First of all, let me confess that I quit writing for over 20 years because I allowed someone’s feelings to carry more weight than my own. I looked into their judgement bearing eyes and tossed my writing in the bottom drawer where it stayed, gathering dust.

By doing so, I suffocated the part of me that was real, the truth of me, the softest part of my heart. I dimmed the light, shelved the dreams, let the fire go cold. No poetry flowed from within onto waiting paper, no stories of Warrior Queens, or howling Wolves, or love overcoming, or the victory of freedom were told, in epic fashion, by the clicks of my keyboard.

After years of that, my soul became one long silent scream of fury.

I will not tell you whose words cracked my heart like an egg finely fractured without breaking open. He would not appreciate the attention. But…