How to Mend a Broken Soul

I was born on the North Wales coast, where the wind never really rests and the sea is never silent. My mother used to say the ocean told stories if you listened closely enough. I believed her. I still do.

My name is Nieve Eirlys. My mother chose my name. She liked to think it meant I would grow into something delicate but persistent. I’m not sure about delicate, but I’ve always been persistent.

I grew up in a cottage overlooking the Irish Sea. My father was a fisherman, gone most mornings before I woke, and my mother filled the house with books to make up for the quiet. I read everything I could get my hands on, but I always returned to romance. I was drawn to the ache of it, the longing, the before of.

I wrote my own stories in battered notebooks. Tragic, dramatic things where people loved each other fiercely but rarely at the right time.

I’ve always been a hopeless romantic. It’s not just something I say—it’s something that has shaped every part of me. I fell in love too easily growing up. A glance, a kind word, a shared moment—it was enough for me to build entire futures in my head. Most of those futures never happened. That used to devastate me. Now, I think of it as training.

When I went to university to study English literature, I told myself I would be more realistic. I wasn’t. If anything, I got worse. I fell hard, properly hard, for the first time. When it ended, it felt like something fundamental in me had cracked. Not broken, exactly. Just… shifted. I didn’t know if I had loved him, or if I had loved the idea of being in love with him.

That was when I left.

Portugal wasn’t part of some grand plan. I came, mostly because staying there felt unbearable. And somehow, that decision changed everything.

Portugal is softer than Wales. The light lingers. The air smells like salt and oranges, and people speak in a way that feels like music even when I don’t understand every word. I rented a small apartment with a balcony and got a pay-the-bills job. At night, I write.

Really write.

For the first time, I am not scribbling fragments or chasing unfinished ideas. I sat down and told a full story. It is still about love, of course. But it was different, too. Quieter. Truer. I think I finally understood that love isn’t just intensity. It’s patience. It’s presence. It’s choosing, over and over.

And now, somehow, I’ve published my first book.

It still doesn’t feel entirely real. This thing that used to live in my notebooks, in my head, in my what-ifs, it’s out in the world now, waiting to be discovered.

I’m still a hopeless romantic. I still believe in chance meetings and life-altering love. But I don’t feel like I’m chasing it anymore. Writing has given me something steadier, something that doesn’t disappear when a person leaves.

Maybe my love story is still out there, waiting for me in some unexpected corner of the world.

But for now, this life, my writing, this quiet apartment in Portugal, are enough.