Held Through The Hurt: When She couldn't Fight. She Was Carried (The Wounds We Carry) Paperback – December 11, 2025

Held Through The Hurt is a powerful and unapologetically raw poetry collection that traces the journey of a young Black girl learning to navigate a world that demanded her strength before she ever had a chance to understand her innocence. Through the voice of “Melinda,” Zola Imani opens the door to a childhood shaped by silence, betrayal, church politics, colorism, and the impossible weight of being a Black daughter in a family and community that expected her to endure more than any child should.From the first page, readers are invited into an intimate, emotional narrative that exposes the hidden wounds so many girls carry—wounds inflicted by the very people who were supposed to protect them. These poems reveal how innocence becomes a battleground when unwanted attention, predatory behavior, and harmful family dynamics attempt to steal a child’s sense of safety. As Melinda grows, her story becomes a testament to survival: surviving inappropriate gazes, surviving the betrayal of her own brother, surviving a mother who chose silence, surviving a church that preached purity while protecting predators, surviving a society that valued her beauty only when it fit Eurocentric standards, and surviving colorism that taught her she wasn’t “pretty enough” unless she resembled someone else.Zola Imani writes with a voice that is sharp, lyrical, and deeply vulnerable. Each chapter explores a different layer of Black girlhood—family trauma, religious hypocrisy, self-image, heartbreak, identity, and the generational patterns that shape how girls learn to move through the world. The poems shift between storytelling, prayer, memory, and reflection, creating a powerful blend of narrative poetry and lived experience. This book does not just speak—it holds its readers through their own hurt and offers the language so many have been searching for.This book is a sanctuary for every woman who has ever felt unheard, invisible, misunderstood, or blamed for her own pain. It speaks to survivors, daughters, church girls, Black women, and anyone who has ever carried trauma in their chest and called it “strength.” Through every verse, Zola Imani reminds readers that healing does not erase the past, but it does reclaim the power stolen by it.Held Through the Hurt is for:• Readers who connect with poetry rooted in truth and survival• Black women reclaiming their stories and their worth• Survivors seeking validation, comfort, and a reminder that they are not alone• Anyone who grew up too fast or learned about danger before joy• Readers who desire a transformative, emotional journey toward wholenessThis collection is more than poetry—it is memory, ministry, reclamation, and rebirth. It is a story of a girl who deserved protection, a teenager who deserved love, and a woman who learned to breathe again. It is a love letter to every Black girl who was ever told to “be strong” when what she truly needed was to be held.If you have ever survived something you couldn’t put into words, if you have ever loved yourself back to life, or if you are still learning how to heal—this book will hold you the way no one held you then. Read more