Once the idea of a A Poem in your Heart was born I spent a lot of time with my own thoughts. I loved the idea but I was scared and excited in equal measure.
How do I go from what feels like a simple idea to the reality of a book appearing in bookshops. As someone who has led massive programmes I knew that if I wrote a programme plan at this stage or put together a risk log it was a non-starter. After all it was just me, no money and a dream.
What could possibly go wrong?
While I had started to write poems I knew that there was a real skill in supporting others to do the same so I needed to find somebody who could help with the creative side and I needed to encourage other women to join me.
I really had no clue where to start, so on the 4 March 2025 I sat down and started sending messages to women I knew. It was a mix of family, friends, colleagues past and present and women who I met over the years that inspired me. In most cases it was a generic message on various social media platforms sharing my dream and asking people if they wanted to get involved. It felt so positive to reach out to people that I hadn’t been in contact with for years. It provided space to reflect on things we had done together, the things we had achieved and the emotions along the way.
I wasn’t sure if anybody would reply, I sat and waited with everything crossed that others would think the dream was something they wanted to be part of. The replies started to come in and it was amazing. They ranged from great feedback and encouragement to when do we start I really want to get involved. While it was what I wanted it felt a bit overwhelming in the early days. I still worry I didn’t reply to everybody. I started a range of conversations, it was so therapeutic to talk to people who I really cared about. I had been hiding away for several months struggling to come to terms with what was happening elsewhere in my life, suddenly there was something bringing me out of hiding. Gradually my spark started to return and I could feel my confidence coming back. Slowly a small group of amazing women were coming together. I was spending time setting up Teams sites, e-mail addresses and domain names – Poem in your Heart was becoming a reality.
In the first e-mail to the group. I shared a short poem:
You listened
You cared
You provided a safe space
You believed in me
I couldn’t find another way to articulate positive impact the replies were having.
One particular reply jumped out as it was from someone who I had worked with when I chaired the NHS Digital Womens Network. My experience with the network had helped me formulate my dream, so it felt really significant that Chloe got in touch. Several e-mails and texts later we arranged to have a Teams call. It was as if we had never stopped working together, we quickly found out new things about each other including a shared love of writing poetry.
If this was a project plan, a key milestone had been reached. Chloe was there to bounce ideas off, share the excitement and help tick things off the to do list so we now had a Facebook and Instagram page.
Among the generic messages there was one very specific message to a friend of my sisters, who also happens to be called Rachel. She is incredibly creative and I thought she might know somebody that could help with the design of workshops to enable women to find their creativity and write poetry. Not only did she know somebody, the person she knew lived in Sheffield, while I wanted the project to have as wide a geographic reach as possible there was something comforting about being able to meet a total stranger for coffee in a location close to home.
Just over 2 weeks after that initial message I was sat in a coffee shop talking to Rosie sharing my dream. Another massive milestone in the non-existent project plan. I immediately felt in safe hands, Rosie’s experience and knowledge was perfect and by a bizarre set of circumstances she’d got a part time job working for a former boss of mine. It felt like the stars were perfectly aligned.
I often look back at all those messages on 4 March 2025 and reflect on the chain of events it created. I had taken some baby steps the concept was starting to toddle, I knew there would be challenges on the way but I was really starting to believe that the day would come when we were celebrating a book launch.
There was now a core team of 3, still not a boring project plan in sight but a set of ideas that we were letting develop naturally. We had a group of women keen to get involved and we knew what other skills we were looking to add. It was time to start making it more public, while it was still a dream, elements of it were now a reality.