"No one will ever fully be able to understand the internal battles you had to endure just to heal, just to grow, just to make it here today. Be proud of the way you fought to save yourself. Be proud of the way you survived."

This book was for the little girl in me. So I took her out and made her sit on a beanbag chair. She just listened as I read to her. She always seems to tug on my heartstrings when I see her. My God, how beautiful she is. When I finished, we were both teary-eyed. And we sat there, just looking at each other. God, I wanna hold her. But all I could muster up to that beautiful broken little girl was, “I’m sorry, lil one.”

Not all poetry to me has to be lyrically artistic and polished. There is beauty in rawness. In the mess. Let it be formed from whatever source it came from. Let it be what it wants to be, not what you want it to be. This book is for people like me to take out and read every once in a while to recenter our younger selves. To remind ourselves. I feel like I don’t need to explain what that means, ‘people like me’. When you check out the description of this book if you are drawn to it like I was? Trust me, take out your younger self and read it to them.

“It is through our darkened journey that we are taught how to appreciate the warmth, how to chase the light.”