Some wounds stay hidden.
Others become stories.

When I began writing The Second Coming of Grace, I didn’t set out to write about trauma. I set out to write about awakening, memory, and transformation. But I quickly realized those things don’t happen in a vacuum.

They happen in the aftermath of pain.

Grace isn’t a broken character. But she carries grief, fear, and the residue of being told—repeatedly—that who she is, as she is, isn’t enough. She’s lost her mother. Her father disappeared. She’s struggled with body image in an industry that demands conformity. She’s had to mask, to shrink, to be acceptable.

That part of her story? It’s deeply personal. And it isn’t just hers.

I’ve survived things, too. Violence from a neighbour. Years of bullying. Depression. A lifetime of feeling like I had to earn my right to take up space. And I’ve spent much of my adult life learning to unlearn those patterns. To feel the feelings I once pushed down. To recognize the old trauma loops when they sneak in disguised as logic.

So when Grace doubts herself, I get it. When she has a chance at love but can’t quite let it in—I know that place. When she wakes from a dream she doesn’t understand but feels down to the bone—I’ve been there.

Fiction gave me a place to process that.
To name it.
To give it shape.
And eventually, to give it light.

Because when we tell the truth through fiction, something powerful happens. The wound becomes visible—not as spectacle, but as shared language. It becomes a bridge. A place where we can meet, writer and reader, without shame.

That’s what Grace taught me.
That’s what I hope this story offers you.