The Trenches

What started as an exciting opportunity working within my local church, moving cities and feeling like I was stepping into the call God had for my life, came to a screeching halt only twelve months in when I began experiencing intense anxiety and had my first ever panic attack. Little did I know where the road would lead me over these next three years. 

The Secret Place is the fruit of this season of my life. It details the struggle I walked through when facing the daily battle in my mind, whilst simultaneously having faith in a good God who I knew not only created me, but cared deeply for me. After stepping back from my work and life in this new city, I returned home. Where I thought the anxiety would cease, a new kind of darkness had come in alongside it and it was in this space my mind spiralled deeper than I had ever experienced before. It’s here we enter The Trenches. 

That’s where this poetry journey began, rage typing in my Notes app, letting these words flow out of me in some of my darkest moments. Initially these pieces of writing felt too dramatic and outrageously vulnerable, and yet the release I found in getting these words from my mind and letting them sit in this world–it was something I never realised I needed. Piece after piece, note after note, these words continued to pour out of me, and when I thought they would’ve dried out, they never have. 

In the beginning, these notes began as a coping mechanism, a way for me to look back at the words I’d written and relish in putting words to feelings I had never before been able to describe. As I continued to write, this once coping mechanism was transformed into a tool I could use to release just some of the pain and heaviness that refused to cease. Stored in this vault, convinced they would never see the light of day, they somehow managed to break free and make their words known…