The Quiet Calendar follows a woman day by day as she leaves a damaging entanglement and rebuilds herself through small, tender moments of clarity, grief, and hard-won peace. Why was this an important book for you to write?

The Quiet Calendar was important for me to write because it marks the moment I stopped disappearing inside someone else’s narrative. I didn’t write it to explain what happened or to assign blame. I wrote it to reclaim myself. At the time, I was moving through grief quietly, functioning outwardly while unraveling inwardly. Writing gave me a place to be honest without performing strength.

This book documents the shift from survival to clarity. It captures how healing actually happens, not in grand gestures, but in small, private recognitions: a day without checking a phone, a breath that doesn’t hurt, a morning that belongs to you again. Writing it helped me turn silence into something useful. It became proof that I could leave, endure, and rebuild, one day at a time.

Why did you choose a day-by-day structure, and how did time shape the emotional arc of the book?

The day-by-day structure mirrors how grief behaves. When you’re in it, time becomes both oppressive and necessary, you count days because surviving them feels like an accomplishment. I needed the structure to ground me, to make the intangible measurable. I was writing in real time to replace texts I no longer sent.

Time shapes the emotional arc by revealing patterns. Early days are raw, repetitive, desperate. Later days are quieter, less dramatic, but more honest. The absence of intensity becomes its own kind of progress. By the end, the act of counting is no longer needed. That’s the real arc: not closure, but release. The calendar eventually dissolves because the life underneath it returns.

How did you decide when simplicity was enough, especially when writing about manipulation and pain?

Simplicity became a boundary. When you’ve lived through manipulation, language can become tangled, over-explained, defensive, performative. I stripped the poems down because clarity is an act of self-respect.

I trusted that naming a truth plainly was more powerful than dramatizing it. Pain doesn’t always need elaboration; often it needs space. Short lines, lowercase, and restraint allowed the reader to feel without being told how. When the words felt quiet but steady, when they no longer asked for validation. That’s how I knew simplicity was enough.

I’ve spent decades in an operating room, where time matters and conversations are often brief, interrupted, or unfinished. That environment teaches you to speak clearly and only when it counts.

My writing carries that discipline. I trust simplicity because it gets to the truth faster. When words are chosen carefully, they don’t need to be loud. 

What role did the drawings play in your own healing process while creating the book?

The drawings were a parallel language. When words felt too loaded, drawing allowed me to process without narrative or justification. They slowed me down. They asked for presence, not explanation.

Visually, they echo the themes of the book—keys, time, absence, return—but emotionally, they served as anchors. They reminded me that creation doesn’t always require articulation. Sometimes healing happens through the hands before it reaches the voice. The drawings helped me stay connected to myself while the poems helped me name what I was leaving behind.

The sketches invite the reader into my internal landscape. They aren’t explanations, they’re presence. I wanted the reader to feel immersed, to experience the emotional weight of the book not just through words, but through what is seen and held in silence. 

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What do you do when the person you loved disappears into silence?
You count. You write. You learn to breathe again.
the quiet calendar is a day-by-day descent into heartbreak—and the unexpected rise that follows. With stark honesty and gentle restraint, these poems illuminate the stillness after loss and the strength found within it.
For anyone who has ever held on too long or had to let go without closure, this collection offers recognition, release, and the quiet beginning of renewal.