Growing Pains and Paper Planes

Before You Read

This book is a collection of truths, some soft, some sharp, and some still bleeding at the edges. Growing Pains and Paper Planes is not a neat story. It’s a messy, honest unfolding of what it means to grow up while carrying weight you can’t always name. It speaks to depression and self-harm, to the quiet corners of pain and the loud echoes of memory. It leans into family,  in all its love and ache , and the complicated beauty of remembering.

You’ll find no easy answers here. What you will find is a voice trying to make sense of the dark, trying to forgive the past, and learning, slowly, how to live with it. These pages are not about perfection or resolution. They are about survival. About building paper planes out of the parts of yourself you thought were too broken to hold. And about watching them fly , even if only for a moment.

If you are someone who has ever felt too much, or nothing at all… if you’ve ever wrestled with growing up, or wished you didn’t have to… if you’ve ever looked for pieces of yourself in the people around you , then this book is for you.

Please take care as you read. Some of these pages are heavy. Some might open old wounds or stir something sleeping. Step away if you need to. Breathe when you must. There is no right pace for healing, no single path through grief or growth. This book simply walks alongside you for a little while.

Thank you for being here.

— Jaleeza Tinea Roberts