UNBOUND: ECHOES OF SURVIVAL

"I no longer risk, to think of the abyss. I dare to dance in resistance."

This is the first time I am making my writing available for sale. It is a draft manuscript of poetry and short prose that was written during a period of acute trauma processing, when writing became my way of survival following the death of my denial. Together, the pieces move through memory and isolation; fragmentation and embodiment; intimacy and shame – through spiritual and material ache into defiance. They reach beyond trauma itself into questions of belonging and wounded attachments, property and ownership, ideology and redemption, agency and survival.

After decades of traumatic amnesia, in 2024 I was midway through my final year of university and still in the early stages of processing the organised CSA I experienced as a child of the church when I became housing insecure. In the aftermath of intimate partner assault and in order to distance myself from coercive control, I was forced to return to my late childhood home - only to find more fragmented memories I'd been suppressing for decades resurface with regard to extensive trauma suffered there.

Eventually, I was helped by the council to move somewhere a little further away from this home and area, which stabilized me enough to finally complete my degree and begin to recover. Enough to process what had until then been raw. But my location is still close to triggers and other potential safety risks in view of me speaking out about what happened to me, so I have resorted to publishing under a pen-name for now, as I remain in need of funds.

I would like to say that my writing is not a call for pity, but rather an invitation to witness. An entangled unfolding of both healing and reckoning. A documentation of suffering that resists sanctification - and a madness that is palpable, yet warm.

This is testimony that unearths hope from the dirt. Raw, unfiltered, unapologetic. If that speaks to you, then thank you for hearing me.

Content Warnings: Child sexual abuse, incest, religious trauma/spiritual abuse, sexual violence, dissociation, suicidal ideation

[Please note: As a result of this being a draft copy and not official publication, I have continued to make minor edits since making this available to the public. Individual copies might be slightly different if you bought this in the earliest of days, feel free to message me for an updated version if that's the case.]