without flinching

without flinching is about grief that doesn't end when the funeral does.

It is about losing a mother and still needing her.
About birthdays that keep happening anyway.
About breaking down on the side of the road and still driving home.

But it is also about interruption.

About realizing the voice in your head was inherited - and deciding not to pass it down.
About becoming a mother and understanding that fear can sound like love if you're not careful.
About learning how to pause in the middle of anger.
How to kneel instead of tower.
How to choose softness where sharpness once lived.

These poems move through hospital rooms, kitchen floors, long drives, quiet nights, and the slow rewiring of a nervous system that once mistook chaos for safety.

This is not a book about being healed.

It is about building the kind of safe that stays.

It is about grief that still hums in the background -
and peace that no longer feels suspicious.

If you are learning how to grieve and grow at the same time,
if you are breaking patterns no one else named,
if you are trying to become something steadier than what you were given-

this book is for you.