The Story Behind Shards of Belonging: How a Poem Sparked a Novel About Truth and Belonging
Every novel begins somewhere — not with polished pages, but with a moment. For me, it began in the middle of a life that looked fine from the outside but felt heavy on the inside. I kept asking myself the same quiet question: what would it take to finally live my truth and feel at home in myself?
If you’ve ever wondered whether being yourself was ‘too much’ or ‘not enough,’ this story may sound familiar. Out of that question came Shards of Belonging — my first novel, and perhaps the most personal thing I’ve ever written.
This is the journey of how it came to be — and why I hope it might matter to you.
The Moment That Sparked the Novel
Earlier this year, I found myself sitting motionless on the couch. Not out of rest, but out of heaviness. I had been trying hard to fit into a job that wasn’t the right fit — every day felt like walking through mud. There were empathy and support, but something just didn’t click. On the surface, it looked like I was holding things together. Inside, I felt like I was disappearing.
In that stillness, I began to see how the shadows of the past weren’t just behind me — they were stretching into the present, threatening to darken the road ahead. I realized that if I didn’t face them now, they would keep holding me back, no matter what came next. And yet, even in the heaviness, there was a reminder: shadows only exist where light is present. The light had been there all along, waiting for me to turn toward it.
Almost instinctively, I picked up a notebook and began to write. What spilled out was not an essay or a plan, but a poem. The opening line came almost fully formed: “Feet on stone, worn smooth by lives before me. Steps echo, not just mine.” That fragment of memory, of walking among ruins and feeling the weight of history and silence, became the seed of something larger.
I didn’t know it at the time, but that small act — scribbling lines in a notebook out of desperation — was the moment a novel began to take shape.
What the Novel Seeks to Answer
That poem was only the beginning. As I kept writing, I realized the words weren’t just about ruins or memory — they were about me. They carried the weight of questions I had been circling for years but never found the courage to answer. Questions like: What does it really take to live your truth? What does it mean to belong?
For much of my life, I had tried to live by inherited rules. I stayed in situations that weren’t right because I thought that’s what “responsible” people do. I poured myself into roles that didn’t fit because I believed working harder would eventually make me worthy. On paper, it looked like progress. It was survival — not presence, not joy. Writing gave me a way to see that clearly for the first time.
The novel became a container for those questions. Instead of trying to solve them through achievements or self-help checklists, I gave them to a story. The act of writing allowed me to step outside of myself and still explore the deepest parts of myself. Every character, every silence, every shadow on the page became a reflection of what I was wrestling with: the tension between performance and authenticity, fear and love, escape and staying.
I didn’t sit down to write a “message” through a book or a grand statement. I wrote because I needed to. And in that process, the novel slowly revealed its purpose: to explore what it costs to hide who we are — and what it might mean to finally come home to ourselves.
From Poem to Manuscript: The Creative Journey
What began as a poem quickly grew into something larger. At first, I thought it was just fragments — scenes, images, moments pulled from memory. But as the pages accumulated, I realized I wasn’t writing in circles. I was tracing a path. The poem had cracked something open, and story began to flow through the space it left behind.
At times, the writing felt like confession. At other times, like discovery. A memory would surface, and instead of analyzing it, I let it shape a scene. A voice I had long ignored would speak, and I allowed it to become a character. Slowly, the fragments stitched together into a narrative that felt both deeply personal and somehow bigger than me.
The process was anything but neat. There were stretches when the words came in torrents, and others when the silence was heavier than the page. But even in those pauses, I noticed something important: the act of writing mirrored the very themes I was trying to capture. I stumbled, I hesitated, I doubted — but I kept showing up. And in showing up, I kept uncovering.
I didn’t start out thinking, I’m writing a novel. I started out writing to survive, to breathe, to put shape to what had been shapeless for too long. And somewhere along the way, it transformed into Shards of Belonging. The manuscript became not just a story, but a mirror — reflecting the slow, often messy work of turning silence into voice, fragments into wholeness.
Themes Woven into the Story
As the manuscript took shape, I began to see more clearly what it was really about. Beneath the scenes and characters lived the same themes that had been shaping me all along: the weight of inherited shadows, the survival rules we don’t realize we’re still obeying, and the longing to rediscover a truer, freer self.
The story asks: what happens when the strategies that once kept us safe begin to suffocate us? What do we do when the very patterns that helped us survive — silence, control, people-pleasing, disappearing — start keeping us from actually living? These questions guided the narrative more than any outline or plot ever could.
That’s why I called it Shards of Belonging: A Canvas of Silence. The “shards” are the fragments we carry — bits of memory, identity, and hope that don’t always seem to fit together. They can cut, they can weigh heavy, but they are also pieces of beauty worth keeping. The “canvas of silence” is the space where those fragments are finally held — where absence, quiet, and even pain can become the backdrop for creating something whole. The title, for me, isn’t an answer — it’s an invitation: to honor the pieces, to sit in the silence, and to see what new shape might emerge.
