Still Here 003

I have thanked you before. And I want to thank you again.

When I went into surgery on January 13th, I knew how to survive a body in crisis. What I didn’t know yet was how to heal in peace.

In the past, I had to learn that lesson the hard way.

After my first surgery in 2013, I couldn’t pay my $143 car note. My vehicle was repossessed with all of my art still in the trunk. A year later, I filed for bankruptcy. I was 21 years old.

That is what illness without a safety net looks like. That is what it means to have to figure it out alone. That is what a lack of community can produce.

This time around, you refused to let that happen again.

The people who showed up, who gave money, who kept watch, who prayed, who sent affirmations into the world on my behalf — you changed my relationship to care.

You enabled me to heal in peace. With clarity. In a way that allowed my nervous system to move from fight or flight into ease so I could heal tissues, nerve endings, and scars.

I don’t take that lightly. I don’t think I ever will.

I wanted to make an offering. A piece of me.

Here it is.

---

During my recovery, I gathered the poems I had been writing for over a decade and made a book. Not because the timing was convenient. Because life is fleeting. Because I refuse to do this alone. Because I didn’t want to die holding it.

Towards What Hurt, a ceremony in poems, is my debut poetry collection.

It debuts September 8, 2026.

Preorders are open now. Books ship September 8, 2026.

Order your copy here.

If you order, you are continuing what you started when you showed up for me. You are helping this book travel.

Thank you for being part of how I got here.

With love,
adria