Every turquoise stone begins as weathered earth. It is not despite the chaos it was born from, but because of it, that every turquoise becomes uniquely its own - marked by the very forces that shaped it, creating beauty in unpredictable forms.
Weathered Turquoise is a debut poetry collection from Sharen J. Sitzes - writer, suicide loss survivor, recovery warrior, and holder of a Bachelor of Science in General Psychology - exploring the terrain between trauma and transformation through 153 original poems. Drawing from lived experience that spans a childhood inside an international religious cult, the wilderness of recovery, and the long work of becoming, Sitzes writes with the precision of someone who has had to understand human behavior in order to survive it.
These poems do not ask for your sympathy. They ask for your honesty. Raw, lyrical, and psychologically attuned, they move through grief, identity, love, loss, nature, the body, and the quiet moments where healing actually happens - not in dramatic gestures but in small, daily acts of choosing yourself. Each poem is followed by a Perceptions page - a space for you, the reader, to sit with what the poem stirred and write your own truth in response. This is not just a book to be read. It is a book to be lived in.
For readers of Mary Oliver, Rupi Kaur, and Andrea Gibson. For anyone who has ever felt too much, endured too long, or wondered whether the broken parts of them could ever become something worth keeping - this book was written for you.