It started as a grief journal.
When Valerie Norment Bruce lost her best friend unexpectedly in 2023, she started writing. A year later, she published her first book of poetry, “Don’t Give Away the End.” This year, she published her second book, “Wildly Undone.”
Bruce, who moved to St. Charles Parish in 2014, said that, after her friend’s death, she began to look back on her childhood trauma.
“His death cracked open everything I had been holding together for 35 years before that,” she said. “Because long before him, there was the girl who was raped and whose family did the right thing legally (the perpetrator went to prison and was released in April), but then did what so many families do: we avoided the topic.”
Bruce said she grew up in a house where pain was swept under the rug. She learned, as a young girl, to carry everyone’s secrets. She now understands how heavy that was, she said. But she knows now she is not alone.
“So many of us are reaching our late 30s and finally realizing we’re allowed to question the things we were taught to carry quietly,” she said. “Between 35 [years old] and now, at 37, I’ve spoken more truths out loud than I had in my entire life before.”
Bruce said in her first book she was finding her voice and questioning if she was brave enough to share it. Her second book doesn’t hold back, she said.
“‘Wildly Undone’ says the quiet parts,” she said. “It doesn’t care if it makes anyone uncomfortable. It’s the book I couldn’t have written the first time around because I was not ready yet.”
Writing felt like getting the truth out of her system, she said.
“It was like everything I’d been avoiding finally showed up and refused to leave quietly,” Bruce said. “My feelings, my raw emotions, all of it. So, the only way out was through.”
And now that it’s published?
“It felt like handing strangers my diary and saying, ‘Have fun with that,’” Bruce said. “I learned from my first book of poetry that the stuff you nearly hide is usually the stuff someone else needs to hear.”
Bruce said she hopes readers feel less alone after reading the poetry collection.
“I hope they see that you can fall apart and come back together as many times as you need,” she said. “Sometimes, healing just looks like surviving the day and trying again tomorrow, and that is completely okay. Even the darkest chapters have sentences worth underlining.”
The collection explores being “undone” and then rising “softer but stronger.” For Bruce, this meant finally letting herself feel the heartbreak and grief she had avoided.
“I stopped rushing to move on and let the pieces sit where they fell until I could see them clearly,” she said. “That’s where the softness came from: realizing you don’t have to rebuild into who you were before, that giving yourself the grace to exist as you are is its own kind of strength.”
Her advice to other writers is to write first and worry about publishing later.
“Don’t overthink the publishing part before you even have words on the page,” she said. “My first book started in a journal. I wasn’t worried about structure, format, or whether it was good enough. I just wrote.”
Bruce published both books through BookLeaf Publishing, which awarded “Wildly Undone” with the 21st Century Emily Dickinson Award. The recognition is given to authors who win BookLeaf’s writing challenges.
“Publishing felt overwhelming until I realized there isn’t one right way to do it,” Bruce said. “Get the words out first. Finding the right publisher can be figured out with Google, coffee, and maybe a mild breakdown or two.”
Bruce said the support she received from the parish community amazed her.
“St. Charles Parish will rally around its own small businesses, musicians, artists, writers, you name it,” she said. “If you can dream it up, they’ll cheer you on. We’re lucky to have that kind of community.”
Bruce’s next collection “What Was Ours” is set for an early 2026 release. She is also working on a novel.
“It feels like the right time to tell the story on a bigger scale,” she said. “The poetry cracked the door open.”
