I became intimately familiar with Whitney Hanson’s poetry recently, thanks to an Instagram reel I was shown by the Algorithm. I IMMEDIATELY pre-ordered her newest poetry book “the love of my life” and it arrived on the evening of its release day, July 7th, 2026. It showed up while I was taking a much needed nap, and soon as I realized it was at my doorstep I dug right into it.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Dagu19yxA1M
By the way, Whitney herself struggled to find copies of her book on release day because it kept selling out! That’s what a massive success this already is! She wanted to sign what copies she could 🙂
Right away in the introduction, I felt it important to share this line:
“Fire is not a joking matter.”
This is relevant as my wife, Emily Slatin, was in fire rescue for two decades. How appropriate a line that is for a poetry collection book about burning everything down, rising from the ashes, and reclaiming your life after rebirth.
“What remains when everything you tied your identity to burns? Even after the worst has passed, recovery takes an indeterminate amount of time.”
I burned my own entire life down about six years ago now. I am only now rising from the ashes. What is left is what is meant to be, and it’s my time to reclaim these things.
From the first poem, “Hi, my name is Whitney,” is something I immediately relate to:
“I’m absolutely certain of almost nothing,
But I am certain of this:
I want to be understood.
More than anything, I want to be understood.”
And that, my friends, is the problem I’ve had for nearly forty years now, wandering through this wilderness we call American civilization, and thus far, only a handful including Emily have ever heard me scream out my truth.
This is from the second poem, “The prime condition for a forest fire is overgrowth.”
“I swept the pieces of my shattered heart
Under the floorboards.
I spent years trying to make my success
Louder than my agony
I stayed up late at night,
Painting over the fractures in my facade.”
And this:
“When we reach a place
where we are forced to fall apart,
we reach the place
we must begin.”
…
The third poem is called “you’re not healing you’re hiding.” Story of my life, thank you, Harry Styles.
“Much of growing up
Is not learning
But unlearning
It is a journey
Not to find who you are
But who you were”
OMG these words. They are such fire.
“…sunlight is a powerful disinfectant.” – “How to tend an invisible wound”
“When you decide to do the excruciating work of healing, of standing toe to toe with your past, it becomes critical that you surround yourself with people who acknowledge and validate the work you are doing.”
“I do not want to be loved for the sake of being loved. I want to be loved because you have traced my scars back to their origins and found something familiar on your way there. I want to be loved because you have turned my heart inside out and sorted through its contents. I want to be loved because your pain recognizes mine, and when our eyes meet I don’t have to wonder if I am being seen.”
“Love me past the surface of my skin or do not love me at all.”
“… You’ll find that mourning is another word for making space.” WOW!
…
From “Perhaps it all comes down to this”
“We all desire two things:
To be authentically ourselves
And to be loved for it.
The problems arise when these two desires
Run perpendicular to each other,
When you are put in circumstances
Where you can have one but not the other.”
“Strictly conditional love
Can be just as damaging as hate”
…
From “A poem for people who intellectualize their feelings:”
“The beauty of being human
is the privilege to mean something to another person
And the burden of being human
Is knowing when to let the meaning lie in the past”
“They say grief is just love with no place to go.”
…
From “Parallel Line”
“Perhaps you will always be my parallel line,
Forever one step and an infinity away…”
…
From “I’m starting to forget you”
“Time may seem merciful,
But don’t be fooled. Time is a thief,
Time is a criminal
Dressed up in a costume of relief”
“I’ve never known how to let anything die / I suppose that is how a person becomes a writer.”
“It’s not so much a gift as it is a disease,
A sickness brought on by grief and rattling keys.
It’s not so much a poem as it is a prayer,
A cry to whoever might be there.”
From “Cocooning”
“When it is time for a new chapter to start
Often your body will know it
Before your mind accepts it”
…
From “Ashes”
“The worst affliction
Is not to live without love.
