What if healing isn’t about getting better — but about learning to live gently with what remains?

In her luminous follow-up to I Thought It Was Normal, poet Layla Schock returns with a collection that gently unfolds the truth about recovery — that healing isn’t a destination, but a reckoning.

These poems live in the tender space between what we survive and what we become. They speak to the quiet aftermath — the mornings when the body remembers, the laughter that arrives uninvited, the faith rebuilt from ordinary grace.

With her signature blend of raw honesty and lyrical warmth, Schock explores how healing can ache, how joy can feel foreign, and how love — even self-love — can be the bravest thing we choose again and again.

I Thought It Was Healing is not about being unbroken. It’s about learning to live beautifully with the cracks — and finding light that feels like peace.