Rituals and Rivers: The Story Behind My First Poetry Collection

I published my first poetry collection in August, brought it with me to KL Zine Etc. Festival, read from it in public, sold copies of it, and somehow never wrote about it here.

The reason is simple. Shortly after the festival, I became very ill. It was not the kind of illness that passes after a couple of days of rest. I was hospitalised a couple of times and was at risk of developing sepsis. I am not going to disclose the actual illness, but it was serious enough that I was unwell for almost two months. I had to stop writing and making artwork. I disappeared from this blog and from most other things while I recuperated. The book, however, did not disappear. It existed quietly while I was recovering and waiting for my return.

Now that I am blogging again, I have realised that Rituals & Rivers has never had a proper post of its own. So here we are. This is not a launch announcement because that ship sailed in August. I just want to introduce my book to my blog readers and visitors.

Where The Book Came From

Rituals & Rivers began with a simple fear: that what I remembered would not be enough. I grew up with fragments of Iban life around me: my family history, tales of my ancestors, old songs and omens, rituals, family names, women’s work and remembered journeys. Many of the things that shaped me were never written down. They lived in memory, in work and warning, in speech and in gesture. They were part of my life and I didn’t think of recording any of them.

However, as I grew older and lived away from Sarawak, I became more aware of what I had taken for granted. The Iban language that I grew up with is not part of my everyday life. The stories I heard as a child became fragmented or forgotten. As a mother raising children far from ancestral land, I learned that inheritance does not always pass down by itself. Sometimes we have to be intentional in researching, recording, and passing that knowledge down to the next generation.

The fear of forgetting is really the seed of this collection.

What The Book Became

What began with personal memory eventually grew into a collection of 69 poems across six sections. However, the more I wrote, the wider the scope became. I realised I was no longer only writing about myself. I started to write about language, longhouse life, women, rituals, spiritual beliefs, family history, colonial resistance, land and environmental change, and eventually about what happens when cultural knowledge is no longer passed down naturally.

The poems are organised into six sections that together form a journey of sorts. They begin with questions of belonging and move backwards into childhood, longhouse life, and the women who shaped that world. From there, the collection goes deeper into Iban rituals and spiritual beliefs before turning to my family history, colonial resistance and eventually the question that rests underneath much of this book: what remains, and what do we pass on?

The six sections are:

The Question of Belonging
The Longhouse Remembers
Women Who Hold the House
Rituals, Signs, and the Unseen
War, Resistance, and Inherited Courage
What Remains, What We Pass On

Four Poems and Why I Wrote Them

I want to feature four different poems and the story behind each of them.

a) Tum Ketumba, I Sang the Lullaby

This poem is about a childhood song my sister taught me when I was small. I remember the lyrics even though much of the world around them has mostly vanished. I tried to preserve whatever I still recall of that world. Hopefully, through writing, I can pass it down to my children.

b) Woven Name

This poem is about my great-grandaunt, Selaka, who was a master weaver of pua kumbu, and also about me. Even though I never learned to weave, when I write, I feel connected to what she did. She wove her pua kumbu from dreams, signs, and patience, whereas I write and make art from memory and words.

c) Aji and Dimah (Two Poems)

These poems were inspired by my family history. Aji Apai Limpa was my great-great-great-grandfather, an Iban war leader who resisted the Brooke government and died in battle at Sungai Langit in 1858. Dimah was his wife, often remembered for one tragic incident before the battle. Writing about them was not simply a matter of saying “my ancestor was a warrior.” I was trying to understand them as people, but I was also thinking about what happens when a name you have heard within your family becomes someone you are trying to see clearly.

Research and Uncertainty

Some of these poems came directly from memory, while others required me to research things I remembered only partially. I read ethnographic and historical sources as much as I could. I revisited family histories and tried to understand practices I had grown up around.

I want to be clear that this collection is not presented as a definitive record of Iban culture. It is a personal offering, drawing from memory, family history, oral tradition, and cultural knowledge.

There are gaps and uncertainties in it, and I have allowed those gaps to stay rather than fill them in with something I cannot honestly claim.

