In a letter to her psychiatrist, Anne Sexton wrote that writing was her way of mastering experience. I feel that deeply. Writing, for me, is how I make sense of my life. It is not throwing spaghetti against a wall—it is how I process, question, and ultimately understand what I’ve lived through. My work is grounded in truth, but not the kind of truth that depends on facts lining up perfectly. I am not trying to be a historian. I am trying to be authentic. My responsibility is to the emotional truth of my experiences—the messy, complicated, sometimes uncomfortable reality of what it felt like to be there. I am constantly asking myself: Does this feel true? If it does, I follow it.
That kind of honesty requires courage. It means writing about things that people would rather I soften or silence, especially as a woman. I’ve been told my work is “too angry,” that anger is excessive or one-sided. But my anger is not random or fleeting. It comes from lived experience, from navigating a world shaped by misogyny and inequality. Being told not to write about that anger only reinforces why I must. Writing, for me, is an act of refusal. It is how I claim space, how I push back, how I say: this is real, and it deserves to be heard.
At the same time, I don’t write just to unravel. I write to connect. When I shared my response to criticism publicly, the reaction from other women was immediate and overwhelming. They understood. They had been told the same things, felt the same pressure to shrink themselves. That moment reminded me that what feels personal is often collective. My experiences are not mine alone. When I write honestly about them, I create a bridge between myself and other women who are searching for language to describe their own lives. That connection is everything. It’s what makes the vulnerability worth it.
I believe in the power of writing to transform not just the writer, but the reader. Poetry and memoir allow us to take something heavy and shape it into meaning, even into something beautiful. They give us a way to process pain, to recognize art, to understand each other more deeply. When we encounter someone else’s truth, it can shift our perspective, challenge our assumptions, or even move us to act. My hope is that my work contributes to that kind of transformation, especially in how we understand women’s experiences in this moment in time. Legacy matters to me, but not in an abstract way. I think about the future in very personal terms. I imagine a young woman—maybe my granddaughter—picking up my work one day and seeing herself in it. I want her to know where she comes from. I want her to feel strength, to recognize that she is part of a long line of women who have questioned, resisted, and endured. I want my writing to say: you are not alone, and your voice matters.
My work returns again and again to questions of identity, voice, and resilience. I write about what it means to be a woman navigating power, expectation, and self-definition. I write about the search for who I am, and the process of learning to say it out loud. My personal experiences—and my family’s experiences with marginalization—shape that perspective and fuel my sense of responsibility as a writer. For me, writing is not separate from advocacy. It is one of the ways I participate in it.
Ultimately, my voice is honest, emotional, and unapologetic. I am not interested in making my work more comfortable for others at the expense of truth. I write to reflect reality as I experience it, to connect with others who feel the same, and to leave behind something that matters. My work is a record of this moment, but it is also part of something larger. It is a shared story of women finding their voices and refusing to let them be taken away.
Nickie DeSardo is a poet and essayist whose work explores themes of identity, love, and social justice. Nickie is a Poet & Author Fellowship recipient at Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Nickie’s recent poems appear in Moonstone Arts Center: Betrayed Anthology, Dipity Literary Magazine, The Word’s Faire, and Hairstreak Butterfly Review. Her journalistic work has been published in The Day. Her poems and articles reflect her experiences as a feminist, mother, and advocate for change. In all her work, Nickie blends artistry with purpose. Follow DeSardo on Instagram @ nickiedesardo. You can also sign up for her newsletter at Writing In the Margins | Nickie DeSardo | Substack.
