Takira Q. Charles was born and raised on the beautiful island of Sint Maarten. She migrated to the Netherlands at the age of 19 to pursue a teaching career. She was an educator for over eight years and a student anxiety coach for two years before deciding to become a writer. She currently resides in Canada, where she lives with her 3-year-old son and husband of 5 years.

The author shares that she is the mother of two children, regardless. Her second pregnancy ended too soon, at 22 weeks. She got to hold her daughter, Grace, for a short moment before she died. She describes her experience as truly traumatic, forever changing how she perceived herself as a woman and mother. Heartbroken, she often wondered if she would ever recover from such a loss. Like many women, the author suffered in silence with feelings of guilt and shame. She experienced panic attacks, severe anxiety, depression, and insomnia after the loss.

"For months I felt like I had been broken up into tiny pieces and scattered, parts of me hidden, never to fully grasp the core of my identity again. It has taken me a long time to retrieve all the broken pieces. Writing helped me do that."

Her first book is Magnificent to hold, a short collection of touching pregnancy loss and infant loss poems. The self-published author wrote the collection while grieving the loss of her baby girl. Besides speaking with a psychologist, the author believes that the moment she started writing again, she gave priority to what she was feeling and was able to structure the confusion within.

The author decided to publish her poems after the realization of the lack of dialogue and stigmatization of such a common occurrence of pregnancy loss, miscarriage, and infant loss. As an Afro-Caribbean woman and Christian, she was confronted with the taboo of pregnancy loss and mental health, and the lack of dialogue proved frustrating.

"In society, in some religious settings, and some cultures, we do not like to talk about the ugly, painful and tragic things and so we suffer alone in silence. It felt as though this horrible thing had happened to us, but most people my husband and I knew didn't talk about it."

Knowing firsthand how traumatic and isolating the experience can be for bereaved parents, her purpose was twofold. With her book, she wants to generate greater empathy for those who have experienced pregnancy loss, infant loss, or miscarriage. In addition, she wanted bereaved parents and especially mothers to know that the journey of healing is tough but not impossible.

“They owe it to themselves to take as much time to grieve in the ways they need to grieve. No one should dictate to them how to grieve and for how long they should grieve."

The author intentionally writes about the ugly emotions and the unexpressed guilt in her poems. In the chapters, In the Missing and Longing, in the Unravelling, in the Resentment, in the Upward Climb, she gives a glimpse into some of the unspoken emotions of grief after the loss of a baby.

Since publishing Magnificent to Hold, she has also joined different pregnancy loss and infant loss groups and platforms where she tries to be of support to other mothers who have experienced the loss of a baby. She shares her story, letting grieving mothers know that they are not alone.

The experience reinforced her love for writing inspirational content and the author is also an active blogger who writes about an array of topics dealing with womanhood, loss, and parenting on her website https://takiraqcharles.com/.  She is also working on motivational Christian books, several children's books and a young-adult fiction novel.

"I hope that I can help others know it is okay to speak their truth and to feel comforted during difficult experiences of what I call the unfair unpredictability of life."