Twenty Years of Healing & Ten Years of Writing

From the Candle's Glow

People say your greatest accomplishments are graduating from high school, going to college, earning a degree, landing your first real career, falling in love, getting married, and having a family. My only two accomplishments from that list were graduating from high school and falling in love. For a long time, I believed that meant I was falling behind. I watched the people around me reach milestone after milestone. I celebrated their weddings, careers, homes, and growing families. I stood in the background and applauded as they built lives that seemed to fit the world's definition of success. Meanwhile, I was fighting battles no one could see.

For twenty years, one of my accomplishments was surviving. I carried heartbreak, loss, disappointment, grief, self-doubt, and the weight of becoming someone I had not yet met. I spent years learning how to heal from things that changed me. Years of learning how to find my voice. Years of learning how to stop shrinking myself to make others comfortable. Somewhere along the way, I convinced myself that my dreams could wait. I believed I needed permission to pursue them. Permission to take up space. Permission to be seen. Permission to believe that what I had to say mattered. I stayed in the background. I dimmed my own light. I made myself smaller. I watched opportunity pass by because I was afraid of what would happen if I finally stepped forward, but healing has a way of teaching you the truth. The truth is that no one can give you permission to become who you were meant to be. That permission has always belonged to you.

Ten years ago, I began writing a book. At first, it was never meant to become what it is today. It was simply a place to put the pieces of my heart. A place to make sense of the seasons I had lived through. A place to tell the truth. Year after year, I kept writing. Through heartbreak. Through healing. Through endings. Through awakenings. Through becoming. After twenty years of healing and ten years of writing, I am finally publishing my first book. Not because the timing suddenly became perfect. Not because someone finally told me I was ready, but because I finally understood that my story deserved to be told. Every girl I have ever been is finally ready to tell our story. For so long, I watched others step into the light while I remained in the background. Now, I choose differently. I choose to take up space. I choose to honor every version of myself that carried me here.

I am finally ready to share with the world the work of the last ten years. My debut poetry collection, Each Season of Our Life, is coming this November. This book is more than a collection of poems. It is proof that healing is possible. It is proof that survival can become transformation. It is proof that the dreams we quietly carry for years still await us when we are finally ready to claim them. This book isn't just the story of my journey. It is for anyone who has ever felt behind. Anyone who has ever questioned their worth. Anyone who has ever survived something that nearly broke them. Anyone who is still learning that becoming is its own kind of success. Writing this poetry book has been my greatest accomplishment. Not because I wrote it, but because I became the woman brave enough to close those chapters and begin a new one. 

With Gratitude for Each Season,

HN Staples

"She closed the book, smiled at the life that had written it, and finally understood that every season had been leading her home." — HN Staples