Surviving yourself

Surviving Yourself

Poems on Family, Silence, and Choosing to Stay

What if the hardest thing you've ever had to survive was your own reflection?

Surviving Yourself is a raw, spoken-word-inspired poetry collection written from the rooms we don't let people see - the living room after the argument, the bedroom after the apology, the silence between a father and a son who love each other but don't always know how to say it.

These poems hold the weight of being the different child.

The gay son.

The one who felt too loud and not understood enough.

They explore fathers who tried, love that existed but didn't always feel reachable, and the complicated space between expectation and identity.

This collection speaks honestly about:

.Family tension

• Addiction and accountability

• Depression and survival

• Comparison and belonging

• Choosing to stay when it would be easier not to

Some poems confront.

Some whisper.

Some sit heavy in the chest long after the page is turned.

This is not a story about being fully healed.

It is a story about staying.

About choosing to wake up.

About learning softness after survival.

About understanding that sometimes the loudest battle is the one no one hears.

For anyone who has ever felt alone in a crowded house, questioned whether they were loved the right way, or fought their own mind in the dark -

This book is proof that survival is possible.

This is what it looks like to survive yourself.