Blog Archives
Private Survival
To Say Goodbye Again is an emotionally candid poetry collection that turns grief, memory, love, labor, and trauma into language strong enough to bear what silence could not. What inspired you to write and publish this collection?
Writing To Say Goodbye Again wasn’t something I planned—it was something I needed. After years on the road as a truck driver, hauling freight across the continent, I carried a lot more than cargo. Grief, memories of family, lost love, the weight of hard work, and old wounds that never quite healed—they all rode shotgun with me. When I finally retired and had time to sit still, those things started demanding to be spoken. Poetry became the way, I could carry what silence couldn’t hold anymore.
I also wanted to prove to myself that I could start a project like this and finish it. I needed to leave behind something for my children to remember me by—something more than just the constant reminders to be responsible, the harping on obligations and discipline. I wanted them to know they had a father who was a dreamer, a goal setter, and who lived for humanity rather than just himself.
Publishing it was about turning private survival into something shared. If one person reads it and feels less alone in their own mess of love, loss, or regret, then it was worth laying it all bare. It’s my way of saying: here’s what the road, the years, and the heart taught me. Take what you need.
How did the structure of the book evolve as you moved from grief and family memory toward “Princess”?
It started as fragments—short pieces about saying goodbye to people and dogs and old versions of myself. The early poems circle grief and family the way you circle a wound that won’t close. I didn’t force an order at first; I just let the memories come out as they needed to.
The strange thing about the final chapter is that I was sidestepping around the idea of adding “Princess” at all. I was more focused on creating a poetry collection that was uniquely universal. I wanted the book to find readers who needed the roller coaster of emotions—that way I was certain to provide something for everyone. “Springtime,” which is a popular piece, was going to be the last chapter.
Ironically, it was during that same week I first started seriously entertaining the thought of publishing the work that the trauma of my childhood came to a head. It was a serious week of hell. I felt that at this point in my life, if I didn’t face all the toxic emotions I carried with intelligence and in a reasonable way, I would rot and die with it inside me—and my family would continue to wonder why I was so sad and withdrawn.
After a week of dealing with it head-on, I finally made the decision to incorporate “Princess.” What I felt, however, was that if I was going to write that piece, I wanted to convey a message to the reader without vitriol and without sounding like a victim seeking sympathy. It needed to be written with wisdom and to lead the reader calmly through the storm. Nothing is learned if we shock the reader and force them to close the book. My desire was to meet people where they were, and that doesn’t work if we chase them away.
Once “Princess” was in there, the whole collection felt heavier, truer. The structure evolved naturally from protection to reckoning. It had to end where the deepest silence had lived, because only then could the goodbye feel complete.
In what ways do work, masculinity, and self-acceptance connect for you across these poems?
For a guy who spent decades behind the wheel, work wasn’t just a job—it was how I proved I could carry weight, provide, and keep moving no matter what. Masculinity, in my experience, often meant swallowing the pain, staying steady for the people counting on you, and finding dignity in dirty hands and long hours. A lot of these poems wrestle with that: the pride in the labor, the loneliness of the cab at 3 a.m., the way it shapes a man.
Though we write for others, the truth is we are often writing for ourselves first. Reflecting on the years as a father, husband, and coworker—all of that was so deeply stitched into me that there was no way my poetry was going to be anything but lived truths. I was always known over the years as a straight shooter. It wasn’t always favorable, but those who knew me understood that they were getting someone who wears his heart on his sleeve and will never be anything but me.
So, my writing reflects all those incredible and heartbreaking experiences.
Self-acceptance came later, after the miles and the losses. It meant admitting I didn’t have to be unbreakable. That it’s okay to feel the grief, the regret, the softness I used to hide. The poems connect those threads—work as both armor and teacher, masculinity as both strength and limitation, and finally, the hard-won peace of letting myself be human. Vulnerable but still standing. That’s the real haul.
What do you hope readers carry with them after finishing To Say Goodbye Again?
I hope they carry the permission to feel it all—the grief, the love, the anger, the tenderness—without shame. Life breaks us in places, but those cracks are where the light gets in and where we learn to speak truthfully.
