Kiera Gerety

I didn’t write Ink, Blood, & Prayer because I wanted to. I wrote it because I had to.

This book clawed its way out of me during the wreckage of relapse and the fragile, holy light of starting over—again. It was born in the middle of the night, between panic attacks and twelve-step meetings, between pouring cups of coffee and trying not to pour a drink. It’s not polished. It’s not meant to be. This book is jagged and trembling and reverent. It’s a prayer soaked in ink and written in the blood of old wounds I kept trying to stitch shut with good intentions.

When I sat down to write these poems, I was only a few days clean—again. The words came before I knew what they were. I hadn’t uncovered all the damage, let alone started repairing it. But the poems? The poems told the truth before I was ready to say it out loud. They told on me. They confessed when I was still pretending I had it all under control.

That’s why Ink, Blood, & Prayer exists. Not as a roadmap. Not as advice. But as evidence: I survived.

---

Let’s Talk Tropes

There’s a danger in calling this a poetry book and stopping there. Because it’s also a survival narrative. A heroine’s journey. A raw spiritual confession. And yes, a book that makes use of some deeply rooted literary tropes—because the truth is, tropes become tropes for a reason. They reflect the patterns we live.

Here are a few of the ones that show up in this collection:

1. “The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes”
We all know this one. And if you’ve ever had to rebuild your life from nothing but grief and grit, you’ve lived it too. Ink, Blood, & Prayer leans hard into this arc—not as some triumphant climax, but as a cycle. Burn. Rise. Burn again. It doesn’t romanticize the rising. It just makes space for it. Again and again.

2. “Found Family”
Not all the people who carried me through this made it into the poems by name. But their presence is everywhere. The sponsor who didn’t give up on me. The friend who stayed on the phone while I sobbed. The meetings where I sat in silence and still felt seen. This book holds them all. The idea that we can choose each other, love each other through hell, and call it family—that’s sacred.

3. “Wounded Healer”
This one runs deep, especially for women who have lived with trauma and addiction. I confront the body, the shame, the sacred, and the survival of reclaiming ourselves. I don’t flinch from the brutal honesty of addiction, relapse, and recovery. I let myself be both defiant and holy. I needed to be.

4. “Angry Psalms”
The title is not a metaphor. Ink, Blood, & Prayer is exactly that: pages inked with fury, stained with past harm, and whispered prayers to gods I wasn’t even sure believed in me anymore. If you grew up religious—or spiritually wounded—you’ll see those echoes. The book challenges the trope of peaceful surrender. My prayers are angry, desperate, broken. But they are still prayers. That matters.

---

Using Tropes without Cliché

Tropes only fail when they’re used without truth. I let these poems breathe in my lived experience. I didn’t set out to write about rising from the ashes—I was still choking on the smoke. I didn’t know I was creating a “found family” arc—I was just writing about the people who refused to leave me in the dark.

So if these tropes show up in my book, it’s not because I followed a formula. It’s because these patterns found me. And I gave them a name.

---

I hope Ink, Blood, & Prayer finds the people who need it. Not because it promises healing, but because it honors the moments before healing even feels possible. If you’re still standing in the ruins, still bleeding ink on the page, still praying through the madness—this one’s for you.

And if you’re not there anymore? This book is a reminder of how far you’ve come.

Keep going.
We rise differently each time.