Books befriended me when I was a child. They opened secret doors and carried me into
enchanted worlds where I was safe, worlds that asked nothing of me but faith. Between their
pages, I found a quiet sanctuary from loneliness and doubt, a place to hide when the weight of
life pressed too heavily upon me. They taught me, long before I had words of my own, how to
move through loss and longing. Their characters—bruised, tender, resilient—showed me what it
is to love, to lose, and still to walk forward with an ache stitched into the heart. In their journeys,
I caught a mirror of my own unspoken fears.
And now, years later, I find myself writing of death and grief—the grief that shaped me, the grief
that revealed how sorrow can hold its own kind of beauty, how every ending hums with the
promise of a beginning. The pages I once clutched are yellowed with time, yet their shelter
endures, a lantern that lights my way as I give voice to the story’s grief has written into me.