It is to live without hope”
“I am convinced
Some people come into this world
Carrying a bit of hand-me-down grief”
“When I am feeling
Utterly alone in the world
I write about the moon”
“I imagine everyone has pockets in their heart
Where they store hope for a rainy day
But it seems my pockets
Have holes because hope never seems to stay”
“I have accepted the sporadic
Nature of joy.
She arrives and leaves
As she pleases”
…
“Somewhere in between” describes the purgatory I’ve been in over the past year or so. Almost to a T.
This might be one of the best titles of a poem ever: “Purgatory is the parking lot of a tire repair shop”
From said poem:
“I’m told I should make some friends
But tell me how to make friends
When I am less than half a person
How can I introduce myself
To someone new
When it’s been months since
I’ve met myself”
“My current hobbies include
Ruminating on my past
And trying to excavate my identity
From beneath my grief”
“When I say I feel a deep sadness
Please know that I am not lacking perspective
I am consumed by it”
Story of my life.
“I am convinced it is not ignorance
That makes a person go mad
It is sanity
It is seeing
It is the inability to shut your eyes
When everyone else is sleeping”!
“I exist between my ears
Far more
Than I exist between the earth and sky
There is this beautiful world before me
And I am trapped inside my mind”
“I frequently feel like a moth
Looking for the moon
But only finding the fire”
“It is possible to have empathy
For the voice inside of your head
Without agreeing
With every word that it says”
“I refuse to abandon my darkness
Because it is the only part of me
That greets me with no expectation
It rejects the perfectionist within
And reminds me that real humans
Have skin as thin as paper
And hearts as fragile as dragonfly wings”
“You cannot clean your house
With a broom made of shame.”
…
I love this title: “If we must grow our separate ways”
This poem is absolute fire, and makes Emily and I wish to cease writing ever again. Like seriously, this girl is AMAZING!
“Isolation is driven by fear
Solitude is driven by love”
“I have never been one to move on quickly
I mourn the way the earth does”
“Only after I have withered to nothing
Do I begin to consider possibilities
Like sunlight and persistence”
…
…
“Pain does not vacate
Without finding a new place to live
And if you do not give a new home
It will find one on its own
It will pass to whomever is closest
And spread like a disease”
“But if you begin building homes for your pain
Create art
Write about it
Speak of it”
“Provide it a place to live
Outside of yourself
You will have space
To begin living a new story”
How relevant is that! RIGHT NOW?
“I do not believe all of what I write
But I suppose that is why I write it
Because I want to believe it”
“So today
I write of hope
To make it real”
Now that is some good stuff!
…
“… you will never hate a hurt thing into healing
So instead of pointing fingers
And jabbing knives
What if you approach with empathy?” – pg 122
“To be a poet
It is to make a mirror
Of the entire universe” – pg 127
Omg “My head is filled with dead things”
“My mind is a graveyard
Of unloved ideas, of potential gone to dust
I cannot mourn, as I am the reason
For what they have become.”
…”Today I try something kind.
Today I begin planting gardens
In the graveyard of my mind.”
…
“Scars are arrows that point us to the stories we must tell.” Whitney Hanson
“Doubt is an opportunity for conversation not an admission of defeat.” Whitney Hanson
“ode to the blank page
What a gift it must be to be nothing
To have endless possibilities
To be a story that isn’t yet written
To be intentionally undefined
To begin again
Is to be infinite”
“What a gift it is
To be a person
Who can change”
A god of the Grey. Whitney says. Interesting.
“Once you have focused your energy inward
To heal what is hurting within you
You are able to focus your energy outward
To heal what is hurting around you”
Words to live and love by.
“Some seasons aren’t the solution
They are the redirection”
“Your narrative changes the moment you stop trying to prove yourself and begin using your gifts to contribute something that is desperately needed in the world. You don’t have to be the best, the most successful, the most gifted. There are no qualifications needed for empathy, action, love.”.
I have not been present for myself nearly enough for so long. Something I need to talk about.
“Shame and doubt
Will always distance you from yourself
Curiosity and love
Will always lead you back” pg 163
I am SO BAD about noting page numbers…
“The frustrating thing about losing your confidence is that the only way to gain it back is to prove your insecurity wrong.”
