A map usually suggests direction, a way to understand where someone has been and where they might go next. Human experience rarely provides such clear routes. In The Maps We Make, Cherie L. Davis turns poetry into a form of personal cartography, tracing experiences that have shaped her across different stages of life.
The collection moves through seven emotional movements and addresses marriage, childhood trauma, healthcare, intimate relationships, healing, mental health, and the state of human connection. The poems emerged from real days and difficult moments, giving the book a personal voice that remains close to the experiences behind the words.
Where Memory Becomes a Landscape
The opening territory of The Maps We Make is a hospital, where Cherie faces the frightening reality of her husband’s failing heart. Tests and waiting bring uncertainty into a relationship that has provided stability. Suddenly, familiar life feels fragile.
That experience opens a pathway into earlier memories. The poems return to childhood rooms and sexual abuse by an older brother, followed by years of family silence. Cherie gives space to experiences that continued to influence her long after childhood ended.
The collection’s loose ordering reflects the way memories can surface. A present crisis can awaken an older fear. A quiet moment can bring back something buried for years. Each poem stands on its own, yet recurring emotions create connections across the book.
Mature themes appear throughout the collection, and Cherie approaches them from the perspective of someone documenting what she has experienced and how those experiences have stayed with her.
From Hospital Corridors to Private Surrender
Another significant part of the collection grows from Cherie’s years in nursing. Fifteen years in healthcare gave her an intimate view of people during vulnerable moments. The poems touch on short-staffed shifts, emotionally difficult patient encounters, systemic frustrations, and the pressure of repeatedly showing up for others.
Nursing also becomes part of the emotional architecture of the book. Caring for patients requires energy, focus, and responsibility, even when the caregiver is carrying private struggles of her own. The contrast between public responsibility and personal exhaustion runs naturally through this portion of the collection.
Away from the hospital, Cherie explores a different experience of responsibility through consensual submission to a Dominant partner.
In Daddy, kneeling becomes a ritual associated with mental quiet, trust, devotion, and release. The physical act of submission allows outside distractions to recede as Cherie describes giving another person permission to hold the weight for a while.
A Promise of Submission approaches the relationship through commitment and emotional growth. Support, vulnerability, mistakes, perseverance, and shared memories shape the poem. Together, these pieces reveal an intimate part of Cherie’s life and her understanding of surrender as a source of stillness.
Learning to Stay With Herself
Healing occupies an important place in The Maps We Make, although it follows no tidy schedule. Therapy and EMDR become part of the process, alongside psilocybin experiences and writing itself. Pages provide somewhere for memories and feelings to exist when carrying them internally becomes exhausting.
There are signs of growth throughout these later poems. Boundaries become clearer. Self-love gains importance. Joy becomes something Cherie can consciously choose and recognize.
Old shadows still return. Anxiety can appear in the early hours of the morning. Flashbacks can interrupt the present, while depression and persistent thoughts can make the mind feel overwhelmingly loud. The collection allows these recurring struggles to remain part of the story.
Eventually, Cherie looks outward as well. Her attention turns toward mass shootings, screens replacing direct human interaction, strained social bonds, and the ways people can fail one another. These observations extend the collection beyond autobiography and into questions about the environment in which individual lives unfold.
About the Author
Cherie L. Davis is an author and nurse leader whose work explores resilience, identity, healing, leadership, and human experience.
Her memoir, Through the Fire: A Journey of Trauma, Healing, and Self-Discovery, follows survival and the process of reclaiming the self after trauma. Her book Ninety Seconds: What Nursing Taught Me Between Breakdowns and Bad Shifts draws from fifteen years in healthcare, blending compassion, humor, difficult experiences, and lessons gathered through nursing.
Across her books, Cherie writes about experiences people often carry quietly and the meaning that can emerge through reflection.
Following the Lines Forward
The Maps We Make feels like a record of someone examining the roads that formed her while continuing to travel them. Its seven movements connect experiences from childhood, marriage, professional life, intimacy, recovery, and the wider world.
The resulting map contains painful territory alongside trust, connection, self-awareness, and joy. Through poetry, Cherie gives those places names and leaves their lines visible, creating a collection shaped by memory, survival, and the continuing work of understanding one’s own life.
