Eighteen months ago, 39-year-old Ronetta Billy hesitated to take on the deeply personal project of writing her life story. Unpacking her past meant confronting decades of suppressed pain, forcing her to relive traumatic experiences as if they were unfolding on a screen in front of her. But one urgent truth pushed her past her fear: every day she waited, more children in the Caribbean communities she once called home would face the same unspoken harm she survived as a child. After a year and a half of painful excavation, the first volume of her memoir series, *A Plucked White Orchid*, hit shelves in June 2026.