The Book Description
The Ballerina on Stilettos is a poetry collection about eldest daughters; the girls who learned to be responsible, fiercely independent, high-achieving, dependable, and self-sacrificing long before they learned how to understand themselves. It is about the idea of “silent inheritance”: what these daughters carry for their families, the things they become good at hiding, and the exhaustion that comes from always trying to be the good daughter.
Through poems about lost childhood, traditions, unquestioned obedience, people-pleasing, ambition, anger, grief, and healing, the collection explores what happens when a woman finally begins to ask what carrying everything on her own has cost her. It is also about the complicated truth of loving her family while feeling hurt by them, and learning that she can need distance, have boundaries, and still love the people she comes from.
More than anything, Darshanika hopes these poems give eldest daughters a place to recognise their experiences, feel less alone in what they have carried, and know that they are allowed to want a life of their own.