Stitched With Promise- Poems of Faith, Love and Becoming took Patricia Lorraine Scholtz back to her younger days. To moments when words first became a refuge and imagination was shaped by stories, faith and family. 

The collection, she described, was deeply rooted in memory with each poem returning her to a specific feeling, season or turning point in her life.

Raised in Bishop Lavis and currently living in Kuilsriver, Scholtz said she had been writing since childhood. 

She remembered growing up in a home where language mattered, shaped by parents who loved words and storytelling. With no television in the house, evenings were spent around the radio, listening to stories that sparked her imagination. She also remembered opening her first library card at the Bishop Lavis Library, calling herself a lifelong “nerd for words”.

“I’ve written my whole life, but never with the aim of having a book,” Scholtz said. 

“I always put my thoughts, feelings and emotions on the page. When you engage with people, you can become detached, so writing became my safe space.”

Reflecting on her work, she described how revisiting her poems took her back to specific moments and emotions. 

“For me it’s about why I wrote something and what I was feeling at the time. When I read my poems now, it takes me right back to that moment and that feeling,” she said.

She is married to Edward Scholtz and described her two sons, aged 21 and 17, as her “constant rocks”. While the collection drew from deeply personal experiences, she said it did not represent her entire life. 

“The poems I’ve published are not my whole story. They speak about where I come from, the start of family life, and then my transformation into the journey I am on so far,” she said.

Scholtz’s arrival on the literary scene had already drawn attention. She was a finalist in the 2024 Diana Ferris Prize Competition, and her Afrikaans prayer-poem Innige Gebed appeared in Ons kom van hier, a 2025 anthology celebrating local voices.

She described Stitched With Promise as a collection for everyone, moving through themes of family heritage, identity, motherhood, grief, resilience and faith. Reflecting on the past two years, she said they had been the most challenging of her life. 

“I’ve done a lot of growing up in the last two years, and that needed to be highlighted,” she said. “God has been my constant companion, and His faithfulness has never failed.”

The book was launched at DNS Café in an intimate gathering that included piano and vocal performances, poetry readings featuring Facing Your Red Sea Moment, Vriendskap and The Crown Bearer’s Plea a conversation with the author, and a message from the New Apostolic Church ministry. 

Family members, friends and fellow writers from the Cape Word Weavers attended the event.

Published by Gavin Joachims, who described the collection as a tender and spiritually rooted offering that mirrors the threads of healing, remembrance and growth.

Stitched With Promise stands as both a literary debut and a testament to quiet resilience, inviting readers into a life shaped by faith, tested by loss and restored by hope.

tracy-lynn.ruiters@inl.co.za

Weekend Argus 

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