Why Rituals & Rivers?

The title came to mind because those two words seemed large enough to contain the entire collection.

The poems are full of rivers. Sungai Layar is the river connected to my ancestral longhouse. Its water carried people and news to and from home before roads existed. Rivers appear as routes, witnesses, and places where history is laid down and life continues.

Rituals are an important part of traditional Iban life. Healing rites, funeral laments, child naming ceremonies, and wedding customs: these are communal rituals that sustain and strengthen a community. They are how we mark what matters and how we pass it on.

Together, rituals and rivers describe what this collection is trying to achieve. Rivers carry things across distance and rituals hold everything together. I am trying to do both.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my children. The final poem, “When They Are Ready”, emphasises that idea. In it, I describe the poems in this collection as perau, or small boats that will carry my children to the things that can reveal their roots.

“… So I write these rivers into words,
each poem a small perau waiting.

When they are ready,
they will launch them,
follow the names I have kept alive,
and find, at the source,

a home that never stopped calling.”

Final Thoughts

After years of working on this collection, the book is finally here. I sold copies during the festival and have continued selling them since. I have read from it publicly, and only now am I sitting down to write about it here.

I am back and writing again. The book exists, waiting for whoever needs it.

Rituals & Rivers is my first full-length poetry collection. If you would like a copy, you can purchase it from my Shopee online store.

I write about Iban culture, ancestral rituals, creative life, emotional truths, and the quiet transformations of love, motherhood, and identity. If this speaks to you, subscribe and journey with me.

A Weekend at KL Zine Etc Festival

I meant to write about this sooner, but I was seriously unwell over the past couple of months and had to put a few things aside. Now that I feel a lot better, I am returning to some of the things I wanted to share, including my weekend at KL Zine Etc Festival, or KLZE.

From 7 to 9 August, I took part in KLZE at the Kuala Lumpur and Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall. It was my first zine festival as an exhibitor, so I was eager, worried and a little overwhelmed by everything.

I had half a table, sharing it with another exhibitor, Not Just Love Stories from Taiwan. I brought my newly published poetry collection, Rituals and Rivers, together with several of my zines, art prints and drawings.

Much of this work began at home, long before I decided to publish any of it. My handwritten drafts and drawings had filled countless notebooks and sketchbooks over the years. Over the past few years, some of those pages gradually became books.

Preparing for the festival meant dealing with the less romantic part of making things: printing, pricing, packing and deciding what would fit on the table. By the time everything was laid out, I could see how much I had made.

It was a strange experience watching strangers look through my books, turn the pages carefully, ask questions about Iban culture and even buy them to take home. These things had existed privately for so long, as ideas, scribbles and files in my notebooks and on my computer. Suddenly, they were travelling home with other people. For the first time, I felt that people outside my immediate circle were supporting my work.

My work often returns to my Iban heritage. At KLZE, those stories could reach people who might never have come across my blog or found my work online, especially Iban people living away from Sarawak and those of mixed heritage. I have always wanted to share Iban culture through simple forms such as zines, particularly with younger people of Iban descent who grew up away from Sarawak.

I liked that directness. The work was there for them to look through, and I was there if they wanted to ask about it.

Selling my work was part of why I was there, of course. Independent publishing costs money, and every purchase helps me continue. I am grateful to everyone who bought something, whether it was a card, a zine or the poetry collection.

I also appreciated the chance to see people encounter the work in person. Publishing online gives me very little sense of what happens after someone reads a poem or looks at a drawing. A festival offers a different kind of contact, even if it is only a brief conversation across a table.

On Saturday, 8 August, I also gave a poetry reading from Rituals and Rivers. It was my first public reading.

Before the festival, the organisers invited anyone interested to give a talk or a public reading. I jumped at the chance without thinking too much about it. I was not nervous and had no hesitation about doing it, even knowing there was a chance no one would turn up to listen.

Writing a poem and reading it aloud to an audience are quite different experiences. On the page, I can take my time and revise in private. At a reading, I have to give the words a voice and let people hear them. I am glad I took that step and grateful to those who sat and listened.