Pg 169
“Perhaps everyone we meet
Is an opportunity
To understand better
Who we want to be
Perhaps knowing yourself
Is a practice of paying attention
To the beauty in others
And becoming it”
Pg 170
Reasonable excuses not to answer an email
I’m sorry I can’t today
I’m busy watching a caterpillar inch
I’m conducting business with the sun
Trading sorrow for relief
…
I made prior commitments
To throw my phone from the balcony
And dance wildly around my room
Pg 175
“… have you ever considered your purpose
is all you do not know?
It is the discovery, the curiosity.
The question marks hanging in the void.
It is to take a million different paths
not to reach a single point.”
Whitney writes about attention as currency. An important reminder. I’m doing a lot better with that these days.
“ we become beautiful creatures
When we allow our beautiful thoughts
To become a responsibility
to act,
to love
to create,
paint the picture.
Your imagination provides
this is why you are here.
The world has enough people who are wanting,
begin planting seeds.”
Pg 181
…
“You can allow yourself to fall
When you know
You will catch yourself at the bottom”
Pg 183
All of pg 190 is worth quoting
“There is magic in late-night talks
There is an entire universe in a person’s eyes.”
Pg 192
“To be loved
Is to see the most monstrous parts of yourself
Reflected in another’s eyes
And resist the urge to run away”
Pg 193
I really love her habits to help you return home. I’ll just snapshot it.
These are so beautiful!
“The greatest act of love
You can offer anyone
Is the work you do
To heal yourself”
Pg 198
…
“If you ask me about love
I might tell you
It is observation
Witnessing another person
Witnessing the world
And falling in love with
The way they do it”
…
“If the greatest sadness is to collapse in on myself
Then the greatest joy is to expand beyond myself
To have so much light within me
That it overflows out of my chest
And onto everything I touch
The love I hold
Cannot be contained”
Pg 203
I’m sending this to Emily because i needed to read this today too.
“When relationships become complicated
Exchange criticism for curiosity
Usually, you find
Beneath it all
There’s a child
Asking to be loved”
Pg 205
“I am writing you poetry at stoplights
Because it simply can’t wait
And i’m thinking what a privilege it is
To have love so insistent inside of me
That I’m hoping the light never turns green”
Pg 219
“So instead of wishing you a love that burns
I wish you love like a river that twists and turns
It changes and flows. It is powerful and free
But a consistently finds its way to the sea
And so like the water
I hope your love is ever growing ever changing
I hope your love is powerful and free
And may always find each other
Like the river finds the sea”
“…you turn my past to liquid between your palms
And you tell me love is sharing the burden
I was never meant to carry it all
And in the very best way
You squeezing me until im small small small”
Pg 221
“You must choose
To love in every tense”
Pg 224
I banned myself from dinner until I finish this book!
“… photos and stories and the small glimpses you catch of yourself in the mirror do nothing to surmount the task of capturing the universe surging within you. You are not an instant. Yoj are an eternity, the gap between now and forever, a color-changing sky.
I’d capture you in a poem, but it isn’t worth the try.”
Pg 226. Wow.
This whole page 227…
“The mistake I made
Was i began calling myself a poet
And I began calling my writing poetry…
The truth is it was never poetry
It was always just words
It was what I had to offer the world…
So if you have something to offer the world…
Make what you like
Make what is honest
Make what you need
Make what is unexpected
But don’t try to be something.”
Pg 227
“I mourn for all the art that is lost
Because we let ourselves forget
That art is the outcome of our expression
Not the other way around.
The goal is not to make music, poetry, art
It is to set something within you free.” 228
You cannot assetize and commodify creative freedom. Seriously fucking capitalist jerkoffs. Fuck off.
“I think we spend too much time being afraid of our own mediocrity.” 228
I adore this woman. May she gain the fame and notoriety of Mary Oliver. Because she had the same impact on me. And that was just due to wild geese!
