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Foundation of My Healing
Unleashing the Power Within is a short, heartfelt collection of inspirational poems that moves through self-worth, recovery, faith, gratitude, nature, and personal renewal. Did you write these pieces as you were going through those moments, or after gaining distance from them?
For Unleashing the Power Within, I began writing these pieces in 2023, after my first book, Inspiring Book of Poems, Dreams and Stories, was published. While many of the experiences come from a past shaped by a toxic upbringing, the writing itself was very much alive in the present moment.
I was reflecting on current emotions, ongoing growth, and the lessons I had carried forward. In that sense, the poems were written from both a place of healing and awareness—looking back, while still living and feeling deeply in the now.
More than anything, this book became a way for me to continue my story, not just for myself, but to empower others who may be walking a similar path.
Faith plays a central role in the later emotional arc of the book. How did your spiritual perspective shape the way you approached recovery?
I have always trusted in God, even in the middle of chaos. Growing up without knowing my father and experiencing abuse from my stepfather led me to realize that the only father I could truly rely on was God.
That understanding became the foundation of my healing. Believing that God had a plan for my life gave me hope, even in the hardest moments. It reminded me that my story wasn’t over and that I wasn’t alone in what I was facing.
My faith shaped the way I approached recovery by helping me hold on, trust the process, and believe that freedom, healing, and purpose were still possible for me.
Your nature imagery—cedar trees, ocean, birds—brings a quieter energy to the collection. What draws you to those images?
Nature has always been a place where I feel deeply connected—both to my surroundings and to myself. When I’m outside, whether I’m hiking or simply sitting still, I take in what I see, feel, and hear, and that often becomes part of my writing.
I love the smell of fresh cedar, the sound of wind chimes, and watching birds, especially the golden finches that visit my yard. I have a bird feeder and bird bath, and those quiet moments—like seeing them in the rain—stay with me. They inspire both reflection and peace.
My poem about the Gulf of Mexico came from a very personal experience. It was my first time standing on the sand in Florida, looking out at the ocean and taking in something so vast and beautiful. That moment stayed with me in a powerful way.
Growing up in a more sheltered environment gave me a deeper appreciation for the world around me. Even as a child, I loved being outside whenever I could. Now, I notice everything more intentionally. Nature gives me space to reflect, to feel, and to breathe—and that quieter energy naturally finds its way into my poetry.
This book often feels like it’s speaking directly to someone who is struggling. Who did you imagine you were writing for?
I was writing to myself, and to anyone who has gone through or is still going through what I’ve experienced. Many of these poems came from moments where I needed comfort, encouragement, and a reminder that I could keep going.
At the same time, I was thinking about others who might be struggling in similar ways—people who feel unseen, overwhelmed, or unsure of their worth. I wanted the words to feel personal, like they were speaking directly to them.
If someone reads my work and feels even a little less alone, a little more understood, or finds the strength to keep moving forward, then I’ve written it for them too.
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Unleashing The Power Within: A Journey of Self-Discovery Through Poetry is a deeply personal, faith-filled collection for the moments that change you. The ones that shake you, stretch you, and slowly rebuild you.
These pieces give voice to what often goes unspoken. The silent battles. The long nights. The strength it takes to keep going when everything feels heavy.
Rooted in themes of healing, faith, and transformation, this collection gently guides you toward rediscovering your inner strength and purpose.
Inside this collection, you will find:
Strength through pain and personal struggle
Healing through faith and reflection
The courage to set healthy boundaries
Clarity in uncertain seasons
The confidence that has always been within you
Healing is not always a straight path. It can feel slow. Messy. Uncertain. But even then, something inside you is still shifting. Little by little, you do not just survive what broke you; you begin to live again.
If this speaks to your heart, this may be exactly what you need right now.
Unleashing The Power Within: A Journey of Self-Discovery Through Poetry
Unleashing the Power Within is a short, heartfelt collection of inspirational poems that moves through self-worth, recovery, faith, gratitude, nature, and personal renewal. Lisa McCarthy writes as someone who has suffered, endured, and come out the other side determined to speak encouragement over both herself and her reader. The book’s emotional arc gathers force as recurring ideas echo across the collection: breaking free from harm, setting boundaries, trusting intuition, reclaiming one’s voice, and finally rooting identity in God. What gives it shape beyond affirmation is the sense that these poems arise from lived experience, especially when the book turns personal in pieces like “My Freedom Day” and “From Silence to Self-Acceptance,” where liberation stops being an abstract slogan and starts to feel earned.
