This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Regina Louise will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner. Click on a tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.
Unladylike: A Mythopoetic Reclamation of Love is a lyrical collection of poetry and prose exploring love, survival, embodiment, and the journey of returning to the self. Blending literary poetry with personal reflection, Regina Louise examines relationships, identity, trauma, healing, and the process of reclaiming one's voice after loss and betrayal.
Through intimate poems and essays, Unladylike maps the emotional terrain between heartbreak and self-discovery, inviting readers into a deeply human exploration of resilience, self-love, and personal transformation. Her work speaks to readers interested in emotional healing, spiritual growth, women's voices, and the reclamation of dignity through storytelling and creative expression.
Rooted in mythopoetic inquiry and lived experience, this collection moves through memory, desire, grief, and repair, offering language for those navigating change, recovery, and the search for meaning. Unladylike is both an artistic work and an invitation-to witness oneself honestly and to return to what was always there.
Read an Excerpt
Say Her Name, Yours, and Mine
for Celie, for the girl on the 24 Divisadero, for all of us
Who taught her to bankrupt herself
back into her own disremembering—
to shrink inside the sound of her own name?
But I call her by her name. Celie.
Not by what Mister said.
Not by the nothing she thought she was.
I call her holy.
I recognize her as my own emulate,
mama,
sister,
auntie,
grandmother,
Jezebel,
and Sapphire,
The forgotten-about ones.
Because, like all of them (us),
she wrote letters to a God
she wasn’t sure existed.
Because she kept speaking,
even when no one answered.
Kept showing up,
and up,
and up—
Until that sacred day she stood and said,
“I may be poor, Black, I may even be ugly—
but dear God, I’m here,”
the day every woman who had been erased
stood up inside her.
The day I stood up.
My smallest exiled self—commanding like Moses—
until her spine / mine / all our spines
reached a Heaven of our own creating.
Miss Celie
touched her own face,
and I touched mine
on the 24 Divisadero bus heading away from Haight,
and we found ourselves beautiful.
About the Author:
Regina Louise is a poet, writer, teacher, speaker, executive coach, whose work explores the intersection of memory, belonging, identity, and emotional liberation. The author of three books—two of which have been adapted for film: Somebody’s Someone, Someone Has Led This Child to Believe and Permission Granted: Kick Ass Strategies to Bootstrap your Way to Unconditional Self-Love—she has spent more than three decades helping people transform adversity into authorship through story, self-inquiry, and radical compassion.
A senior teacher with the Hoffman Process, Regina is known for guiding profound conversations about restoring dignity, resilience, attachment, and the art of becoming fully oneself. Whether on stage, in classrooms, behind a microphone, or in intimate workshop settings, she invites audiences to reimagine the stories that have shaped their lives and discover the freedom that awaits beyond them.
Her forthcoming collection, Unladylike: A Mythopoetic Reclamation of Love (September 2026), marks her debut poetry collection. Blending poetry, lyrical prose, and aphoristic reflections, it is a fearless meditation on love, loss, self-possession, and the sacred work of returning home to oneself.
Regina Louise lives in California, where she continues to write, teach, and create work that honors the transformative power of language to restore dignity, deepen connection, and reclaim what has always belonged to us.
Website: http://www.therealreginalouise.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therealreginalouise
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/regina.louise.5/
Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/p/books/unladylike-a-mythopoetic-reclamation-of-love-regina-louise/b4379cc65cf1293b
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B001IQXN7M
