I published a Poetry Series

For as long as I can remember, I have been writing poems. I can recall attending primary school, as we refer to it in the Caribbean, where we learned about limericks. This was my first formal introduction to writing poetry and the beginning of my relationship with poems.

As children entering puberty, we are not always given proper guidance in how to cope with the changes our bodies go through. Growing up, I suffered with low self-esteem, I was bullied by both the children in my family and children I came across. If you've ever had to deal with it at a young age, you would understand the anger that you're forced to grow up with. The adults in your circle, whether they be family, friends or teachers will highlight all the reasons why you should ignore the name calling and love yourself. However, they are not the ones being made a mockery of on the playground. They do not quite understand how your legs weaken when passing a crowd because you have already mentally told yourself that everyone is focused on your imperfections.

I was in High school when I decided that I was done crying over the words of my schoolmates and anyone who had some negative comments about my appearance. Unfortunately, by that time, my voice was not loud enough to effectively explain my emotions to others for fear I would be judged negatively. What was my back-up? Writing. Yes, writing it all out. I wrote letters and diary entries as most of us teenagers once upon a time.

Eventually, I moved away from letters to some extent and started expressing myself through poems. I wrote about my anger and what I thought of doing to persons who hurt me. I was a coward, terrified of blood yet I wrote about how I would revenge everyone who caused me pain. I can recall watching a movie and seeing teenagers using different methods of coping with their feelings, some of them quite unhealthy. Thankfully, the only thing I could bring myself to, was expressing myself through words.

To date, I have over 150 poems that I affectionately refer to as "tears" and finally got the courage to publish some of them. My first attempt to publish was over 10 years ago. I shopped around for quotes and publishing companies that could help bring my dream to life. After receiving the quote, I made a budget and saved up enough to do it but changed my mind as I was not ready to share the tears I cried while I was vulnerable.

Fast-forward to 2021, when I was dealing with my world crumbling and felt the best way to navigate was to focus my attention on publishing. The poems were selected, reviewed, edited and a cover art was conceptualized. Progress right? For sure, the book which would consist of 74 poems divided into 6 themes would be made public. Sadly, that was another failed attempt.

In July 2024, while browsing through Instagram, I saw a post from my past classmate Valyn Athena Eugene that she had done what we planned on doing for years. She published! Valyn went all the way, cracked the code, overcame all the noise and published. You can find her book on Amazon entitled I (almost) loved you to hate.

Of course, I contacted her and said I needed to know how she was able to make our dream a reality. We were able to set a date to meet up via video chat and it was there I was given the final push to go all the way. Through our discussion, the decision was made to release my book that was titled years ago as "Tears of my heart" as a trilogy instead of one book. At the time of publishing, the manuscript of all three books are completed. 2 out of 3 are available for purchase and the third is waiting on the final cover art.

The three books available in the Tears of my Heart Trilogy are:

Book 1: Unabashed and Barefaced

Book 2: Gwo Pwel

Book 3: Eros to Storge kind of love- will be released on November 13, 2024. The link will be made available via a separate post.

Books are available for purchase on Amazon in both ebook and paperback versions. 

You can find me on Instagram and Tiktok using the handle Shajnbawrites.

Thank you for reading and look out for my future posts where I dive deeper into the individual books.