<p>Reading <strong>A True Soul</strong> is like having open-heart surgery on Christmas morning. It's a hug when you're bleeding. It's laughing at the accident on the side of the road. Helena Borden's poems are at once dark but inspirational, deeply sad yet bright and hopeful.</p><p>Everyone has times of despair, of fear, of self-doubt, interspersed with moments of joy, courage, and contentment. It is evident that Helena has had countless of all of those. She has obviously lived and encountered more in her young life than many people twice her age. But she manages to collect all the complex and variable emotions, memories, and struggles-like a box of old trinkets gathered from all corners of the globe, each one with a story-and convert them into pages of words that feel and motivate and comprehend and comfort.</p><p>In Helena's poems, there is pain and loneliness and despair. But there is also love and friendship and spirituality. There are all of the things that will remind you that sunflowers grow even amidst the poison ivy. This insightful book shows us that there is good floating in the sea of ugly, if we only keep the faith.</p>