In that way, the themes of the novel are not distant or abstract — they’re lived. They’re the same struggles many of us face when we ask what it really means to live as ourselves, without shrinking or pretending.
External Catalysts
Although writing often felt like a solitary act, I didn’t walk this path alone. Halfway through the manuscript, life handed me an unexpected gift. The company I was working for decided to shut down my department. Suddenly, I was given two months’ paid notice and the space to search for a new role that truly fit me. Instead of panic, what I felt was relief. It was as if life itself had cleared a path — not only to find work better aligned with who I was becoming, but to give this novel the attention I knew it needed.
There were smaller but equally meaningful catalysts too. My daughter’s natural creativity reminded me of something I had buried years before. She would sketch portraits of her teachers, sew dresses for her dolls, and invent entire stories about their lives. Watching her create so freely brought me back to my own love of poetry and art — the very passions I had convinced myself were impractical. Her spark gave me permission to honor mine.
There were also moments of encouragement — a friend who read an early scene and said it moved them, a quiet conversation where someone asked me to “keep writing this.” These small nudges mattered. They were reminders that stories grow not only in solitude, but also in relationship, in being witnessed.
In the end, the novel was not just a product of my own determination. It was shaped by these external catalysts — by life’s interruptions, by love, and by the quiet support that helped me keep going.
The Emotional Resonance
Looking back, I realize this novel wasn’t just about creating a story — it was about reshaping myself in the process. Writing it forced me to slow down; to notice the reflexes I had mistaken for personality, and to finally sit with the parts of me I had spent years avoiding.
What I found was both sobering and freeing: so much of who I thought I “had to be” was simply survival. And survival is not the same as living.
That’s why the novel matters to me beyond the pages. The novel doesn’t try to solve anything; it creates space to ask what we’re often afraid to voice; it’s an offering of questions.
· What does it cost us to keep performing instead of showing up fully?
· What does it take to face the chains passed down to us and still choose light?
· How do we stop abandoning ourselves in order to belong?
These are not abstract questions. They’re the questions that sit at the heart of marriages, careers, friendships — the places where we most want to be seen.
My hope is that readers will find themselves in the protagonist’s journey. Not because their circumstances are the same, but because the emotional terrain is familiar: doubt, silence, longing, courage. If you’ve ever felt the tension between being accepted and being authentic, you may recognize yourself in these pages. So, this story is, in some way, about you too.
In the end, Shards of Belonging is less about the answers I’ve found and more about the shared path we’re all walking — the fragile, courageous work of becoming who we really are.
Looking Ahead
Today, the manuscript is complete, and Shards of Belonging is about to begin its journey into the publication process. That phrase alone feels both surreal and deeply grounding. What started as a scribbled poem on a heavy night has become a finished novel — one that now has a life of its own. In some ways, handing it over to the next stage feels like another act of vulnerability: allowing the story to leave my desk and step into the world.
I don’t know exactly what will come next, but I do know what I hope for. I hope this book finds its way to the people who need it — those moments when someone is quietly asking themselves, How do I live in truth without losing love? How do I belong without disappearing?
My dream is that the novel meets readers there, offering not certainty but companionship, a mirror, and perhaps a spark of courage.
For me, writing Shards of Belonging has been less about achievement and more about becoming. And now, as it moves toward publication, I carry the same hope for its readers: that they might see themselves in its pages and feel less alone in their own becoming.
This is just the beginning of its next chapter. And like all beginnings, it is equal parts uncertain and full of possibility — which, I suppose, is exactly what the book is about.
Epilogue: The Poem That Sparked It All
Before Shards of Belonging was a novel, it was just this poem. The spark that cracked me open — the fragment that grew into a story, and eventually into Shards of Belonging.
As I See You, I See Myself
Feet on stone, worn smooth by lives before me.
Steps echo, not just mine.
The past hums under my soles,
whispers between the cracks of brick and ruin.
The village breathes.
Old, new, ancient—layered like skin.
Bricks patched, some fresh, some crumbling,
like memories I carry,
like wounds that never learned to close.
The sun drapes the ruins in gold.
Softens the jagged edges.
For a moment, the past is beautiful,
not heavy.
But then—
A child’s cry, sharp as broken glass.
Not in the air, but inside me.
The scrape of a door slamming.
A voice, thick with anger.
I was small. I was silent.
I learned to be stone.
Now, I walk through shadows that know my name.
They cling to the corners,
spill over into the road ahead,
fog the future,
turn tomorrow into something blurred, uncertain.
But the sun—
it does not care for ghosts.
It stretches long over rooftops,
paints everything in its leaving light,
makes even the ruins glow.
A red rose, waiting for the sun to rise.
The cold, quiet breeze lurking.
The road mourns the echoes of past footsteps.
The sun shining through the clouds.
Love. Sadness. Loss. Hope.
They are the same road.
And so, I walk.
That’s the story of my story and I would be honored if you continued down this path with me and sign up for my occasional newsletter. It will keep you up to date on the publication of Shards of Belonging and I will share inspirational material. No frequent and annoying emails, you have my word.