Unladylike: A Mythopoetic Reclamation of Love is a lyrical collection of poetry and prose exploring love, survival, embodiment, and the journey of returning to the self. Blending literary poetry with personal reflection, Regina Louise examines relationships, identity, trauma, healing, and the process of reclaiming one's voice after loss and betrayal.Through intimate poems and essays, Unladylike maps the emotional terrain between heartbreak and self-discovery, inviting readers into a deeply human exploration of resilience, self-love, and personal transformation. Her work speaks to readers interested in emotional healing, spiritual growth, women's voices, and the reclamation of dignity through storytelling and creative expression.
Rooted in mythopoetic inquiry and lived experience, this collection moves through memory, desire, grief, and repair, offering language for those navigating change, recovery, and the search for meaning. Unladylike is both an artistic work and an invitation to witness oneself honestly and to return to what was always there.
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For a Taste of Normal
for anyone who has ever ran away to stay with a boy
You cut clean across Victor Drive,
curved over to Dana,
and climbed that hill zigzag to save your breath.
At the top:
a payphone bolted to the brick wall outside the Circle K.
No frills. Grab-and-go.
The kind of place group home kids and neighborhood kids
snuck into for penny candy, Now and Laters—
aisles stocked with Hostess Twinkies, Big Hunks,
Big Red gum, motor oil, maybe Andy Capp’s Hot Fries.
But today,
your quarter wasn’t for candy.
It was for him.
You remember him.
Teeth even like a straightedge.
You met at the Conservation Corps—
how he’d handled that girl’s sprained leg
and asked for your help,
sealing in what you already knew was true about you.
There was something fine about that boy.
Something steady.
After you both splinted her ankle
and got back to preserving the asphalt roads around Whiskeytown Lake,
he asked if you’d be his girl.
No more time for reverie.
One quarter.
You stood, receiver in hand,
sun bouncing off the chrome-plated keypad.
The coin—
a small key.
Or maybe a prayer.
You’d slipped coins into these mouths before—
phones that never paid out,
calls where you didn’t feel worth the gas it would take
for someone to come get you.
But this number—
this one had been slipped to you in secret.
Passed quietly,
beneath the gaze of the driver
who came to collect the girls
at the end of the day.
You memorized it like a secret agent—
digits snapped into place
in the back pocket of your brain,
as if disbelief might obliterate them.
As though you were sliding
a love note beneath God’s door,
you dropped that quarter in the slot.
Any minute now,
that white county van could roar up the hill
and crank you back into panic.
“Hello—”
He came for you.
Borrowed his brother’s Oldsmobile Toronado.
You jumped in. Buckled up.
The two of you drove
in the easy quiet of perchance.
You almost beat him at Pay Day.
You laughed—really laughed—
orange, green, yellow paper money
tossed like confetti.
You shuffled cards for Spades.
He didn’t know the rules.
You never told him
you were gifted at splitting a moment of gratitude
into hundreds, down to the nth degree—
like others split hairs for confusion’s sake.
That you lived
in a residential treatment center
for severely emotionally disturbed girls,
but that you had never felt anything severely
except the absence of love
from the woman who once wanted to adopt you,
and the real mother who tried—God knows she tried—
and the need,
so old,
to be touched.
The Jiffy Pop blew your mind.
You watched it untwirl,
foil crackling and ballooning
like magic over flame
as he scraped the bottom of the pan across the burner.
You knew there was a God.
The popcorn popped.
The telephone rang.
And the look on his face
told you everything you needed to know.
The county van driver had found you.
On their way.
You held his hand
like your palms were lungs,
breathing someone alive.
You drank from that moment
like ladled water from a sacred well.
And your lips—
parched from anticipation—
touched his sideways
until you both leaned in
like pinky promises
hellbent on finding one another in the next life.
It was worth every red mark
you earned on that daily behavior chart.
It no longer mattered
that they thought you were “unredeemable.”
Anyway.
I want to know who died and left them the boss of counterfeit holiness?
Regina Louise is a poet, writer, teacher, speaker, executive coach, whose work explores the intersection of memory, belonging, identity, and emotional liberation. The author of three books—two of which have been adapted for film: Somebody’s Someone, Someone Has Led This Child to Believe and Permission Granted: Kick Ass Strategies to Bootstrap your Way to Unconditional Self-Love—she has spent more than three decades helping people transform adversity into authorship through story, self-inquiry, and radical compassion.A senior teacher with the Hoffman Process, Regina is known for guiding profound conversations about restoring dignity, resilience, attachment, and the art of becoming fully oneself. Whether on stage, in classrooms, behind a microphone, or in intimate workshop settings, she invites audiences to reimagine the stories that have shaped their lives and discover the freedom that awaits beyond them.
Her forthcoming collection, Unladylike: A Mythopoetic Reclamation of Love (September 2026), marks her debut poetry collection. Blending poetry, lyrical prose, and aphoristic reflections, it is a fearless meditation on love, loss, self-possession, and the sacred work of returning home to oneself.
Regina Louise lives in California, where she continues to write, teach, and create work that honors the transformative power of language to restore dignity, deepen connection, and reclaim what has always belonged to us.
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