Built From All of Them
Every story begins long before the first page is written. Mine began at a family table that stretched across generations — a table filled with silence, survival, stubborn hope, and the small heirlooms that outlasted the people who held them.
The collage above is made from photographs of my ancestors. Some I knew. Some I only know through stories. Some I know only through the way their choices shaped the world I was born into. When I look at their faces, I see the same thing I see when I write Jamie Poole: a lineage of quiet strength, complicated relationships, and people doing their best with what they had.
How My Family Became Part of Jamie’s World
I’ve said before that Jamie’s relationship with her father is influenced by mine, not parallel to it. Influence is different from imitation. Influence is the echo — the emotional physics — that travels through generations. My father’s silence, his patience, his way of showing love through action rather than words… those qualities became part of Jamie’s father. Not as biography, but as texture.
The same is true of my grandmothers. One taught me to kneel in the dirt and listen before I acted. The other survived more than she ever spoke aloud. Their resilience shaped me, and because it shaped me, it shaped the universe I built.
Family Heirlooms in the Tarot Deck
When I created the Time Travelers Tarot, I didn’t choose symbols at random. The suit of Cups includes my grandmothers' tea cups — delicate, worn, and full of memory. They aren’t props. They’re continuity. They’re the reminder that every seeker, every reader, every character in Jamie’s multiverse comes from somewhere.
Tarot is a language of inheritance. Stories are, too.
Why This Collage Matters
This collage is more than an image for a blog. It’s the visual thesis of my creative life:
I am built from all of them. The war stories that were never told. The grief written down so someone else could carry it. The patience to crack a stone open just to see what glows inside. The dirt under the fingernails. The refusal to back down. The love letter saved for decades. The silence that meant survival. The survival that meant I could exist.
These are the ingredients of the Jamie Poole universe. Not because the characters are my family — they aren’t — but because the emotional architecture of my lineage taught me how to build worlds.
The Song Behind the Image
The lyrics I wrote for this collage came from the same place. They speak to the inheritance of grief, patience, dirt, and fight — and how those elements become something new in the hands of the next generation. They’re written in Jamie’s voice, but they’re also mine. They’re the bridge between the real world and the fictional one.
A few lines capture the heart of it:
I am the sum of people who all knew each other once… I am built from all of it — the silence and the survival…
The song is a tribute to the people who never knew what I would build from what they carried. The tarot deck, the books, the multiverse — none of it was their intention. But it is their legacy.
Why I Write Jamie Poole
None of my ancestors knew they were contributing to a science‑fiction universe. They were simply trying to get through the day and love who was in front of them. But I took what they gave me — the grief, the patience, the dirt, the fight — and I turned it into something that outlives all of us.
Jamie Poole is not my autobiography. But she is my inheritance.
And this blog, this collage, this song — they’re my way of honouring the people who built me, and the world I built in return.
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