Clues I Left Myself

From the very beginning of pursuing this publishing house, my intuition was loud and clear: Don't publish your sacred writing.At first, my plan was simple. I just wanted to test the waters. I was going to release a softer collection made up of poetry, journal entries, fragments, and scattered pieces that didn't yet have a permanent home. Nothing too polished. Nothing too precious. Just enough to let myself become comfortable with being seen.But a few days before my final release date, everything changed.As I reread the pieces I had originally selected, I realized there was something else hidden inside them—something trying to come together on its own. So instead of releasing the original collection, I pulled from old thoughts, old feelings, old fragments of myself, and wrote something entirely new from them.What emerged was not a collection of scattered writings, but a short novel born from the pieces beneath the pieces.A story I didn't even realize I was carrying until I sat still long enough to hear it.Ironically, this became the last book written, yet the first one released.And honestly? I still don't fully know what I'm doing here—but I knew I had to write something.I've been hoarding my words like hidden secrets of a coven—kept close, protected, whispered only in the quiet spaces of my own mind, waiting for the exact moment they would no longer let me keep them.I'm still standing at the edge of sharing all of it—so this is where I begin.Somewhere along the way, I realized I wasn't just writing.I was observing. Translating. Reshaping.Turning feeling into language.Turning confusion into clarity.Turning moments into meaning. A writer.A poet.An alchemist of thought.An intuitive listener.A quiet seer.A visionary in fragments. Not titles I tried to claim, but ones that found me through the act of paying attention.For a long time, I didn't understand what I was holding. These weren't just thoughts. They were fragments, echoes, signals—arriving before I had the language to explain them.This book became a reconstruction of those signals. A reshaping of old thoughts into something living. A story pulled from the quiet spaces between memory, instinct, awakening, and observation.Some parts are gentle. Some cut straight through. Some contradict themselves—because this is what it looks like to grow, to question, to unravel and rebuild in real time.Every page holds pieces of who I was while becoming who I am.This is a glimpse into my mind during a time when everything was shifting—before I had the words for it, before I could name it, before I even knew I was waking up.And then, after finally publishing it, I went back to preview everything thinking it was perfect… only to realize the formatting was completely botched. Random letters where they shouldn't be. Headers out of place. Little glitches scattered throughout the pages like breadcrumbs I never meant to leave behind.And you know what? I laughed.Because somehow, it felt fitting.Raw. Messy. Unfiltered. Unapologetically human.Botched publishing turned into another alchemical moment for the win. So it is.If something in these pages feels familiar—like you've stood in that same in-between space, like you've heard these thoughts echo somewhere inside you—then maybe these words were never just mine. Maybe they were always meant to find you. Sending giant heart hugs, love, and strength along your journey.—Samantha J. Hughes—Yousha[My highest self, also known as Shamelessly Healing]