Beautifully Broken

Beautifully Broken: Poems of Hurt, Healing, and Hope is a journey through the quiet wreckage and radiant repair of a life touched by early trauma. This collection bears witness to what breaks in us-and what astonishing beauty can rise from the aftermath.

Written in an accessible voice that is both intimate and unflinchingly honest, these poems explore the lifelong reverberations of childhood wounds-emotional, psychological, and invisible to the outside world. They speak from the cracks and silences, where shame hides and memory flickers. But they do not stay there. With grace, grit, and a hard-won tenderness, they move through the landscape of healing: therapy, friendship, self-discovery, grief, rage, forgiveness, love.

Some poems ache quietly, with the heavy stillness of unspoken pain. Others rage or tremble. And gradually, light begins to come through. The language softens. The voice steadies. The heart, still bruised, opens anyway. These are poems of survival, not in the dramatic sense of one-time escape, but the slower, braver kind-of waking up every day and choosing to try again.

Many of the poems sit in liminal spaces-between girlhood and womanhood, between silence and speech, between being broken and being rebuilt. They do not offer simple resolutions or clean timelines, but they do offer truth: that healing is nonlinear, that progress can be quiet and invisible, that love (of self and others) is both fragile and fierce.

You'll find themes woven throughout: - Trauma and memory, and how the past can live in the body long after the danger has passed.

- Shame and silence, and the cost of growing up unseen or misunderstood.

- Therapy, reclamation, and growth, through hard inner work and unexpected grace.

- Friendship, as lifeline and witness.

- Grief, especially around suicide, loss, and the ache of things unsaid.

- Hope and love, not as easy answers, but as hard-fought choices.

Some poems are narrative, sketching scenes and fragments of a younger self navigating betrayal, bullying, or the ache of being different. Others are spare and lyrical-just a handful of lines that hit like a pulse in the dark. A few may bring tears. A few may offer a strange comfort. And some may feel like your own voice, finally given permission to speak.

Though the subject matter is deeply personal, Beautifully Broken is ultimately for anyone who has been through something and lived to tell about it. For those rebuilding their sense of self after childhood trauma. For those still learning what it means to be safe in their own bodies. For those who have loved someone through their own healing. For the quiet survivors. For the ones who feel too much. For anyone who's ever whispered "I'm fine" while secretly holding it all together with trembling hands.

It's not about victimhood. It's about becoming.

Of choosing softness in a world that tried to harden you.

Of discovering that healing is not about erasing the past, but integrating it-learning to carry it differently.

Of finding beauty, not in perfection, but in the way your scars catch the light.

The language is accessible, emotionally rich, and often direct. There are no abstract metaphors here-just truth, rendered with care. It may not have answers-but it does offer companionship. A reminder that you're not alone. That your pain is real. And that healing, however imperfect, is possible.

A Note from the Author

This book was written from personal experience, but it's not just my story. It's stitched together from memories, late-night journal entries, therapy sessions, and countless moments when I didn't know how to keep going-but did anyway. If even one poem in these pages makes you feel seen, less alone, or a little braver, then it was worth writing.