I didn’t write Ink, Blood, and Prayer because I had a book deal. I didn’t write it because I thought anyone would buy it, or because I wanted to inspire anyone. I wrote it because I was breaking. Because I needed a place to scream without being interrupted. Because relapse had gutted me, and I didn’t know how to keep living unless I gave that pain somewhere to go.
This book is not tidy. It doesn’t offer a neat redemption arc. It doesn’t pretend recovery is some shining, linear climb. It’s stitched with blood and craving and sacred fury. It’s soaked in the kind of grief that doesn’t go away just because you’ve stayed clean another day. And at the center of it all is a prayer. Gods who never flinched when I raged or begged or relapsed again.
With only eight days left until launch, I want to take you deep into the bones of this book—into the reasons I wrote it, the gods who guided it, and the people—still using or long clean—who I wrote it for. This is more than a poetry collection. It’s a spell of survival. A tribute to the addicts who don’t feel seen in the rooms. A love letter to those still suffering.
If you’re here, if you’re still breathing—you are the reason this book exists.
Let me tell you why.
Why I Wrote Ink, Blood, and Prayer
I didn’t write Ink, Blood, and Prayer with any intention of publishing it. I wasn’t thinking about readers or sales or neat thematic arcs. I was trying to survive. I was in the wreckage of yet another relapse, crawling my way back to day one, then day five, then day thirty. The poems came in the early mornings when I couldn’t sleep, in the quiet hours when the cravings were so loud I thought they’d drown me. They came between meetings, in the middle of arguments with myself, and while crying on the floor. Writing was the only thing that made the noise bearable.
This isn’t a book about getting better. As I wrote in the foreword, this is a book about getting through. It’s about how I made it from one breath to the next when I didn’t think I could. The poems were my voice when I didn’t have one. They let me scream without apology. They let me speak the truths I was too afraid to say out loud in a meeting, the ones that made people shift in their seats. The ones that were too raw to edit.
In “War Inside,” I wrote:
Four days clean,
but my body remembers.
The ache sits in my chest,
a hungry thing,
a snarling thing,
a beast with my name
tattooed on its teeth.
I wasn’t sure anyone would understand what it’s like to crave death and yet keep choosing life. I wasn’t sure anyone would want to hear it. But I needed to tell it anyway.
I was barely clean when I wrote most of this. I hadn’t even reached 90 days. Every word was a rope I was clinging to. Every poem was another inch of breath. And in that process, something shifted. Not just in my recovery, but in my spirit.
Poetry helped me reclaim what trauma tried to erase. They gave me back my fire and my voice and my name. And they’re braided into every line of this book.
In “The Long Way Back,” I said:
I don’t know how I got here.
Or maybe I do.
Maybe it was the slow unravel,
the meetings I stopped going to,
the phone calls I left unanswered,
the voice in my head that whispered,
“You’ve got this now. You’re different.
You don’t need them anymore.”
And for a while, I believed it.
For a while, I thought I was free.
But I wasn’t free. I was falling. And this book is what I wrote in the middle of that fall. Not because I knew I’d survive it, but because I didn’t know how not to write my way through.
So if this book feels like a howl, if it feels jagged and unfiltered and raw—it’s because it is. I wrote it when everything hurt. I wrote it with a pen in one hand and a prayer in the other. I wrote it to stay alive.
And now, I’m sharing it so someone else might feel a little less alone in the dark.
Recovery Doesn’t Look Like a Hallmark Card
People love a clean recovery story. They want to hear about the rock bottom, the decision to get sober, and then the triumphant return to life. They want polished endings, smiling selfies with keytags, and some quote about gratitude tucked into a caption. They want us to have made it. They want the mess to be over.
But that isn’t my story. It isn’t most people’s story.
Recovery is brutal. It’s full of false starts, ugly mornings, and nights that feel just like the ones that broke you. It’s showing up to a meeting with nothing to say but still sitting through it because you don’t know where else to go. It’s dragging yourself out of bed when you haven’t slept in three days. It’s crying in the shower because you want to use but promised someone you wouldn’t. It’s calling your sponsor—or not. It’s relapse, sometimes. And starting over.
In Ink, Blood, and Prayer, I didn’t try to write the version of recovery that fits neatly into a TV special. I wrote the version that starts with your hands shaking and ends with your legs barely holding you up. I wrote the version that includes the shame, the fury, and the fight.
In “Shards of Grace,” I wrote:
Five years clean, I wore it proud,
A warrior’s strength beneath the shroud.
