My name is Shauna Shepherd.

I am the curator of Mary's Child Writes.

I have always loved creative writing but

for some reason or another I stopped.

I did not start writing again out of joy.

I started writing because there were

things I could not carry anymore.

My mothers' death was my breaking point.

My mother was the first place I learned

what it meant to be strong.

Not the kind of strength people admire

The kind that learns how to hold everything

without asking to be held.

The kind that becomes dependable

before it becomes understood.

When she returned to the earth,

the world did not stop.

There were still things to manage.

Still people to be there for.

Still a life that expected me to continue

as if nothing had shifted.

But something had.

The place I came from was gone.

And I did not yet know

how to come back to myself without her.

Writing became the place

where I could finally set things down.

Not to forget them

But to understand what they had made of me.

Line by line,

I began to see a woman

who had learned survival so well

she had never been taught how to live softly.

Mary’s Child Writes is not just a name.

It is a continuation.

It is what remains

when love does not leave with the body.

It is what grows

when grief is given somewhere to go.

Every word I write

carries the imprint of where I come from

and the quiet work of becoming

someone new.

If you have ever been the one

everyone could rely on…

If you have ever had to keep going

when something inside of you needed to stop…

If you are learning how to return to yourself

after being what everyone else needed

You are not outside of this story.

You are part of it.

This house was built in memory of my mother.

But it stands

for every woman

learning how to live

after holding everything together for too long.