History of the Site

In 2013, I started a blog called Circus of Words under the pen name Eillya-Marí Kocumba. The blog was basically a tool to help me rekindle my love for writing, specifically poetry. I kicked of a poetry challenge to write (and post) 1 poem a day, for better or worse. Needless to say the blog is mostly poetry. However, I also posted short stories, fragments of longer stories I was working on, black history, current events, and christianity. After two years, I felt that it was too much of a hodgepodge. Most blogs focus on one topic and all the "how to" guides about blogging recommend finding and blogging about your niche.

The three types of posts I loved the most were my poems, the ones on christianity, and the ones of black culture. So, I decided to streamline my blog by splitting it into 3 separate blogs. This gave birth to In God I Trust and CulturedExpressions. The plan was to post my blogs about the Bible and Christianity on In God I Trust, my blogs about culture on CulturedExpressions, and maintain Circus of Words as a poetry blog, primarily. After two more years, I started to feel like that was a disaster. Not only was it hard to keep up with all three blogs, a lot of the time the posts intersected multiple blogs and I couldn't figure out where to put it!

When I started getting the urge to do a podcast in early 2017, I new it was time for rebranding. When in doubt be yourself, right? I have a lot of interests, and while sometimes they seem very disconnected, they're a lot more related than meets the eye. They can't survive independently.

The first part of 2017 was dedicated to finishing up graduate school, so I couldn't spend much time formulating a plan for the blogs let alone implement it. However, once I graduated, I was all about finding a way to make all of this coexist. The first item on my to do list was to start the rebranding with a new name. I needed something I could use for the podcast that would encompass both the theme of the podcast, as well as, the themes of the three blogs. I also needed it to be easy to remember and available as a domain name.

After choosing a name, it was all about setting up the actual blog. I didn't republish every post from the old blogs, but I did keep the ones that fit vision of PSALMS to God. For these posts, you'll see notes indicating that it was first published on one of the original blogs.

With those two things completed, PSALMS to God has become a reality!