I also came home with work by other makers. Part of the pleasure of a festival like this is being able to browse what everyone else has brought and take some of it home. Being an exhibitor did not stop me from being a reader and a buyer too.

Looking back, KLZE gave me a chance to bring together parts of my creative life that usually happen quietly at home. The writing, drawing and making became something I could share across a table, and the poems became something I could read aloud.

Thank you to the organisers, everyone who stopped by, and those who supported my work. This post is late, but I still wanted to give that weekend a place here.

I Still Remember Him

I still remember him.

The first time I saw him, it was raining. I was sitting in the corner of a small, quiet cafe that smells of burnt beans and old wood. I was busy with my notebook, trying to finish a thought, when the bell above the door rang. He looked like he had wandered in by mistake. His hair was damp, sticking to his forehead in uneven clumps, and his jacket was slightly oversized and hung off his shoulders. He looked like he had not slept in days. He didn’t stand out. He felt out of place in that cafe. I noticed him, then returned to my notebook.

The shift happened months later on a Tuesday evening. We were walking toward a bus stop, and the wind was biting. I was complaining about a lost pen, and he stopped walking. He did not look at me. He peered at a little crack in the sidewalk where a weed was growing. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a piece of candy, and placed the wrapper carefully back. He said, “Most people look at the sky when they’re lost, but the answers are usually stuck to the bottom of your shoe.”

After that, I began to notice him more closely.

He notices things that other people ignore. He can tell when someone is lying by the way their hand shakes or how the barista hides chipped mugs at the back of the shelf. In conversation, he does not speak in a conventional way. He observes. He waits for the silence to become uncomfortable, then asks a question that lands where it is difficult to respond. He says things casually, like “Life is just a series of things we survive until we don’t,” while chewing on a lollipop.

He often has something in his hand. A lollipop, a toothpick, a plastic stick. He keeps his mouth occupied so he does not need to smile. When he thinks no one is looking, he rubs his temples and stares into space with an expression of concentration. He looks worn in those moments, an exhaustion that sleep does not resolve.

He once told me, “Don’t bother remembering the things that don’t want to be found.” I return to that moment often because of how still he was when he said it. His eyes were distant, yet he seemed aware of everything around him. It felt like he was giving me permission to stop looking for parts of him he had chosen to keep hidden.

When I think of him now, I remember the smell of sugar and cold rain. He made me pause because he was the first person I met who seemed to be living in the aftermath of something significant, yet he never asked for sympathy. He existed within it and occasionally pointed out something he thought was worth mentioning.

If someone met him briefly, they would miss the sharpness. They would see a messy, eccentric man who cannot keep his hair combed and seems slow to respond. They might think he is lazy. With time, it becomes clear that he is always aware of what is happening around him and that he often knows what you are about to say before you finish your sentence.

If I had to describe what makes him unique in one sentence, it would be this: he observes things that most people ignore and keeps facing them, even when it makes him uncomfortable.

The Hour Between Us

I have been grieving these past few days. It’s not intense but ever present, making every morning feel like a careful step. I have been taking things slowly. I sleep when my body asks. I journal when I feel overwhelmed. I make simple meals and spend less time on social media or reading the news.

Today, on Valentine’s Day, the pain rises closer to the surface. I read that the brain areas that register physical pain also register emotional hurt. The idea almost makes a paracetamol seem logical, as if the heart carried a headache, though I know medicine will not soothe it.

I am sharing two poems I wrote years ago because they hold what I feel more clearly than I can right now. They come from two sides of the same moment. The first poem speaks from her view, aware that time never pauses. The second answers from his side of the same room, the same bed, the same slowly emptying hourglass.

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Her Perspective

Slipping Away

We are dying a little more each day,
you, me, the neighbor with the cracked glasses,
the woman at the train station
who waits for no one.
The boy who lost his dog
last November.

But,
we live like we have
all the time in the world,
we wake to alarms that steal
the dreams from our skin,
eat breakfast,
leave dishes in the sink,
argue about the bills,
make love as if our bodies
aren’t maps of vanishing places.

