Last year on Valentine’s Day my book came out. I could have chosen any day to publish Things I Have Loved but in reality only this day made sense to me.
Not because the book is about a breakup and all the ways I didn't love myself but because to me it is a manifest to self-love, to defiance and a roadmap towards radical self-worth. “To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect.”, wrote Joan Didion in her landmark Vogue essay from 1961. And writing this book felt exactly like that, like giving myself back to me.
Since then it’s been such a wild ride from book launches in Edinburgh and Berlin to being stocked in the most lovely independent bookshops all over the world and now writing on my third book – to conclude the trilogy of my poetic memoirs, I can’t wait to share it with you someday – it only seems fitting to celebrate this year by publishing one of my favourite pieces from the book.
Something I r…