There is always a story behind a story. Have you ever struggled with wanting to share your story but also wanting to hold it back in the same breath? Being vulnerable is never easy and the more personal the story, the harder it is to write.
In my new novel, the story that inspired it is one of betrayal, loss, and love. It’s personal. It’s provocative. It’s something I struggled to walk through in my reality. I crafted the novel based on my own experiences this past year where I struggled to cope with circumstances where others hurt me. Their words hurt me. Their actions hurt me. That’s why this novel explores the theme of the weight of our words and our actions whether we want them to have consequences, they will – either good or bad. They linger long after we leave someone’s life or someone leaves ours. It’s the nature of being in relationship with others.
In the novel, love is symbolized most by a red rose – one that Walter brings to Ivy in life and after her death. Its significance was rooted in my personal experiences of how love protects us. Just as a rose has thorns, it keeps things away that come to eat our petals. Love is also beautiful and all surpassing with the right person – coming close to appreciate us in our beauty and giving us space to be vulnerable.
The red rose also represents the duality of love as it has the ability to bring both deep joy but also suffering. The largest struggle I had was if I should write a story that carried so much personal weight. The neglect of purging my emotions and pouring them into my writing took a toll. Only now in the last month as the story has finally started to be put to the page has my heart begun to fully ease.
Ivy’s story is similar to my own, she loves deeply and is betrayed by those she loves. She grapples with unspoken love for Walter which mirrored my own journey as I kept the things I truly felt from the person I loved. Her death symbolized the end of my old self and illustrates how the actions of others deeply affected my perceptions of love and identity. I believe true love is sacrificial. We sacrifice our words at times in pursuit of love for another, as I did in my own life. The world teaches us we should not be silent and we should share how we feel. While at times that is true, we must regard the other person above ourselves and not allow our feelings to disregard their best interest.
True love looks for the best interest of the other even if that best interest is not us at that point in time.
Time is also a theme in a novel as it’s written in present and past periods by alternating chapters. The alternating timelines mirror the duality of love’s joy and pain, converging in a climactic moment that changes all the character’s lives forever. The red rose that Walter continues to bring to Ivy after her death represents how love conquers the grave both in pain and in beauty. It was inspired not only by my personal life but also by Song of Songs 8:6, “Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave.”
With that, my novel explores the idea of it never being too late. We never know how our words, our actions, and our love impact those around us. The same goes for unintentional hurts others inflict upon us and unintentional hurts we inflict upon them. I firmly believe that real love is nuanced, isn’t cookie cutter, and doesn’t play by a set of rules. Even in my faith, there is no recipe for how love specifically looks while it plays out in our lives. Why? Because sin is so pervasive and so unexpected. It ripples out in currents to everything we experience whether we acknowledge it or not. We hurt others and others hurt us at times. That’s why it says “Love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8) – love is that powerful.
My experiences in love deeply impacted my new book because I didn’t know how it would end or how the story would evolve. One of my friends pointed out that I just needed to write it down – and she was right! Because while I started writing it to purge some of my pain, my anger, and my grief, it has evolved into something else entirely. It has ended up being a story that explores how interconnected we all are to one other and how love is the emotion God created to bind us together.
I hope you follow my journey as I continue to pour my heart into my writing – especially this new novel. I hope it encourages you to share your own love story whether it’s of sin, of forgiveness, of grief, or of head over heels love. That’s why love binds us together – it marks us so completely and truly conquers the grave long after those we love leave our lives.