Denial is an art,
we are its faithful painters.
We fill our days with notifications,
deadlines, grocery lists,
traffic jams, dinner plans,
laughter.
We say, “see you later”
knowing full well that one day,
one of us won’t.

I watch you
in the soft glow of evening,
the furrow in your brows,
the absent scratch of your fingers.
I watch the flicker of your eyes,
as you skim through a book.
You mutter beneath your breath,
making sense of your read.

Later,
in the hush between midnight and morning,
our fingers trace unseen
constellations across warm skin.
For a moment, time disappears,
leaving only us.

I want to tell you,
the sand in the hourglass
doesn’t pause because
we are too afraid to look.
Instead,
I kiss you,
as if that will keep you here,
just a little longer.

His Perspective

Before the Hourglass Breaks (for Liv)

We are fading,
you and I,
like paper that yellows under glass.
Each day lifts a little color.
I count the changes, afraid
I’ll miss the exact moment
we become part of the past.

And still,
I meet you in the mornings
as though the clock has stalled.
I pour coffee,
listen to the three slow turns
of spoon on porcelain.
We talk about nothing urgent,
leave the bed unmade,
let the light spill over our carelessness.

I keep my hands busy
because if I stop,
I’ll touch your face
and give away too much.
Instead, I watch the shadows
move over your shoulders,
trace the curve of your wrist
as you turn a page,
note the small frown
that settles when a sentence traps you.

Later,
when the world finally goes quiet,
your fingertips search for me in the dark.
I memorize their path,
the pauses,
the breath you release
before you closing the space between us.

I want to tell you,
I feel the sand running too.
That I’ve been learning
how to love without holding,
how to stay without staying.
Instead,
I let my lips find yours,
hoping the taste carries forward
into whatever comes after,
and that you’ll feel me there,
just a little longer.

My First Group Exhibition in Malaysia and A New Zine in the Making

Tomorrow is the soft launch of Akar Kita Abadi, the group exhibition I’ve been preparing for the past few weeks. I will exhibit several of my Iban heritage poems called Rituals and Rivers, and holding these printed booklets, which just arrived, feels like a confirmation of all the time spent writing, editing, and polishing. This little booklet (or zine) has 10 poems from a much bigger collection of Iban heritage poetry that I want to publish in 2026. I will be selling these booklets during the exhibition and they are quite limited in number. I will share more about the exhibition after the launch tomorrow. I can’t share pictures until after the launch so I can’t really say much about the whole thing. The exhibition will last until 23 November so if you’re in Klang Valley, you may want to drop by and give us your support.

While this exhibition marks the beginning of sharing that collection publicly, another project has started to take root in parallel. I have begun working on a new zine that will focus entirely on Iban women. This project seems like a continuation of Rituals & Rivers, but through a more personal viewpoint. It will look at various facets of Iban womanhood, from ancient times to the present.

Every page will be hand-drawn using pencil and black fine liners, but for the actual zine they will be edited and printed. Drawing by hand has a grounding effect, allowing each line to have its own rhythm and imperfection. The only printed text will be the longer passages and explanations, saving space while keeping the design balanced. I have not planned the number of pages or illustrations yet. I like to let the process evolve spontaneously. Each piece generally begins as a poem or a brief reflection before taking on a visual shape.

One of the first illustrations is inspired by women who sing to the moon as their laughter threads through the bamboo. Another drawing shows the anak umbung, the daughter of an Iban war leader who was raised apart from others and taught weaving skills. Her story has stayed with me, serving as a reminder of the beauty and self-control that once entwined women’s lives. There is also a drawing of a woman tending to the hearth before dawn. These aren’t big moments; they’re small actions that show tenderness, duty, and strength in Iban women.

This new zine will be based on the same ideas as Rituals & Rivers, but it will focus more closely on the daily and the personal. It will explore what it means to be an Iban woman across generations, including the traditions that are passed down, the unspoken resilience, and the actions that connect one life to another. It’s a way for me to listen to the voices of the women who came before me and to honor how their spirit still lives on in us now.