McCarthy isn’t trying to be sly or ironic, and that lack of distance gives the collection a disarming openness. When she writes about blooming “beneath the ashes and dirt,” or compares healing to pushing toward light, the imagery is simple, but it lands because she means it. I felt that again in the poems about the natural world, especially the red cedar trees, the Gulf of Mexico beach, the lavender fields, and those bright little “Golden Finches in the Rain.” Those poems briefly loosen the book’s grip on exhortation and let it breathe. They offer a quieter kind of restoration, and I found myself wishing there were even more of them, because McCarthy’s voice is often at its most vivid when she pauses long enough to really look.
McCarthy returns to the language of empowerment, destiny, courage, and self-belief. I respected the clarity of the ideas. This is a book deeply invested in healthy boundaries, in refusing negativity, in choosing gratitude, and in seeing survival not just as escape but as transformation. Even when the phrasing is familiar, the conviction behind it feels real, and that reality matters.
I read Unleashing the Power Within less as a formally ambitious poetry collection than as a personal testament shaped into verse, and on those terms it has genuine warmth and purpose. It’s a book about speaking kindly to the bruised parts of the self until they begin to believe they deserve light. I would recommend it to readers who want accessible, faith-tinged, emotionally direct poetry about healing, resilience, and beginning again. For someone coming through loss, self-doubt, or a hard season of change, this book could feel like a companionable hand on the shoulder.
Pages: 96 | ASIN : B0DBVC33S5
The Savior and the Shadow Queen: A Fantastical Tale Told Through Sequential Poems
The Savior and the Shadow Queen is a story told through poetry, unfolding in layers that mix fantasy and raw human emotion. It begins as a mythic tale of Eselli and Nabseatsi, two friends who set out to defeat a terrible enemy called the Shadow Queen. Their world feels ancient and mystical, full of prophecies, weapons, and dark magic. But as the story progresses, that fantasy begins to fade, and the truth emerges. Eselli is Leslie, a young woman living in the real world, grappling with grief, guilt, and the haunting weight of loss. The Shadow Queen becomes something much deeper than an external enemy; she is the darkness inside us all, the reflection of our pain and self-hatred.
McAfee writes with such openness that it’s hard not to feel what Leslie feels. Her pain, her confusion, her desperate hope for healing, it all comes through in the rhythm of the poems. The fantasy world works beautifully as a metaphor for mental illness and self-discovery. I loved how the story shifts from myth to memory, from sword and prophecy to hospital rooms and recovery. That transition hit me hard. The writing itself is simple, almost deceptively so, but it carries deep emotion. It’s the kind of poetry that doesn’t need fancy words to make you feel something, it just does. The pacing feels natural, the imagery vivid, and the emotions raw enough to make you pause and sit with them.
I could feel the compassion in McAfee’s voice. The book doesn’t wallow in sadness, even though it’s born from it. It offers forgiveness, for oneself, for others, for the past. I appreciated that McAfee didn’t sugarcoat the pain, yet she gave it meaning. The real-world sections are written with quiet strength. There’s hope tucked between every line, and I found myself rooting for Leslie as if she were someone I knew. The author’s choice to end the book with a direct message to the reader was perfect. It felt intimate, like a friend reaching out to say, “You’re not alone.”
I’d recommend The Savior and the Shadow Queen to readers who loved The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Both books explore inner transformation through journeys that seem external at first but reveal themselves as deeply personal. Like Santiago’s search for his treasure, Leslie’s quest to defeat the Shadow Queen becomes a metaphor for finding meaning after loss. But where Coelho’s story leans on destiny and spiritual discovery, McAfee’s feels more grounded in real emotion like grief, guilt, and the slow rebuilding of self-worth.
Pages: 102 | ASIN : B0CH411ZSP
Reflections: Earth, Heart, Light, Dark
Reflections: Earth, Heart, Light, Dark is a mother-daughter collaboration that explores the intertwined themes of Earth, Heart, Light, and Dark through poetry. The book flows like a seasonal cycle, beginning with poems rooted in nature, moving through love and memory, then toward hope and illumination, and finally into grief, loss, and shadows. Each section feels distinct, yet they all circle back to a shared sense of searching for meaning in both beauty and pain.