More than anything, I want readers to walk away knowing they’re not alone in their goodbyes, whether to people, to old selves, or to the versions of life that didn’t work out. There’s resilience in naming the hurt, and there’s renewal on the other side of it.
I also want those who seek my work to trust that I am not self-serving. I may not know exactly what they are going through, but I will be there for them if they need me. Whatever they read, they will know that I had them in mind and not just myself.
If this book leaves them with a little more courage to say what needs saying—or to finally say goodbye again—then I’ve done what I set out to do.
Shadows, Roads and Redemption the Memoir and full story scheduled for a 2026 mid-summer release.
Author Links: GoodReads | Jac Winters | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Amazon
“In the ache of saying goodbye, grief arrives as our uninvited guest. We
can let it consume us, or we can let it forge us—carrying us forward,
transformed, into whatever comes next.” —Jac Winters.
Jac Winters shares his deeply personal journey through childhood trauma, 48
years of enforced silence that held the pain in check, and the long-overdue road to healing that finally began in 2017 with a single, powerful poem that cracked open the past.
In To Say Goodbye Again, retired truck driver and poet Jac Winters lays bare his life through vivid, heartfelt verses born from the shadows of loss, grief, abuse, and hard-won resilience.
What began as a private act of turning endured evil into something good has grown into a quiet lifeline for other survivors burdened by silence, violence, or marginalization. These poems speak straight to the heart of anyone who’s carried their story alone for too long—offering connection, validation, and the gentle reminder that healing is possible, one brave, determined step at a time.
This book of poetry is a hand reaching out from one survivor’s road to yours, saying you’re not alone, your voice matters, and it’s never too late to say goodbye to the weight you’ve carried.
To Say Goodbye Again
To Say Goodbye Again is a short but emotionally wide-ranging collection that moves through grief, memory, love, masculinity, work, faith, family, and trauma with a striking lack of self-protective distance. Author Jac Winters writes in a mode that is part confessional poetry, part personal testimony, and part manifesto, so the book feels less like a curated sequence than a life speaking in bursts. It begins in mourning, circles through pieces about childhood, parents, romance, trucking, and the death of a beloved dog, and culminates in “Princess,” a devastating autobiographical account of childhood abuse that recasts much of the book in a harsher, sadder light. What stayed with me most was the sense that Winters is trying, again and again, to turn private pain into language sturdy enough to carry it.
There’s very little irony here, and almost no cool detachment. Winters writes as someone who means every line, and that sincerity gives the collection its force. “To Say Goodbye Again” and “Please Remember Me” ache with a plainspoken fear of loss and disappearance, while “Big Ben,” about the sudden death of a dog, is so direct in its grief that it almost disarms criticism. Even “No Matter Where I Go,” with its return to the childhood block, has an unguarded tenderness that I found genuinely affecting. I believed the emotional stake in nearly all of the poems. The book’s warmth comes not from polish but from exposure. Winters is willing to sound earnest, wounded, grateful, furious.
Winters often reaches for grandeur, piling image on image, and sometimes that intensity lands beautifully. Even when the phrasing grows ornate, the ideas underneath are clear: love dignifies us, work hardens and defines us, grief rearranges the soul, and survival demands that a person stop hiding. I found “Fueled My Drive” especially revealing in that respect because it frames self-acceptance not as branding or self-help, but as a hard-won moral act. And once I reached “Princess,” the whole collection changed shape for me. Its lyrical approach to such unbearable material won’t work for every reader, but I found it haunting precisely because it preserves the confusion of a child’s memory alongside the adult voice trying to name what happened.
I came away feeling that To Say Goodbye Again is vulnerable and deeply felt, which is also why it resonated with me. I think its greatest strength is emotional candor, the feeling that someone is finally saying the thing they’ve carried too long in silence. I’d recommend it to readers who value autobiographical poetry, reflective writing about grief and endurance, and books that care more about truth-telling than literary neatness. This is the kind of book that doesn’t ask to be admired so much as it asks to be felt.
Pages: 52 | ASIN: B0G4S75CW1