I don’t know what the completed zine will be like, but I know it will develop slowly, page by page, just like stories used to do, with care and patience.

If We Had Stayed | A Prose Poem from an Alternate Life

It was never loud between us. Our love never needed proof. Just subtle signs. A gaze that lasted too long. A jacket shrugged off without being asked. How his silence moved toward mine and made room.

We live above the bookstore near the station. The one with crooked shelves and a leaking pipe that drips near the poetry section. On quiet mornings, I wake first. The kettle whispers steam. He is still asleep, half-buried in the blankets, one arm flung across my side of the bed. I write before the city wakes up. One lamp on. My pen moves slowly and carefully across the page because some mornings are fragile.

Some days, we walk to the cafe where we first met. The one where the windows get foggy, and I forgot a pen once. He never mentions that he kept it. Never asks why I replaced it. But he returns it anyway, weeks later, as if it was never gone. The pen, not the moment we shared.

We have a habit of not explaining. He says it once, at the door, without turning around.

We often stroll to Yanping Riverside Park. It is our routine. We never call it that, but we keep coming back to it. On quieter days, we walk under trees that offer more than just shade. Kids dart past on scooters, while we walk slowly. His hand near mine. Sometimes he stops at the railing and looks at the river. I can feel him and the constellation he carries between us.

He rarely talks about work, and when he does, it’s only in fragments. Just enough to remind me that there are things that can’t be put into words. And that’s enough. I don’t have to know everything about him to love him.

I learn to read his silences. The way he checks the locks twice. The way his eyes drift when he’s too tired to pretend. I never think of his silence as distance. It’s a huge part of the whole.

We don’t talk about forever. We just stay.

There are rooftops and rain, the wind carrying jasmine from someone else’s balcony. Matcha soft-serve he buys without asking. The way he looks at me when I hand him a poem. How he holds it like a feather.

We don’t make any promises. But he and I stay.

He once told me that being around me hurt him like a third lung. I don’t say anything. I just trace my thumb over his knuckles and let the silence remain. There are no anniversaries. No statements. Just the ritual of being there.

He catches me when I slip on uneven pavement. His fingers wrap around my arm like the answer to the questions I’ve been too scared to ask. He says, “I guess I’m here to catch you.” I smile and file that sentence in the back of my mind, where the most important things live.

Our life together isn’t always perfect. We fight. We turn our backs in sleep. But we stay. He doesn’t save me. I don’t save him. We just stop pretending we don’t need each other.

And in this world we’ve carved our lives into, the silence isn’t absence—it’s alive, trembling like a living thing.

Olivia Atelier offers printables, templates, and art designed to inspire reflection, healing, and creativity. Visit Olivia’s Atelier for more.

Things I Was Told Not to Say (But I’m Saying Them Anyway)

Like everyone else, I was raised to be polite, to lower my gaze, and to keep my mouth shut before it bleeds arrogance or truth. But truth doesn’t always need to wait for permission and I’m done looking for it.

This is a list of things I was told not to say because they are deemed shocking and inappropriate. But I’m saying them anyway, because being silent isn’t always safe. It was a slow suffocation and death.

I was told not to say:

“I’m tired of being the emotional one, the one who feels things.”

But I am. It’s draining carrying the burden of my own feelings and everyone else’s. You say I’m too touchy. I say you need to be more sensitive.

“Sometimes I don’t want to be a mother.”

It doesn’t mean I don’t love my children. It means I want to disappear sometimes. To be free of endless burdens and responsibilities. I want to just be me without being attached to roles and expectations, even just for a while. Just long enough to find myself again.

“Marriage is lonely.”

Yes, even the good ones. Especially the good ones; when you’ve been together long enough, you know each other too much there are barely any surprises anymore.

“I still think about the one who left.”

No, I don’t want him back. But he lives in the hallways of my memory, like when I stop to think about certain songs or street names or places. That’s not being unfaithful. It’s my memory and the only way to forget it is if I lost my memories to dementia or brain damage. Otherwise the memory remains. And I’m allowed to carry it.

“I don’t want to go to this church anymore.”

