About Bright Raven Press and My Need for Autonomy
I’ve written about the book I am launching in July, but not about the publishing process that sits behind it. This is about as neurodivergent as I can get! The drive for autonomy and having complete creative freedom with my works.
Bright Raven Press wasn't just a practical decision about distribution and royalties. It was an act of complete autonomy. As a neurodivergent woman who has spent a lifetime navigating systems that weren't built for her, deciding that this one thing - my creative work, my voice, my vision - would be entirely on my own terms was fundamental. No agent to wait on. No publisher to water it down. No marketing department to tell me the music angle is too niche or the books are too short. No one deciding when it comes out, what it looks like, or who it's for.
I want these books to represent the hidden, the invisible, the silenced. Each story shares a part of the neurodivergent and chronically ill. All from different perspectives and each of them stifled in their own way. Little Bird is about the forgotten sibling and the mislabelled. Distant Sky is about the secret world our minds weave in trauma. Under the Willows shares the silent struggle of neurodivergent men. Each has a place.
Three Novellas and a Fund
These books almost wrote themselves. They have a visual identity, and a mission. And not only that, proceeds from these books will go straight back to the people that need it. I’m creating a fund for young people so they, too, can access a safe therapeutic space.
I’ve doubted myself so often over the years. And so many women I work with doubt themselves, too. We are so often told we’re too loud, too quiet, too much, too ill, too tired, too unpredictable.
But this is what it looks like when a neurodivergent brain is finally given permission to work with its own nature rather than against it. The hyperfocus, the pattern recognition, the ability to hold ten threads simultaneously, the refusal to do things the conventional way - all of it in service of something real. I see it every day in my therapy space, with all the incredible women I work with. You are all amazing.
My Story - Your Story
A neurodivergent woman, tired of waiting for permission, builds her own publishing house.
That single statement connects everything - the books, the fund, the therapy practice, the autonomy, the music, the dancing - into a single coherent narrative. It is about me. It is about you. It is about every single neurodivergent person who doubts themselves and their way of doing life. When we give ourselves permission to do it our way, we do amazing things. It just might not look like what society says it should. Or how our parents saw it. Or that neurotypical teacher or specialist we saw that time who said we were broken and unwell.
Because this is not just my story. It's the story of every neurodivergent woman who was told she was too much, too scattered, too intense, not focused enough, burning out, difficult. Bright Raven Press, Little Bird, Distant Sky, Under the Willows, (not) Broken is for everyone woman, child, husband, mother, father, grandparent, teacher, and specialist who eventually stopped trying to fit the mould and just built something of their own instead.
Little Bird is about a girl whose wings were never broken, just misunderstood. Bright Raven Press is me proving that's true. None of us were ever broken. We were just waiting for the right conditions to fly.
If you’d like to hear about future events, be the first to know when my books release, and get beautiful, curated somatic practices sent to your inbox each week, sign up below. You’ll also get a free copy of my companion poem to Little Bird.
