BECOMING AN AUTHOR

I have learned to creatively express my feelings, thoughts, and story through words. All I've ever wanted to do is share my story to help others through theirs.

The photo above was taken at Artprize in Grand Rapids, MI of a brilliant poet that caught my eye.

As a kid, I grew up knowing I loved to write. My mom is an author herself as It may have been sewn into me at birth. I had hundreds of notebooks of journal entries, thoughts, goals, and ideas. Everything had a place. I liked ink pens and thin tip colorful markers as they helped piece together my notes.

I struggled to read as a child, going much slower than most of the other kids. Taking extra classes and time spent focusing rather than actually reading. It wasn’t until college I found out I had vision disabilities that hindered my growth as a reader, test taker, and performer in school. At Grand Valley State University, I utilized the disability center that provided me with help on all of those things. I started excelling in school, especially in the subjects I enjoyed.

It wasn’t until 19 years old, I knew I wanted to write a book. I had poems hidden in crevices everywhere. In my journal on my nightstand, in my school notebooks, files on my google docs, I had to merge them all into one. I spent one whole summer meshing my words from years on end into one book. My very first book was published in September of my sophomore year of college. It was the scariest thing to put out there. Those are my raw, real words and experiences that would soon be in the hands of others. Reading back at my first book now, I sense I had a lot of frustration and anger toward myself for the things that other people did to me. Whether it was a bad relationship I thought would fix me or a trauma that I continued to blame myself for years. My words didn’t hold that maturity yet.

I published my first book to help me cope through a hard season of my life and hoped my words and my story touched another along the way.

I remember the first time I posted anything I’ve ever written, I was incredibly nervous and brave all in one breath. I posted it on Twitter and Instagram—the responses were overwhelmingly positive which pushed me to keep doing what I love to do.

Almost 5 years later, I am an author of 3 self-published books I made my own. I have just broken my writers' block and am working on my fourth.

I am accepting + learning to love the little things ♡

Stay tuned for more to come!