In I Thought It Was Normal, poet Layla Schock peels back the quiet layers of life’s hardest seasons — addiction, illness, estrangement, and loss — to reveal something astonishing beneath: hope that refuses to die.

With poems that move between whispered prayers and grocery store laughter, Schock captures what it means to keep living when your heart has forgotten how. Her words hold space for the messy, holy ordinary — burnt coffee, late-night grief, soft miracles — and remind us that even broken things can shine.

This is not a story of defeat. It’s a love letter to resilience — to mothers and daughters, to women rebuilding their faith, to anyone who has ever held their pain up to the light and dared to call it beautiful.