This authoring journey has been a wild, beautiful, painful ride.
In the beginning, it burst out of me with raw excitement and eager abandon. Stories bloomed like wildflowers—untamed, unruly, unrestricted. I wrote the stories I had searched for and never found. The uncommon. The untold. They called to me like a beacon, as if I had been chosen to carry them into a world that hadn’t yet made room for them.
For a while, that was enough.
But over time, passion had to make space for practicality. The art, I was told—by logic, by pressure, by expectation—should be paying for itself by now. Especially at the speed my mind and fingers produced stories. Readers, after all, are particular. Many are mood readers. To reach more of them, I learned to bend. To adapt. To shape myself around what was “marketable.”
I tried. I really did. My late mother would have been proud with how hard my grind and hustle was.
I shifted here and there, wrapped my loves in compromises, hoping to still keep my voice intact while appealing to the masses. I didn’t realize then that each small concession was quietly eroding my passion from the inside out. Demands grew louder. Moods shifted faster. What once felt like an invitation began to feel like an obligation.
I became a ship lost in a storm—white-knuckled and bone-tired, salt stinging old wounds, hands bleeding as I clung to the wheel. Every wave threatened to pull me under, every shifting target demanded I turn again before I could catch my breath. I didn’t sail so much as endure, gritting my teeth through the fatigue, through the scars forming faster than they could heal. I stayed afloat not because the waters were kind, but because I refused to drown—even when my arms shook, even when the horizon disappeared, even when surviving was the only thing I had left.
And I did. I kept going. But not without cost.
At the height of my release schedule, I published five works in a single month. That same month, my mother died. That same month, I won multiple awards. Achievement and grief collided, and the weight of it all finally broke something open in me. I stood among the ashes, numb and burned out.
My husband—my knight—pulled me away. Forced rest. Forced distance. Forced silence.
But grief is not linear. It creeps in when you think you’re steady. I kept writing for my readers, even as the stories grew shorter, turning into novellas. That original spark still flickered, stubborn and fragile. And I am nothing if not stubborn.
I told myself I could survive this too.
But I was only half there—moving on discipline and muscle memory alone. Bookworld, I realized, was never a place for souls like mine to thrive. The more I forced myself into constant visibility, into social media, into marketing as an army of one, the clearer it became: I had always thrived best in solitude.
So I surrendered.
I handed my business to God and asked Him to be my CEO. To lead where I could no longer see. One by one, He peeled things away—layer after layer—until I could finally hear myself again. Until I returned to that childlike faith. That childlike joy of storytelling. The talent He placed in me. The fruit I was meant to grow and give unto others.
Pulling away from the noise of “the market” grounded me. God reminded me I was never meant for the masses. Unique things bloom differently. The path He had for me was wider, deeper, and far more meaningful than I could have imagined.
I trusted Him.
And He showed me that the parts of myself I thought needed more discipline were the very parts that needed freedom. The things I dismissed as insignificant had quietly grown into thorns turned inward. With surrender came clarity. With stillness came discernment.
And gently—so lovingly—He helped me find myself again.
The writer I was at the beginning. The one who wrote like essence. Like breath. Like truth.
I miss her. And I am becoming her again.
This journey has been marked by both soaring highs and quiet, aching lows—many of which I’ve carried in silence, because my readers were never meant to bear my pain. But to those who stayed. To those God drew closer instead of gently peeling away—I would not still be standing without you. Your patience, your faith in my voice, your willingness to walk beside me through seasons of change has meant more than I can ever fully express. There are days when the weight of that loyalty brings tears to my eyes, when gratitude wells up so suddenly I have to stop and breathe it in. Please know that none of it has been taken lightly. I carry your support with me, always.
I try to honor that by paying it forward. By helping others so they don’t stumble the way I did. So they don’t have to carry the same wounds.
Life taught me how to endure the blows.
God taught me how to heal.
And now, by returning to my roots—to the poet, the storyteller, the weaver of words—I hope to help others heal too.
That is where I belong.
And if you are out there right now—adrift, exhausted, staring at a horizon that feels impossibly far—please hear this:
You are not weak for feeling tired. You are not failing because the waters are rough. And you are not alone, even when it feels like no one can see your ship through the storm.
There is no shame in gripping the wheel with shaking hands. No shame in slowing your pace. No shame in choosing to survive before you choose to produce. The sea does not get to decide your worth—only your willingness to keep listening for the voice that called you to write in the first place.
If you feel like you’re drowning, pause. Breathe. Let yourself float for a moment. The story inside you is not leaving. It is patient. It will wait for you to come back to yourself.
Write because you were made to. Write because something in you needs to speak. Write even if the world isn’t watching yet. Especially then.
Storms pass. Scars become maps. And sometimes, the very waters that almost took you under are the ones that teach you how to sail.
You belong here too.
-YD
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