The Story of 'Poems From the Heart - A Journey Through the Seasons'

In the winter of 2022, I started writing. I've always jotted things down and written poems here and there, I did a travel blog when I was away, but something felt different about this.

During the end of the summer of 2021, I went through some pretty big change. As I moved through and processed, I found myself spending a lot of time outside. It was winter and it was a cold one that year. Cold, complete with a lot of snow - it was perfect. I often found myself walking down on the river trail and more often than not, because of the weather, no one else was out there, it was just me in the silence, it was nice.

One afternoon, it was snowy and blustery out, I let myself fall backwards into a snowbank and just allowed myself to be held. I watched the snow fall, felt it melt on my skin and fully sunk into the coziness of the snow, I surrendered and allowed myself to fully be and that's when I first began to write. I still remember the moment so clearly from it came...

I decided that I would continue to write through the winter and when winter finished, I decided that for the next year, I was going to write through the seasons and just see what would come from it. Winter turned into Spring, Spring to Summer and Summer to Fall and words poured out of me into my notes app and I loved it. I found a new appreciation for each of the seasons and I allowed myself to move and flow with them. You'll notice as you read through the book that for every season there is an 'opening' and a 'closing', a hello & a goodbye, a beginning and an end.

Somewhere along the way I had played with formatting my poems into a book on Canva - at this point in time I still had no idea what I was going to do with it or if I was ever going to do anything with it but the breadcrumbs kept falling and I continued to follow.

One of those breadcrumb moments was at a market in Clear Lake that summer. I knew I wanted a crow to be on the cover because the crow kept showing up for me in mysterious ways that year. The crow served as my guide, everywhere I went, there she was - known to symbolize wisdom, intuition and the power of change. They are adaptable, intelligent and have a transformative nature about them. Magical, mystical, mysterious and usually misunderstood which was so very resonant for me through that chapter of my life.

There was a break in the market day and my friend & I found ourselves doing 'legs up on the wall' in the middle of the parking lot on this random grass patch, no wall in sight. We were enjoying the moment, most likely laughing at what people must have thought about what we were doing as they walked by when all of the sudden this murder of crows landed in the trees across the road, behind us. They were upside down to me in that moment, but when they landed I just knew that was it. I immediately sat up to snap a picture because I knew, that was going to be the cover of my book... that I still really had no intention of publishing ha ha, truly.

At the end of that year, when the writing was 'done' and I had played around with some formatting - I just sort of left it on my computer in Canva and "never looked back". 

I did slowly begin to share them though. At the end of every breathwork class I would often share a quote or a passage from a book that I like, sometimes a tarot/oracle card or something that I'd jotted down as the class had gone on and one day I decided to share one of my poems. After every class I send out an email with the playlist and anything that I've read and so I signed my initial & last name at the end of the poem and sort of hoped it would just go under the radar. But people began to notice and they told me that they often felt like energetic transmissions that they needed to hear in the moment so I continued on.

About a year after the initial writing stopped I was in Toronto sitting around a table with some of my friends that were discussing their love for poetry when I mentioned that I had a whole book on my computer that I just hadn't done anything with yet. They both told me I should publish it so I went home and decided to finish it and then put it out into the world.

Writing her and publishing her has been one of my favourite and most vulnerable projects! It's been this wild ride where all of the pieces continued to fall into place for me along the way - one that I am so glad I never rushed. 

Reading it from start to finish during the editing process was really neat for me. Some of the poems I was truly in awe that I had written them, others were words that I needed to hear again at this point in my life and some I felt like were just straight up a little cringe and yet isn't that how life is and what this journey is about - accepting all aspects of self. The book felt complete by the time I was ready to hit publish, that chapter of my life felt complete - one that I am forever grateful for because something so beautiful came from it. And not only the book but the experiences that have happened since being brave enough to allow myself to be vulnerable enough to put it out there - there have been some very cool life moments that I've gotten to witness as a result.

Your vulnerability will open doors for you that you never imagined possible - it gets to be better than you can even imagine!

This experience has truly been one of a kind and I am so incredibly blessed to everyone that has supported me and the book every step along the way, I am so grateful!

You can purchase your copy of 'Poems From the Heart - A Journey Through the Seasons' directly from the website or find it on all Amazon platforms.

Until next time...

<3