Finding purpose in the pain

But eventually, I found myself carrying a pain I could not hand to anyone else.
After a painful and abusive religious experience left me feeling bare, hopeless, and disconnected from myself to the point that I was unable to write, I had to confront a question I had never really considered before

What do you do when you are the one who needs somewhere to put the pain?

So I started writing again.

At first, it was private. Pages filled with thoughts I didn't know how to say out loud. Then slowly, I began sharing some of those words publicly. Journaling gave me somewhere to place what I had been carrying. Poetry gave language to feelings I didn't yet know how to name. Prose helped me make sense of what had happened.
And somewhere between the pages, I began finding my way back to myself.

What began as a way of processing pain eventually became my first essay on Substack and later, my first poetry collection.

Build to Bloom was reborn from that same belief, that writing can be more than something we create. Sometimes, it can be somewhere we go to meet ourselves again.

Here, I explore poetry, prose, journaling, and the messy, beautiful work of being human. Not because writing can erase what happened to us, but because sometimes putting words around an experience makes it easier to hold.
If you're carrying something you don't yet have the words for, perhaps you'll find some of them here.

Official Bio

Itunu Taiwo is a writer, poet, and educator whose work explores love, identity, healing, memory, and the multilayered work of finding one's way back to oneself. She is the author of The Garden Is You, a poetry collection about love, heartbreak, healing, self-discovery, and becoming.

Her fiction and creative work have appeared in publications including Kalahari Review and The Shallow Tales Review, and her writing has been recognized by the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and the BookGo Flash Fiction Literary Contest.

She is the founder of Build to Bloom, a digital space exploring writing, reflection, and the messy, beautiful work of being human. Through poetry, prose, and journaling, she creates space for readers to slow down, make sense of their experiences, and find language for the things they carry. Her writing is also shaped by her experiences of migration and return, and her newsletter, Between Two Homes, reflects on belonging, identity, and the experience of living between places.

Alongside her writing, Itunu has taught thousands of students from around the world and brings her love of language and storytelling into her work as an educator. She alternates between Lagos Nigeria and Toronto, Canada.