I believe in God. But I don’t believe in being controlled and being silenced. I don’t want to pretend everything’s fine when my spirit is clearly not. I’m not giving up on faith; I’m moving toward the truth.

“I feel ugly on some days.”

No amount of affirmations makes it disappear. There are days when I can’t stand my body. Some days I don’t even notice it at all. Both truths exist.

“I envy women who get to choose their identity.”

Because I never did. I was born into roles before I could choose which ones I liked. Wife and mother. Good girl. Christian. I played every one of them. But now I want to rewrite the script where the real me can finally be set free.

“I don’t want to be grateful all the time.”

Gratitude is holy. But forced gratitude is performance. I don’t owe anyone a smile when I’m breaking inside. I can be grateful and grieving at the same time.

“I want more.”

More silence. More passion. More space to create without guilt. More people who see me without needing me to explain myself. I want more than I was told I should ask for.

And yes, sometimes I want to be desired and not just needed. There’s a difference. And I feel it every time I’m touched with obligation instead of longing.

I was told not to say all of this. They are taboo and a good Christian woman, a wife and a mother, shouldn’t entertain these sinful thoughts.

I was told to play it safe. To keep my life neat, soft, godly. I was told not to stumble others in their faith.

But truth isn’t always soft. Truth can hurt and burn sometimes. And I’d rather burn than spend another decade in silence.

Call me whatever you want. A premenopausal woman in the heat of a midlife crisis. A delusional Christian woman being lured by the devil. These are some of my truths and I’ll not stop writing about them and shrink myself for others’s comfort. I’m so done with being prim and proper and always saying the right things all the time. I’m done with lying. It’s time for me to proclaim my truths and make them known to others.

The Things That Undid Me

I cooked my love down to tar,
a black syrup in the bottom of the pot.
It taste like a lie
but I said nothing.
I was raised to chew my
tongue for supper.

I sewn myself into the good wife’s dress,
blessed and above reproach,
but I swallowed my own teeth
like communion wafers.

My children put their ears to my palms
and heard singing.
But some nights,
my fingers were fists
full of burnt letters.
I’m no witch,
only a woman
who learned too late
that silence is murder.

The pastor preached be pure.
But I loved the smell of rain
in my dirty hair,
my body wanting
without shame.

God, forgive me–
not for sinning
but for the way I loved it:
the unwashed sheets,
the stains on the hymns,
the animal in me
that refused to kneel.

I’m not sorry for the smoke,
or the fire I’ve become.
I’m sorry it took me
this long to strike the match.

Olivia Atelier offers printables, templates, and art designed to inspire reflection, healing, and creativity. Visit Olivia’s Atelier for more.

The Other Me | The Woman Behind the Poem

When I wrote the poem “The Other Me,” I wasn’t trying to sound bold or dramatic. I was just being honest by telling my truth.

People often assume they know me. They see a woman who is quiet. A wife. A mom. A Christian. Someone who shows up, serves, nods politely, and doesn’t cause trouble or controversy. I’m familiar with this image because I’ve lived inside it for most of my adult life. It’s not that it’s wrong. It’s just incomplete.

There has always been a deeper current under the surface. Beneath all that facade of neatness, there is someone who asks harder questions or feels hurt when silenced. There is someone that remembers who I was before all the roles and expectations started to pile up on me.

“The Other Me” is not a fictional character. She is a real person who has always been by my side. I put her away, hidden, so that I could make room for acceptance, safety, and community. In religious communities, women are often praised for being quiet, gentle, and obedient. Where doubt must be neatly dressed in submission, and discomfort is treated like rebellion.

The poem came from the grief of hiding and of living a half-truth because the whole truth felt like too much.

I was taught to be agreeable as a child or to be well-liked. I learned that being difficult was the same as being rejected. That if you had questions, you lacked faith. That wanting more, like more closeness, more freedom, and more honesty, was wrong or selfish.

So I stayed small. I stayed quiet. I played the role so well I almost forgot I was acting. But staying quiet has a price.

