in this life

that feels too tight

A skin that I've outgrown.

It's time to pick

at the pieces of me.

Shed the relic of an old self

and slither onward

to my next adventure.

Sepia Shades

Managing expectations

for myself

to avoid disappointment

when things don't work out

has become a way of life

in which I refuse to feel hope

in case it ends in pain.

 

It's a perpetual plateau of the lackluster

the home of fine and okay and pretty good.

I'm done with the sepia shades

of a life lived caged 

by realistic prospects.

I want to hope for more and mean it

even if it ends in pain.

To Be A Woman

 It's International Woman's Day and I wrote it a poem.

Reluctant Woman

To be a woman

is to fear dark parking lots

more than men do.

To have less right to personal space

than men do.

To be expected to please others

more than men are.

To bear pain and continue broken

more than men can.

To give pleasure without return

more than men will.

To be a woman in this room is uncomfortable

when people keep telling you things are already equal

with their hand on the small of your back

and their voice drowning out your words.

It's benign and acceptable, they say,

when he leans in too close.

He's just being friendly

when he looms over you with his larger paycheck

and a lifetime of subliminal messages at his back

telling him he was bold and strong

when you were told you were pretty and nice.

To be a woman is to sit with your legs together

and your voice quiet.

To be a woman is too much and not enough all at once.

Early Reviews: Love So Fierce

Reviews are the lifeblood of the literary world. 

They are the best way to reach new readers and that is what writing is all about. On Amazon, once you reach 50 reviews, your book is recommended in searches and promoted as something a shopper may also be interested in. It places the book in front of new people who otherwise would never have seen it: would never have known it existed.

Reviews will open on Amazon for Love So Fierce on April 3rd when the book is published. I hope that when you read it, you will return to the website and leave a review. If you have already read the book in an advance review copy, you can visit its page on Goodreads and leave an early review like these reviewers:

Here's what people are saying about Love So Fierce.

"There is a lot of life in these poems.  It is highly personal and emotional.  The life of a struggling mother bared before your eyes.  A struggle with miscarriage, mental health, parenting, identity and relationships... it’s safe to say that this is the best poetry I have read.  And I’ve read a lot. I will get emotional reading sometimes, which is one of the hallmarks of good writing, but it’s rare.  These poems make me cry. I challenge anyone to read them without feeling the emotion expressed in these pages."

"These are SO good;  there isn't a mother alive who wouldn't identify with every one of them. The title Love So Fierce is perfect. I just love them."

Thank you, Reviewers! You're the best!