A memoir of love gone wrong

_{Heart & Craft}

I have been writing this story for some time now. It belongs to me.

But it also belongs to anyone who has loved. Anyone who has lost themselves, a bit here, a bit there, in the name of love. And it belongs to anyone who has found themselves, and found love, again.

There were moments in the writing when this story felt like a wild thing, elusive and skittish. I had to coax it to edge closer. I enticed it with scraps and affection so that it sidled up to my campfire, and then I spent hours with it, listening to what ached to be heard and also to what lay beneath.

As I befriended this story, some creatures of the night hovered, their eyes glinting in the shadows. With their sharp teeth, they tried to drag this story away from the warmth of my campfire, out of reach of my loving gaze.

As their claws dug in to haul this story into the dark forest where it would be lost forever, they hissed: ‘Why bother? No one cares.’ and worse: ‘If this story is brought out into the light, you will not be safe. You will not be able to protect yourself and your family.’

But I stood in the night, my back warmed by the flames of the fire, and I pulled it back. Back to myself. I held it close to my heart.

I held true to this story because it’s a story I desperately needed, all those lifetimes ago. I wrote it because I was determined to emerge from the darkness clutching treasure of some kind.

And I am putting this story out into the world because I believe there are others in the depths of the murky forest who are struggling to keep their flickering fires alive. I know that they are longing for the heart-to-heart companionship a story can give.

And my deepest hope for this story is that it will offer the reader a glimpse of a path through the dark, so that she lifts her head, adds another log to the fire and starts planning her way out of the wilderness.