Fran Adell was born in East Baltimore and raised between the streets of Baltimore and Southeast Washington, D.C., where resilience was a necessity, not a choice. A survivor of childhood trauma, profound loss, and heartbreak, she turned to writing as both refuge and rebellion.

Her poetry reflects the unfiltered truth of a life lived through grief, faith, love, and the slow, determined work of self-reclamation. In The Girl Before Me, Fran pulls back the veil on her own journey from the silenced girl she once was to the woman she fought to become. Her work offers hope without sugarcoating, strength without pretense, and beauty that refuses to erase the scars.

In The Girl Before Me, Fran Adell delivers a raw and unflinching collection of poetry that journeys through childhood trauma, loss, love, faith, and the unsteady road to healing. Told in five gripping sections The Breaking, The Reckoning, The Silence The Rising, and The Becoming, these poems speak to every survivor who has fought to reclaim themselves.

For anyone who has survived what should have destroyed them, this is for you.