The Mirror I Stepped Through

Some books begin with a question.
This one began with a mirror.The Mirror I Stepped Through grew out of the moments when the self becomes unmistakably visible,the patterns we repeat without noticing, the masks we learned to wear long before we had language for them, the stories that once protected us but now keep us small. Recognition is rarely comfortable. But it is always clarifying.This collection grew from the poetry I was writing for Four Arcs of Belonging and a realisation that many of us need more knowledge to be able to help ourselves be more self fulfilled. Ideas kept circling the same revelation: that the self we present to the world is often a negotiation between who we were taught to be and who we actually are. Therefore this book is a mix of short prose pieces and poems that trace that negotiation — the quiet distortions, the inherited scripts, the ruptures that finally let the truth through.Stepping through a mirror is not about reinvention.
It’s about meeting the self you’ve been avoiding, and discovering she has been waiting for you.These poems are not confessions. They are observations — the kind you make when the light changes and you can no longer pretend you don’t see what’s there. They follow the moment the mask slips, the moment the pattern cracks, the moment the reflection sharpens into something undeniable.If you recognise any of these reflections, I hope you find steadiness in them.
May these pages help you notice the patterns you’ve outgrown.
May they offer the courage to meet your own gaze without flinching.
And may they remind you that clarity, even when it stings, is a kind of freedom.

I will be sharing small excerpts of the prose and poetry in the various sections to give you a taster of the contents and I hope you will follow and give me feedback as I refine and edit for publication.

Here is an example of a poem.

​Behind our eyes, the fairground never sleeps.
We stand trapped in a turning ring of glass,
where old beliefs have warped the silvering,
bending the light to bend the truth.
​Watch them pass on their relentless track:
the elongated ghost of an old shame,
the crouched, defensive dwarf of fear,
the rigid soldier built of rules we broke.
These are the wardens of the inner eye,
forcing us to watch the monsters we assume we are.
​A sudden glare strikes a distorted curve—
and by reflex, we ignite.
We catch a phantom fire from a twisted pane,
blistered by an old, reflected spark
before we ever stop to look
at what is bending the light.
​But the glass is only heavy while we believe it.
Turn your back on the rotating show.
Find the one quiet pane that does not stretch or shrink,
reach out a hand, and let the silver yield.
Step into the mirror—
and step out, shattered and whole,
as you want to be.