Launch July 2026
Ferocious Women: Poetry on Strength, Healing and Finding Your Voice
These poems were written across years of movement; between countries, cities, seasons of life, and the many conversations that quietly shaped me. Some began on aeroplanes over unfamiliar landscapes, others in apartments filled with laughter, in airports and gardens, beside seas, or during meanders through streets that slowly became home.
Living overseas has given me the gift of seeing life through more than one lens. Different languages, customs, and ways of living have deepened my understanding of belonging, distance, identity, and connection. Travel has taught me that although places may differ greatly, human feeling rarely does.
At the heart of this collection are the women whose friendships, wisdom, resilience, humour, and honesty have influenced my thinking over the years. Women of different ages and cultures: mothers and daughters, old friends and chance acquaintances have left their imprint on these pages. Through shared stories, quiet encouragement, sometimes disagreement, kindness, and courage, they have widened my perspective and enriched my life in ways both subtle and profound.
These poems do not attempt to offer conclusions. Rather, they are reflections: moments gathered from journeys outward and inward. They speak of memory and change, of place and displacement, of friendship, womanhood, loss, discovery, and the small details that connect us across borders and generations.
If these poems invite you, my reader, to pause, remember, question, or feel less alone in your own journey, then they have found their purpose.
Poetry for Ferocious Women… Coming Soon!
There is nothing quite so sobering as the thought that everything you think you have worked for is attached by the most fragile of threads and can disappear in the blink of an eye.
The Will To Surthrive
Even before the Coronacoaster, I had become aware of the futility of slogging at an education system which I no longer believe has any principles, for a life that I don’t especially relish, so that I can buy useless things that I know I don’t like.
After a great deal of loss, feeling the burnout from teaching, and an existential crisis brought on by my Mother’s death from dementia, I had decided that life is too short to be living anything less than the one of which I am capable. There were seemingly no roadblocks – only my own thoughts and fears.
Then came a shockingly timed loss of my job, along with financial insecurity, and a global pandemic. That’s a motorway pile-up, if ever there was one. No time to wallow…the show must go on! Time to put into action all the lessons I have learned to thrive in the heart of happiness, even amongst the chaos which surrounds us.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Will-Surthrive-Julie-Whitney/dp/B08DSS7PPK
It seems that, at times of great loss, we may also be lost for great words.
Not Lost For Words
One effect of grief is being unable to formulate our thoughts, struggling further to muster up enough coherence to process them. It can be just as hard to express our empathy and sorrow for others – when they go through the same rites of passage – without seeming to make it about our own mourning, suffering and anguish.
But in trying to find the words, we persist with compassion. In trying to find meaning, we may be able to help others.
We are ‘Not Lost for Words!’
Sometimes, despite being mindful and respectful of the needs of someone diagnosed with dementia, it is also painful and hard to bear. Dementia is cruel and unrelenting. But what makes it so much harder is the way words are casually misappropriated.
This collection of poems and anecdotes formulate some shared help, focusing on the way words can be used to empower people living with dementia, to help us to stay positively engaged and to sustain feelings of belonging and self-worth.
“I’ve just finished your book and loved it. Personally, I could relate to a lot of it, especially the being prepared for her death but not prepared for your/my life after it. Even without those shared experiences, I think it offers so much experience and wisdom of how things can be done better. I loved the poems too, especially ‘Dance on the table.'”
Cathy Pennicott
Latansani 