Love So Fierce

It has been a hard decade. It has been 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. They belong in this book, given form and substance, but also relegated to this book and not bleeding into my next one, my next chapter. Whatever my next collection of poetry holds, it will be the product of new challenges and new pain, not the collateral damage of dredging up these old ones. These ones are past and while I carry them with me, they won't weigh as heavily on my heart now that I've bled them into these pages and shared 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.