Until 2021, Lissa Rae Daniels thought poetry had to be structured and rhyme with each line. Yet she found it freeing to share her inner thoughts without a rhyme scheme as she narrated her life through several significant changes in the last three years in her new book, “What if I Told You.”
Before writing the book, Daniels admits she only wrote poetry in an academic setting. That changed when she saw herself unable to stop writing from start to end during her day. She found herself writing snippets that would keep her awake at night or spur thoughts throughout the day.
“I was able to really explore my feelings and emotions and just everything that I’ve experienced over the course of the last few years in a way that I hadn’t before, and I was journaling in a non-traditional sense,” Daniels said.
The book is 239 pages long and contains over 100 poems. The topics range from Daniels’ faith deconstruction to abuse, heartbreak, coming out, and the rebuilding, healing, and growth that followed some of her rougher moments in life.
She described the feeling as “freeing” to voice everything and allow herself that vulnerability.
Now, that vulnerability harbors a fear of showing people her art, but not just in the sense of vulnerability. Imposter syndrome began to fill her as she made the post to notify people of this significant step.
“I self-published it, so I tend to feel like I didn’t get a publishing deal. But I put a lot of work and effort into it, and that alone is worth congratulating,” Daniels said. “There’s a lot of imposter syndrome and vulnerability, especially in the sense of sharing close pieces of my heart that I keep to myself.”
But what has kept her going through this release has been what she hopes the book will do for readers along their recovery journeys.
The poems are compiled from the last three years of her life, and she feels like her audience is the person in the same position she was three years ago.
“I felt very isolated and alone. I know that the things that I’ve experienced in my life are incredibly unique, but I also know they’re not unique, and there are a lot of experiences that are incredibly universal,” she said.
Because of the subject matter, she said the book is recommended for 18+ readers, as it contains “a couple of F-bombs” and themes of abuse.
“They are few and far between, but I think they are used in a way that makes a lot of impact, but it is there. And I don’t think if I were a teenager, that my parents would have been particularly thrilled coming across that book that I was reading,” Daniels said.
Daniels said you can purchase a copy of “What if I Told You” on the publisher’s site, Amazon, or in person at Displaced Pages, a locally owned bookstore.
