For months, Jacklyn Gilmor spent much of her time staring at the same purple walls.
A concussion had left her dealing with nausea, dizziness and an inability to look at a screen. She couldn't work, couldn't do many of the things she once enjoyed and found herself spending much of her time in bed.
But instead of letting that difficult period become the end of her story, Gilmor began turning it into poetry.
The result is "Seasons: A Poetry Anthology of Love, Loss, and Womanhood," which she published in May.
“I don't want to just dwell on the pain,” Gilmor told Barrie360, referencing when she decided to turn her work into a book. “I want to do something with it.”
The book, subtitled brings together writing Gilmor has done since she was 16, organized into four sections representing the seasons of life.
She says the poems reflect how she changed from a teenager into a 28-year-old woman — falling in love, experiencing heartbreak, losing people, gaining new relationships and deepening her faith.
Seasons also comes from a poem of the same name, about being in love.
"It's a little starry-eyed, she said. "It's like 'I want to be with you through the rain and the snow and at the beach and by the campfire', and I I couldn't think of a title for it.
One poem in particular, "Paint," became central to the collection.
Gilmor was inspired by sitting in her room, staring at the purple paint on her walls as she struggled with the effects of her concussion.
At first, the colour represented her sickness and sleepless nights. But by the end of the poem, the purple had taken on a different meaning: the colour of the sky just before dawn.
For Gilmor, it became a symbol of the possibility that there could be light after a difficult period.
“I realized there's maybe light at the end of the tunnel,” she said.
Her Catholic faith also became an important part of that journey.
Gilmor says faith helped her through the isolation and uncertainty of her recovery, and that perspective found its way into the final section of the book.
Some of those poems, she says, feel almost like “love letters to God” — asking for help when she couldn't get through the experience on her own.
But Gilmor says "Seasons" isn't intended to be a specifically Christian book.
"Anybody can read it and hopefully relate to it, but a lot of the poetry in spring — the last section — is pretty faith-related," she said. "I'm saying, 'can you just carry me because I can't get myself through this and I need you to do it for me,' and just realizing that he will. That sense of hope is woven in there."
She says much of the book is about learning to love and appreciate herself as a woman, while encouraging other women to recognize the beauty in their own experiences.
“I want us to lift each other up,” she said.
That message has also helped introduce Gilmor to Barrie's local arts community.
She says a recent book launch event at a Barrie Indigo location brought together family, friends and local poets, giving her a chance to connect with other writers who are drawing on their own experiences.
Gilmor says she's now becoming more involved in the city's arts community and hopes "Seasons" can contribute to that growing connection between local artists.
For Gilmor, seeing her work on a bookstore shelf has made a lifelong dream tangible.
"I used to steal my mom's construction paper and staple it together and write these little stories," she said. "I don't know what they were about, but I always had my eye on publishing something. I feel like if I'm not writing, I'm not living."
Now that her first collection is out in the world, she's already thinking about what comes next.
“I'm always working on something,” she said.
