Fair warning about this book: there is darkness enseamed in these covers. Throughout history and all over the world, to be woman is about so much more than an assignation at birth and we often pay a heavy price for that assignation.

Womanhood speaks of dreams, fears, and travail. We love, we marry, we fight, we carry–and miscarry.

But womanhood has a bloody side: rape, suicide, death, and stillbirth; climate change, pestilence, famine, and war; betrayal, pain, rage, and grief. Through this illustrated collection of freeform poetry and prose, explore a world of metaphor in a retelling of Biblical themes intertwined with elements of mysticism and Arabian lore; where language echoes those of cultures seemingly disparate: the old English of the Amish and the Arabic of the Levant, both masterclasses of poetic turns of phrase.

This collection unwraps a collision of hemispheres when an Amish woman and an Arab Muslim man unexpectedly cross paths. Past traumas bleed from wounds long thought closed.

Is it possible to heal from so much darkness and blood?Disclaimer: Though this collection was written as an expression of my gender identity and experience, this book is in no way exclusive to those who identify as women nor does it seek to erase the experience of those who do not identify as women but have experienced many of the same challenges. Additionally, even among those who identify as women, each of us has a unique story or path and this collection in no way is intended to invalidate the journey of another.

TRIGGER WARNING: rape, suicide, political and religious subjects, religious trauma, miscarriage, stillbirth. .