Home is not defended. It is tended.
If We Chose Repair asked how we name the damage, The Ritual of Living asks how we stay afterward.
This domestic poetry collection moves from fracture to practice — from survival to devotion in the ordinary.
In these pages, M. Rowan Nowak offers literary poetry about marriage, long-term love, and emotional maturity — not as fantasy, but as daily tending. This is contemporary poetry about staying. About choosing the room instead of the exit. About apology as ritual. About softness that is earned.
Through reflective women’s poetry grounded in lived experience, The Ritual of Living explores:
• poems about infertility grief
• poetry about PCOS and endometriosis
• sobriety as spiritual practice
• poems about adult friendship and learning to let people stay
• modern relationship poetry shaped by repair rather than performance
• seasonal depression and returning light
This is an infertility awareness poetry book that speaks honestly about the body — including the quiet ache of monthly hope and the grief of being mistaken for something you are not carrying.
It is also embodied healing poetry: attentive to breath, to ritual, to the small acts that build a life after harm.
There are no grand declarations here. This is not a book of dramatic breakthroughs.
Only repetition.
Tea instead of alcohol.
Hands in the soil.
Music in the kitchen.
Marriage watered daily.
Rooted in emotional clarity and restraint, this contemporary poetry collection is for readers who have outgrown spectacle and are learning to live with intention.
The Ritual of Living is not a book about becoming someone new.
It is a book about remaining — gently, imperfectly — and calling that enough.
Perfect for readers of literary domestic poetry, reflective works on recovery, and modern poetry about love, grief, and devotion in the sacred ordinary.