Tainted Shadows: Forty-One Poems of Anxiety, Panic, Depression and Hope.

by Kendrick Sims

Overcoming the catastrophic effects of anxiety and depression can be difficult. Sometimes, impossible. Yet to survive not by the day but by the minute is a shield that keeps anxious thoughts at bay. For only in the moment does anxiety exist. Only in the here and now does depression drag the soul along for life's lonely ride. Mindfulness, existing in the minute and remembering who you want to be can send rapid thoughts packing. To do this, to accomplish this mighty feat we need a distraction. Something to focus on. Something enjoyable to send the madness away.

Here within these pages are my distractions. My poems. My thoughts as recorded when in an anxiety attack. Edited, of course, for nothing emanating from a panic attack can be coherent. Still, these exist proving that recorded thoughts of panic is possible, and I might add, therapeutic. I offer these poems to you, that perhaps someone out there is in my position. Dealing daily with panic, anxiety and depression. Perhaps these poems will be therapeutic for you as well. I can only hope.

Kendrick Sims
August 2025

87 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 7, 2025