We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Tyra Curran. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Tyra below.

Hi Tyra, thanks for joining us today. What sort of legacy are you hoping to build. What do you think people will say about you after you are gone, what do you hope to be remembered for?

I hope to build a legacy embedded in servanthood, discipleship, transformation, and understanding- a legacy that honors truth, even when it trembles. I want my work to have cracked open the silence around grief, trauma, love, and healing for survivors and those who are surviving every day. My goal is to offer people mirrors and maps: mirrors to see themselves more clearly, and maps to navigate their way forward. I want my words to outlive me.

I hope people say that I was someone who made them feel safe enough to unravel and strong enough to rebuild. They will say that I helped them name their wounds and gave language to things they thought couldn’t be spoken. Beyond my art, I hope people say that I didn’t just write about healing and growth. That I wielded it and held space in a way that made them feel seen, safe, and sovereign in their journey. I hope to contribute to communities, and conversations surrounding growth and understanding on a generational scale. There is so much work we need to do for our children and our children’s children and I intend to make a great impact to that work.

I want to be remembered for my heart, my honesty, and my willingness to stand in the fire with people- and help them find their way out.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m Tyra Curran- poet, author, speaker, aspiring social worker and therapist, and serial entrepreneur. But more than any title I possess or earn, I consider myself a creative and a vessel for clarity. My creative and professional work is rooted in healing- mine and others’. I write, speak, and serve from a place of deep survival, and everything I do is about offering others a way back to themselves.

I started writing and creating when I was a little girl. Writing was my favorite way to express myself. Throughout my life, I have experienced domestic violence, addiction, and chronic grief through lived experience and serving my community. Poetry became the language I needed before I even understood what healing looked like. It gave me breath. It gave me a voice. It helped me live.

I published my debut poetry collection, “To End Your Reign of Abuse”, in May of 2022 offering a raw and empowering look at reclaiming identity after trauma. In March of 2024, I published my first children’s book, “Things Spring Brings!” that celebrates innocence and curiosity while acknowledging the natural give and take of life through seasonal changes. The lessons we live throughout life occurs in seasons. That’s where transformation is found.

Eventually, the page led to the stage. I began speaking and sharing my work publicly, realizing that my journey resonates with other people who have walked in like-journeys in silence. Beyond public speaking, I am also planning to launch a radio show, titled “Soul & Sound”, which blends music, vulnerability, and reflective conversation. The goal is always the same: to offer people room to feel and the tools to grow. Now, I’m pursuing a career in social work and therapy, not to step away from the art, but to deepen the impact. My work sits at the intersection of creativity and healing.

I’m currently working on a new collection of poetry, “Clarity”, which will be released in the Summer of 2026. It includes 28 poems, each titled with a single word representing a prince or truth I’ve reclaimed. Alongside the book, I’ll be curating an exhibit featuring visual artwork I’ve created to pair with select poems, along with a silent auction and book reading to invite the community into the experience of it all. “Clarity” is a body of healing.

What sets me apart in my ability to hold both the personal and the collective. I don’t speak from theory- I speak from lived truth. I’ve been lost. I’ve been the person who has had to rebuild brick by brick (more than once). And now I walk as a guide for others as a navigator.

If there’s one thing I want people to know about who I am and what I do, is that it’s all rooted in integrity and intention. I don’t create or speak just to be seen- I create to help others see themselves and each other. Whether you read my work, listen to my voice, or sit across from me in a therapy session one day, my hope is that you walk away feeling more grounded, more seen, and more whole than you came.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

One of the most defining chapters of my life began when I lost my mother after her year-long fight with Stage 4 Metastatic breast cancer. Her passing gutted me. She was my safe place, my anchor, and my truest friend. Losing her felt unbearable as I lost myself in domestic abuse, alcohol dependency, and the weight of losing my greatest support as a single mother.

But in the midst of that darkness, I connected with my mother’s burning desire to live. I remembered when the doctors told her that there was nothing more they could do to treat her. When they told her she only had a couple weeks to live and to let go- she held on. She demanded more treatment. She demanded that she live. Remembering my mother’s resilience instilled the same in me, and God’s light, strength, and grace allowed me to keep moving. I held grief in one hand and purpose in the other.

Every step forward came at a cost- but it was also an act of defiance. I refuse to let what I’ve been through and what I was going through to defile who I am. While continuing to work full time, I published my children’s book while I was in the thick of it. I returned to college just weeks after surviving the abuse and developed healthy coping skills that allowed me to live sober and present. I held grief in one hand and purpose in the other.

That part of my journey didn’t just show me how resilient I am- it became the foundation of the work I do now. I carry that story into everything I create. It reminds me that healing is messy, nonlinear, and sacred. It reminds me that surviving is not the end goal- becoming is.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

I think many non-creatives struggle to understand that for some of us, creativity isn’t just a hobby or a talent- its our lifeline. I don’t create because it’s cute or cathartic. I create because I have to. Writing saved my life. Its given me shape to my grief, my rage, my confusion. Its given voice to the parts of me that were silenced in trauma.

What people don’t always see is the emotional labor that goes into telling the truth, especially when your art is rooted in survival. It’s one thing to perform or publish- its another to relive. To wrestle with memory. To pull language out of pain and make something beautiful from it. That takes a cost that doesn’t always show up on the surface.

But the beauty of it, the thing I wish everyone could feel, is the freedom that comes when you tell your story on your own terms. When you reclaim your voice. When you look at your own truth, not with shame, but with reverence.

My journey as a creative is really a journey back to my true self. And for anyone who doesn’t see themselves as a creative, I’d still invite you to explore your own form of expression- because we all need a place to put our truth. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be you. There’s nothing more powerful than standing in your own truth and offering it as light for others. That’s what creativity is for me: not performance, but presence. And if I could leave anyone with one message, it would be this-

You are who you say you are. No one gets to write your story but you.

Contact Info:

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/herwiththewords/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyra-curran-929182133
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@herwiththewords
• Other: Tiktok- @herwiththewords