Kiera Gerety

The Lie of Tidy Redemption Arcs

Recovery, we’re told, is a straight line. Fall down, get back up. The twelve steps are numbered. The timelines are neat. Movies give us the long-awaited moment of clarity, the shaky but hopeful hand reaching for help, the swelling music as the sun rises on a new life. And then we are supposed to be grateful. Forgiving. Clean.

But that’s not my story. That’s not most people’s story.

I did not wake up one day washed clean by grace. My sobriety is a bloodied knuckle clutching a shattered bottle. It is a scream in a parking lot at 2 a.m. It is falling on my face, again and again, crawling through the broken glass of my own making. My redemption arc isn’t tidy. It’s soaked in sweat and bile and betrayal. It’s rage-filled and desperate and ugly.

And that’s why Ink, Blood, & Prayer exists. Because recovery poetry that erases the rage betrays the truth. I don’t write tidy redemption arcs. I write what survival really looks like.

What It Means to Write Honestly About Addiction

Honesty in addiction writing doesn’t mean confessing your sins like you’re paying penance. It means staring into the black mouth of craving and letting it spit its venom on the page. It means admitting that sobriety doesn’t erase pain. That sometimes, even clean, you still want to die. That sometimes, the Gods are silent. That the people you hurt may never forgive you. That you may never fully forgive yourself.

To write honestly is to say: yes, I almost didn’t make it. Yes, I clawed my way back with teeth bared. Yes, I burned everything around me more than once. And no, I am not a saint now.

Pretty recovery poetry offers hope, but often cheap hope. Instagram captions dressed up like healing. My poems are altars built from wreckage. They do not pretend that recovery is soft or safe. They do not pretend that I was some innocent girl swept up by bad choices. No. I made my bed of needles. I kept lying down in it. I kept waking up impaled. And somehow, I’m still here.

Why Poetry Should Not Flinch

People sometimes ask if my poems are “too much.” Too dark. Too angry. Too raw. As if poetry should wear clean gloves. As if beauty only lives in soft things.

But survival is not soft. And neither is my poetry.

Recovery isn’t polite. Addiction isn’t aesthetic. Trauma isn’t quiet. Healing isn’t linear. To flinch from these truths is to dishonor the people still clawing their way out of hell. To soften the edges would be a lie. To cut out the rage would be to cut out the truth.

My poetry holds up the raw, unfiltered mirror. It says: I know what it feels like to hate yourself. I know what it feels like to want to disappear. I know what it feels like to want the drugs more than breath. And it says: you are still here.

That is prayer. Not the whisper of easy forgiveness, but the roar of stubborn survival.

Ink, blood, and prayer, that’s the trinity I write in.

The Invitation

This book isn’t for everyone. It’s not soft. It’s not sanitized. It won’t hand you easy comfort. But if you know what it’s like to stand at the edge of your own destruction and scream into the void, if you know the taste of rage and grief and survival tangled together, then Ink, Blood, & Prayer was written for you.

I wrote these poems for those still crawling, still bleeding, still trying to find a reason to stay. For those who have prayed with clenched fists, for those who know the weight of shattered things. For those who carry their own sacred rage.

The Gods met me there. Perhaps they’ll meet you there too.

Your Invitation to Join Me

If these words echo something inside you, if you recognize yourself in the blood, in the ink, in the prayer, then I invite you to read Ink, Blood, & Prayer. Share it with those who might need to know they aren’t alone. Carry it like a talisman for the nights when the rage is louder than the hope.

And if it speaks to you, let it. Let it scream with you. Let it pray with you. Let it remind you that you are still here. Always, still here.

Ink, Blood, & Prayer releases July 17, 2025. Pre-orders are open now.