When you’re around people who only know the version of you that makes them comfortable, a certain kind of loneliness grows. They love that safe version of you and they honor her because she embodies the values they approved. But you start to wonder if they would still love you if you said something out of character. What if I stopped editing myself for the sake of their comfort? What if I let the fire show?

And then one day you write a poem.

You write it because you have things you want to say but can’t. Your body remembers what your mind tries to bury. Because there is a woman inside you who is sick of bending over backwards to meet other people’s expectations.

You don’t even know if you’ll share it when you write it. But that is beside the point because the truth is you need to see this woman and say to her, “I haven’t forgotten you.”

“The Other Me” is about the version of myself that doesn’t fit into polite spaces. She is the one who laughs too loudly, writes about God and desire in the same line, and asks questions about things she was told not to touch. She loves deeply but won’t let anyone else control her.

In the past, I was scared of her.

But now I know she isn’t a threat. She isn’t being defiant just to be dramatic. She is just being honest. She is the version of me that lived and survived. And I owe her more than just silence.

When I say I feel alone sometimes, I mean it in a specific way. I don’t mean that I don’t have anyone around me. What I mean is that I don’t have a place that feels like home and where I belong. I don’t quite fit in with the local creative community, where the type of poetry that gets attention is usually light, easy to read, and trendy. I write differently. I write deeply. And sometimes, that depth becomes a wall between me and the world I want to reach.

At the same time, the people who connect with my work often live far away. They have different cultures, different worldviews. We connect through words, but we live in different worlds. That, too, feels like a dislocation.

But still, I write.

Because this is how I heal, and this is how I remember. This is how I get back the parts of myself that I’ve tried to hide for a long time.

The Other Me is not a rebellion. It is a way for me to return to the version of me that I’ve neglected.

And maybe, just maybe, if I keep writing her into existence, someone else out there who also feels out of place, half-formed, and unseen, will recognize themselves in my words. And that recognition will feel like belonging.

We might not need to fit in to be complete. Maybe we just need to be honest.

And that is what this poem gave me. A little more honesty. A little more light. A little more room to breathe.

And to the version of me that is still hiding: I see you. We’re coming home.

Note: This poem is not published yet, but you can read a short excerpt on my Threads post.

Olivia Atelier offers printables, templates, and art designed to inspire reflection, healing, and creativity. Visit Olivia’s Atelier for more.

After Andrea | A Tribute to Andrea Gibson

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When Andrea Gibson left this world, they didn’t vanish. They simply changed form.

That’s what I believe. What I’ve always believed. That death isn’t the end but a transformation. It’s a reassembly of light, soul, and memory. It becomes energy that lingers in the folds of pillows, in dog-eared pages, in the sound of your laughter.

Andrea said it best in one of their final gifts to the world: “Dying is the opposite of leaving. When I left my body, I did not go away.”

I read those words with a lump in my throat, but not because I was grieving. They reminded me of something I wrote months ago, not knowing then how it would one day connect me to someone I admired from afar.

So when we grieve for an unbearable loss and feel the crushing weight of absence, perhaps we can take comfort in knowing that nothing is ever truly gone.

The ones we miss exist in a different form now. They are scattered across the cosmos, carried in rays of sunshine, drifting in the gentle breeze. The photons that once danced across their skin continue their journey through space. Their laughter still lingers around us, waiting to be felt by those who remember.

If we explain death by physics alone, the conservation of energy means that when we die, our energy disperses into heat, into the environment, and into the people we loved. ~ Excerpt from my blog: The Physics of Goodbye

Andrea’s poems weren’t just poems; they were silent revolts against erasure and the lie that pain and beauty must live apart.

And maybe that’s what we leave behind: words and permission. Especially permission. Permission to grief and cry. To be angry. To acknowledge love out loud. To die beautifully. To stay, even after.

