The Gift of Resilience

The author as a child with her great-uncle.

This week, while sorting through a box of my grandmother’s old photographs, I found one that stopped me cold. It was taken years ago—faded, sunlit, and full of quiet tenderness. In it, her brother, my great‑uncle Harlow, kneels in the grass with a small child in front of him. That child is me. Me, just as I picked up that first crayon and began the journey that would lead me to Jamie Poole.  The moment feels cinematic, like a still from a family film that never existed. The image I share here is a restored version of the image. I'll put the original one below.

Harlow was many things. Sailor, hobo, traveler, hermit, philosopher... But if you look at what he left behind, Harlow was a poet first. I’ve written about him before—how his verses spoke of gentleness and grace, even though his life was marked by hardship. He fought in World War II, and though he rarely wrote directly about those experiences, I suspect the few poems that touch on them are veiled truths. Fictionalized, perhaps, but still rooted in memory.

When I look at this photo, I see the same paradox his poetry carried: a man who had seen cruelty yet chose kindness. His work imagined a world softer than the one he knew. That choice—to write toward hope—is its own kind of courage.

It reminds me of how I approach the Jamie Poole universe. My stories aren’t autobiographical, but they hold fragments of truth—echoes of resilience, of learning to face what must be faced. Time traveler? I am not. But Harlow gave me a gift: the ability to keep moving forward, even when the past presses hard.

Every family carries its share of generational trauma. Some inherit the pain; others inherit the strength to endure it. Resilience doesn’t erase scars—it simply refuses to make them the center of the story. That shift, whether conscious or instinctive, is what allows healing to begin.

It’s a theme that runs through Jamie’s world—both in the books and in the Time Travelers Tarot: the courage to do what must be done, to keep faith with the future even when the past feels heavy.

Yes, Jamie Poole is science fiction, but that doesn’t mean it lacks a human edge. Every character carries their own challenges, the weight of circumstance they must process as the story—or the tarot deck—unfolds. A story cannot be told honestly without that human element. It’s what naturally led the Jamie Poole universe to become a tarot deck: both explore the same truth.

We are all seekers. Tarot helps us move through discovery toward understanding, and the books do the same in their own way. When Jamie begins to unravel the mystery surrounding her father’s family—and his refusal to tell her who they are—she will finally understand who the psychopath time traveler truly is.

But it’s not as simple as assuming her father is the man who has manipulated Time. He isn’t. He’s only one piece of a much larger picture, one that will lead Jamie on her own journey of revelation.

Harlow’s poems, his life, and now this photograph—all remind me that optimism isn’t naïve. It’s work. It’s legacy. And it’s love handed down through generations.

If you’d like to explore how these ideas weave through my creative world, visit the Jamie Poole Diaries and the Time Travelers Tarot. They are, in their own way, part of the same inheritance—a story of resilience that keeps finding its way forward. And if you've read this far, use the code JAMIE10 to get a discount on the deck over on Etsy! If you're in Halifax, drop me a line. We can arrange free shipping: info@jamiepoolebooks.com