Ashes & Wildflowers: Poetry for healing, starting over, and finding yourself again (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9782959698170)

The marriage ended. Then came the year she doesn't talk about much. And then, when she'd stopped expecting it, love arrived and made sense of all of it.

Ashes and Wildflowers is 368 pages of verse about losing everything and coming back. Not just the surviving part. The whole way through.

From the ashes, wildflowers rise.
They do not ask permission.
They bloom in broken places, along the cracks, on the edges, where no one thought beauty could return.
So it is with you.

You'll find the night on the floor when the crying wouldn't stop. The month the divorce was final. The slow work of forgiving. The day she looked back and saw how far she'd come. And then the part almost no book about heartbreak includes: what happens after, when someone sees you properly and stays.

Something else happens as you read. For most of the book you're watching a woman you'll recognise. Then it turns, and starts speaking to you.

Two years later, everyone assumes you're fine.
They see you smiling, moving forward, living.
But it still hurts.
Quietly.
In moments when no one's watching.

This book is for those moments.

Read it in order or open it anywhere. Every piece stands on its own, so it works as well at three in the morning as it does start to finish.

Written for the end of a marriage. For grief people assume you're over. For anyone doing the unglamorous daily work of starting again.

Georgia Clare grew up in Wales and rebuilt her life in a village in southwest France. There's no advice here and nothing to fix. Just company, from someone who has sat where you're sitting.

Healing poetry for women starting over.