After Andrea

I want to call you by the sound your bones made when they fell into the light. I want to call you return instead of loss, to pin your spirit to my wall like the last goodnight of a sunbeam. You are not gone. You are still here. You are a new verb. You breathe through my ribcage at midnight when I forget my name and remember yours. Your echoes make me who I am. You are the ghost of the lamp turning on by itself, the sudden music when no one’s home. What trick of physics lets a soul remain when the body collapses? What cruel grace? Andrea, I never touched your hands, but I have held your sorrow, your laughter, your thunder, your holy queerness. I carry it now. In me, and in everyone who heard your voice before they knew you. Thank you for the light. Thank you for the absence that still feels full. Thank you for dying like a poet; all metaphor, without end.

Olivia Atelier offers printables, templates, and art designed to inspire reflection, healing, and creativity. Visit Olivia’s Atelier for more.

What I Know Now That I’m in My 40s

As I get older, I realize that change doesn’t stop. You don’t reach a certain point where you finally feel “together.” When I was in my 20s, I thought that women in their 40s had it all figured out. They knew how to love, how to parent, and how to stay calm when their world fell apart and the bills were late and the kids were fighting. But now that I’m here, I know the truth: we’re all still learning and figuring things out.

In my 40s, I no longer chase the idea of being extraordinary. I want to be real, present, and kind to myself. I’ve stopped apologizing for being quiet, for needing time alone, or for feeling deeply. I used to shrink myself so people would find me easier to digest and tolerate. Now I let the fullness of who I am take up space, even if it makes other people feel uncomfortable.

I have learned that performance doesn’t determine one’s worth. Worth doesn’t come from being productive, getting praise, or doing everything right. Even when I’m still, I am still worthy. Or when I’m unseen or unnoticed. Or when I am not achieving a single thing. This kind of emotional growth doesn’t happen overnight. It came through years of burnout and soul-wrestling, trying to be everything to everyone and having nothing left for myself.

Motherhood taught me that but not in a pretty, “Pinterest-quote” way. It taught me in the messy, heartbreaking moments that often happen in the trenches of parenting. Motherhood revealed the gaps in my patience, where I lost my sense of self or the ghosts I hadn’t exorcised yet. It forced me to look at myself when I was at my worst and ask, “Can I still be nice to my kids? Can I still stay and get through it all?”

Marriage, too, has been a teacher but not always a gentle one. Love in your 40s is less exciting and can be boring but I’m speaking from my experience. It’s less about the big, impressive things and more about the small, boring things like showing up for each other. Or listening when you’re tired and don’t really care about the nitty-gritty of it. Or saying you’re sorry first. I used to think that being in love was like being high. But now I know better.

My art and writing have saved me more times than I can count. They gave shape to emotions I couldn’t name. They held me when I felt invisible. When I returned to writing poetry after years on hiatus, it felt like coming home to an old friend who never stopped waiting. I don’t write to impress anymore; I write to learn and understand. I want to tell the truth without worrying about how it sounds or how it looks. That’s the heart of my creative healing.

And this is my truth: I am a woman who is no longer afraid to feel everything.

I’ve learned to slow down and take my time. I’ve learned to walk away when something costs me my peace. I’ve learned to take a break without guilt. I’ve learned to feed myself what nourishes, not what numbs. I’ve learned that joy isn’t something you chase relentlessly. Joy is something you notice. You can find joy anywhere you look hard enough. In your child’s laughter. In the soft, fading light at 7.30pm. In the peaceful and dull parts of your life.

I’ve stopped needing everyone to like me. Not everyone will. And that’s okay. I am not for everyone. But I am for the people who value honesty over performance, presence over perfection, and depth over decorum.

Being a woman in your 40s means I carry both tenderness and steel in my bones. I know how to hold space and when to keep things to myself. I know how to tell the truth even when it hurts. I still make mistakes, of course. I still feel anxious most of the time, but I’m not as scared of being seen as imperfect. There is no pretending. What you see is what you get.

I don’t have it all figured out. But I know who I am now. And I like her more than I ever have.

Now That I Know

I don’t need fireworks.
I light my own sky
with the hush
of knowing I survived.
No more performance prayers.
No more bloodletting for love.
If I bend now, it’s not to please–
but to plant.
My thighs and belly are soft.
My words are sharp.
I’m no longer a girl
waiting to be chosen.
I have chosen myself,
my whole being–
transforming.