“It was hard to look at. There was a lot of shame. There was a lot of embarrassment, and I tried to reject it. I was rejecting myself, rejecting my words, and so I started to distract myself. I went out and got a really physical job because that’s how I dealt with a lot of things. And then I ended up tearing my rotator cuff and back into a chair I was and started writing again.

So writing found me. I didn’t go out seeking for it.” – Cheydrea

Andrea aka Cheydrea is a new published author. Her story begins years before a book was published. It started with journaling and processing deep emotions and traumas. When the words first started pouring out if her, she said if felt like she was hemorrhaging. She tried to hide from the words, to run from them in a very intensive job. All that brought her was an injury and her butt back in the seat. She took comfort in learning different artistic mediums during her writing journey to help her heal and process what was coming up. The writing, art, and even poetry, started to resemble something she could share with others. With her daughter’s encouragement a book was born. In her unique style, Cheydrea produced a book of poetry, art, and words aimed at healing the inner child.

In our full length interview she recounts painful moments in her writing journey that were isolating. She felt abandoned by those who couldn’t hold space for her in the grief. She shares that sometimes on our healing journey we have to let things and people go. This painful part of the process gave her extra gratitude for those individuals strong enough to stick by her through it all. Without that extra encouragement from her daughter, this may never have become a book at all. In this full interview she gives us all that little extra encouragement we need in our darkest writing hours: “…there is a meadow of flowers after you crawl out of the cave.” – Cheydrea.