Poems like Transition pulled me in with their intimacy, especially the image of a mother’s hands rebuilding a new world after a storm. It felt deeply personal but also universal, the kind of moment that made me stop and think about my own family. I’ll admit, Grandmama caught me off guard with its questions, “What thoughts did you have? Did you think them deserving?” and left me feeling both unsettled and comforted at the same time. That’s what I liked most, the poems didn’t tie everything up neatly. They lingered.
From Ash to Light carried a strong sense of resilience, and I couldn’t help but feel buoyed by its journey from despair to joy. It had this rhythm of stumbling and rising that felt human and raw. On the other hand, Dawn of Forty-Nine leaned more toward classic imagery, almost old-fashioned in its rhymes, which at first jarred me but eventually worked because it added texture to the collection. I found myself rereading those lines about waterfalls and winds, almost like I was letting the words wash over me instead of trying to decode them.
Then there’s the “Dark” section. This is where the book hit hardest for me. You Left Me was plainspoken, almost brutally so, and that stripped-down honesty made it sting. The Waves had this hypnotic pull with its repetition, “Rising above, wave after wave,” that felt like drowning in grief and memory. I could feel the authors letting themselves go to heavier places, and I appreciated that they didn’t shy away. It made the hopeful poems earlier in the book feel more earned, less naïve.
Reflections: Earth, Heart, Light, Dark is for readers who like their poetry to sit somewhere between personal diary and universal myth. It’s not heavy with academic wordplay, but it’s not fluff either. If you enjoy quiet evenings with a book that makes you pause, maybe even tear up, this one is a must-read. Personally, I closed it feeling like I had sat down with two voices who weren’t afraid to be vulnerable, and that’s something I’ll always admire in poetry.
Pages: 38 | ASIN : B0FFNGQ15P
On the Verge
Marie Rickmyer’s On the Verge is a delicate, unflinching collection of poems exploring life, trauma, and family. Each piece drips with nostalgia, capturing the quiet fragility of memory—like a glass pane trembling under the weight of lived experience. Rickmyer invites readers into intimate spaces: kitchens brimming with warmth and chaos, childhoods that linger like faint scars, and moments suspended between joy and sorrow. Here, nostalgia and trauma are not at odds but intertwined, stitched together by subtle, aching beauty—a weight of sunlight, the quiet despair of witnessing your mother as both parent and person.
Reading these poems feels like overhearing deeply personal conversations—tender, raw, and unfiltered. Rickmyer’s words evoke the weariness of her mother, the emptiness left by absence, and the heavy silence of unspoken longings. It is not a collection concerned with life’s grandeur but with its endurance: the sacred moments hidden within the mundane.
From the start, On the Verge captivated me with its thematic focus on memory, trauma, and fractured families. Admittedly, I hesitated at first—the poem structure and style felt unconventional—but the writing quickly grew on me. Each piece unfolded like a film, vivid and visceral, with no pretense or grandiosity. Rickmyer’s simplicity is piercing. Her lines feel less like crafted poetry and more like confessions, whispered truths, or rants from someone intimately familiar. For a moment, you are there—in her mother’s kitchen, at the edge of her grief, alongside flowers bathed in memory—transported not just into her life but, uncannily, into your own. The poems “Pantoum on Mother” and “Elegy for My Brother” are especially powerful, confronting the quiet burdens we carry and the losses we never fully release. Rickmyer captures what we inherit and what we endure, often at the same time. Her language is so personal, her imagery so immediate, that the connection feels inevitable. It resonates deeply, like a shared ache you never realized existed.
Marie Rickmyer’s On the Verge holds a quiet power, subtle yet relentless, like a stream carving its path through stone. By the final poem, I felt as though I had lived through a lifetime of someone else’s struggles and small victories. It is a book I will return to—a companion for moments when I need to be reminded of the quiet beauty of endurance. On the Verge is intensely personal yet strangely familiar, as though Rickmyer isn’t just telling her story but yours, too. It is a testament to the weight of memory and the tenderness of survival—an unforgettable offering of truth, nostalgia, and fragile beauty.
Pages: 74 | ASIN : B0DFMVG9DD