The echoes of pipes, of powders, of shame,
sealed in a vault, a forgotten name.
I held my head high, my path was straight,
a beacon burning against my fate.
But grace is brittle, a fragile thread,
and old temptations are never dead.
I thought I was done with the worst of it. I had the clean time, the wisdom, the toolkit. But addiction is patient. It doesn’t always knock you down fast. Sometimes it shows up in a doctor’s office, smiling with a prescription pad. Sometimes it sneaks in while you’re doing everything “right.”
Relapse doesn’t mean we failed. It means we’re still fighting something that wants us dead. The world loves to see us rise, but it doesn’t always stick around when we fall. That’s why the rooms matter. That’s why we show up. Because in those rooms, there are people who’ve fallen and gotten back up again. People who won’t flinch when you say, “I slipped.” People who will nod when you say, “I almost didn’t come back.” And people who will say, “We’re glad you did.”
“Red, White, and Brown” holds that moment tight:
I know the feeling will pass.
I know I’ll make it to thirteen weeks,
fourteen, maybe more.
But tonight, I sit with it.
The wanting, the war.
The blade in one hand, my phone in the other.
That’s what recovery looks like some days. Not clean counters and perfectly brewed coffee. It’s mess. It’s pacing the room. It’s the beauty of not using even when every cell in your body is screaming for it. It’s calling someone when you’d rather isolate. It’s walking into a meeting with your head down and being welcomed anyway.
Recovery is messy, but it’s also holy. Not because it’s perfect, but because it’s honest. Because we get to keep trying. Because every time we fall and choose to come back, we are living proof that healing is possible—even when it hurts like hell.
This book is not about being healed. It’s about staying alive long enough to keep healing. It’s about finding something worth holding onto, even in the mess. Especially in the mess.
You Don’t Have to Be Ready to Be Loved
If you’re still using, this book is for you.
Not the future version of you, the one people tell you to become. Not the clean, glowing, made-it-out version. You—right now. The you waking up dope sick. The you who doesn’t think you’re worth saving. The you who called the dealer again. The you who thinks recovery isn’t for people like you.
I remember that version of me. The one who wanted to want it but didn’t. The one who said she was done while hiding just enough for one more. I remember waiting in alleys, bruises blooming up my thighs, blood on my socks, staring at a phone that could connect me to help—or to the next hit. I made my choice. And I made it again. And again.
This book is for her. It’s for all of us who weren’t ready yet.
There were poems I almost cut. Too dark, I thought. Too hopeless. Too much. But I kept them in. Because someone needs to know that wanting to die and still writing a poem counts. That being high and still hoping there’s something better counts. That even if you’re not clean, you’re still worthy of being witnessed.
In “Sweet Death,” I wrote:
I close my eyes,
Unbind the ties.
Breath falters, hollow and slow,
Following the shadows
Of those who’ve come before,
Knocking softly on this final door.
I didn’t write that from a distance. I wrote that from inside the ache. I wrote that still tasting the burn. I didn’t know if I’d live through it. I didn’t think I deserved to.
But recovery doesn’t start when we get clean. It starts when something inside us wants to try. Even if we don’t listen to that voice. Even if we drown it out. That tiny flicker that says maybe. Maybe not this time. Maybe there’s something else. That’s where the work begins.
You don’t have to earn poetry. You don’t have to get clean to deserve softness. You don’t have to wait to matter. You matter now. In the middle of it. In the blood, the sweat, the shaking, the numbing. You are not forgotten. You are not alone.
If you never read another book again, I hope you know this one saw you. I hope you know I did.
From My Page to Your Hands
If these words have hit you somewhere deep—if you’ve seen yourself in the wreckage or the rebuilding—Ink, Blood, and Prayer is ready to hold space for you. The book is officially launching in just a few days, and you can preorder it now:
Preordering helps more than you know. It shows booksellers that stories like ours matter. That rawness belongs on shelves. That the grief, rage, survival, and sacred struggle deserve to be read.
And if you’re in the area, come be part of the launch. We’re gathering in Erie, Pennsylvania, to celebrate not just the book, but the people who made it possible to write at all.
Werner Books, 3508 Liberty St, Erie, PA 16508
Thursday, July 17th at 5:30 PM EDT
We’ll have a reading, time to connect, and space to breathe together. No need to dress up or be anything other than exactly who you are. Bring your heart. Bring your story. Come as you are.
RSVP or share the event on Facebook
We made it this far. That’s worth celebrating.
Kiera Gerety 
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