How do your poems reflect your experiences? How do these experiences drive you to write?
Poetry has always been how I've coped. From as far back as I can remember I have written this way. I suppose we all have an innate drive to express our experiences, if we are open to listening inward. And that looks different for everyone. For me, it has always been poetry. Poetry is my survival anthem.
What is your writing process? As a single mother of three children, how do you balance writing, parenting, and other responsibilities?
Life with 3 kids is exhausting, especially as a single mother, and especially as one living with complex PTSD and other traumagenic struggles. Balance is not something I've found, if I'm being honest. Every day is a multi-faceted battle for survival, both internally and externally. I share custody with the children's father, so one half of my life is starkly different from the other. When the children are away, and the house is quiet, that's when the writing happens. I wouldn't say I have a writing process. I would say the words find me. They've always found me. They live inside of me and spill out sometimes in the form of poetry and prose. Anytime I've sat down with the intention to write, nothing comes out. It doesn't work that way. The words come to me from a place I've never understood, and even after they are sprawled out in front of me on paper or in my notes app, there are times I don't even fully comprehend them. They are continuously teaching me about myself, and about the parts of me that still need tenderness.
How has your childhood trauma affected how you approach parenthood? What do you want for your children?
It would be easier to list the ways my childhood trauma *hasn't* affected parenthood. I can't even fathom what life would have been like if trauma wasn't the lens I was forced to view things through. I think one of the biggest things though is that having children has exposed so much more of my own wounds than maybe anything else could have. They've challenged and triggered me, they've brought out the worst in me, and they've forced me to face that. And for that, I will always be grateful. Nothing has propelled me towards healing and towards even staying alive in my darkest moments, than their faces and their beautiful humanity. I have failed them more than I'll ever be able to repair, but it is their unwavering existence as beings worthy of so much more that pushes me to grow and learn every single day.
Really, I think having kids has shown me just how much I deserved as a child myself but missed out on. Things like safety, body autonomy, and a sense of self. There is nothing I want more than to be better each day for them. To show them their own worth. To take full accountability for my wrongs against them. To advocate for them in a hostile world. To teach them to speak up for themselves, even if that means challenging me. Their stubborn fire reminds me of what was once innate in me too, but was snuffed out. I want to rebuild that fire within myself while doing everything in my power to keep theirs burning.
How has writing The Sins of the Fathers helped you to, not necessarily overcome, but to deal with trauma and keep going?
Creating The Sins of the Fathers felt like letting out a scream that had been trapped inside of me for decades. The few months before releasing it were an agonizing writer's dry spell. And in the weeks leading up to putting it together, it felt like there was this crisis brewing inside of me that I couldn't quite put words to. I called it an emergency when trying to explain it to my therapist. I was worried at first that another inpatient psych admission was on my horizon. But instead, this wild hyper energy came forward and the book was essentially put together over two consecutive childless weekends.
I remember being up until after 3am more than once during that time (not unusual for me) combing through a decade of my writings and curating the message I felt needed expressed through my book. There's no other way to explain how it came together other than to say that there was truly an emergency inside of me and The Sins of the Fathers was the evacuation protocol. After finalizing the whole project, this huge sense of relief came over me. An exhale. And then the words came again. There was this sense of space inside of me that hadn't been there before. Like publishing my book made room for the next parts of my story to be written. Healing is an ongoing process and I'm definitely not done trudging through it, nor am I done documenting my journey.
When thinking about creative expression, what draws you to write poetry?
I think I was just born a poet. I was dropped into a war zone family and the universe gave me poetry as my battle sword. I hope never to stop wielding her.
You discuss compartmentalization and disassociation as coping mechanisms. What do you say to someone, particularly young women, who are in a similar situation?
I have been diagnosed with a dissociative disorder. I didn't know this was how I coped until a few years ago, that's how compartmentalized the compartmentalization was. And that's the nature of dissociative disorders and dissociation in general. It's our brain's way of surviving things we might not otherwise survive. It's a beautiful adaptation, but it certainly comes at a cost. For me, it wasn't until I was in my early 30's that those walls came crashing down in layers, causing years of mental health crises and confusion and decisions made in dissociative fugue I still can't fully make sense of. I am still in the middle of it, really. Still sorting through it. Still peeling back layers.
If you are someone who relates to this, I would say find safe support. Whether that's a therapist, friends, a partner, etc. It's a long messy journey, untangling the mess that is dissociation and repressed memories, and you shouldn't have to do it alone. But remember that your brain did this to protect you. I am still learning to show myself compassion for the ways I survived. For the ways I'm still surviving. But compassion and softness towards self is key, or that's what my therapist is always telling me anyhow.
What do you want readers to take away after reading The Sins of the Fathers?
That I believe you. Whatever your story is, whatever your scream, I believe you.
What's next for you?
Another book, hopefully. As I've said I'm always writing. The words are constantly forcing themselves up from the murk and into my consciousness. Since the release of The Sins Of the Fathers 3 months ago, I have written dozens of new pieces. I'm not done screaming. The more layers I get glimpses of, the more poetry will pour out of me. I am but a vessel.