Welcome to Brookery Tales
A place for real stories. The kind we’re taught to bury.
Before you go any further, I need you to know:
This site was born from silence. From being talked over. From being told to “move on,” “forget,” “be strong,” “be quiet.”
It’s for every moment I tried to explain myself and wasn’t believed.
It’s for the versions of my story I wasn’t allowed to tell.
It’s for anyone who’s been misunderstood—and still showed up anyway.
What is this?
Brookerytales is a collection of my life:
The memories I remember.
The ones I don’t—but others do.
The stories I’ve rewritten just to survive them.
It’s part truth, part questioning, part contradiction.
It’s also a fight.
A fight against suicide, silence, shame, and the Southern way of pretending everything’s fine when it isn’t.
I created this space to open up the conversation around mental health, especially in the American South where so much is still hushed, hidden, or handled with prescription pills no one can afford to refill.
The Structure of Brookery Tales
There are three ways a story can live here.
Each version matters. Each offers a different truth.
Tales
How I remember it.
These are my personal memories—stitched together by emotion, instinct, and survival.
Sometimes romanticized. Sometimes distorted. Sometimes the only version I’ve got.
These are the stories I carry in my body, even when the details blur.
Tells
How I make sense of it now.
These are my reflections. My voice now, trying to unpack what happened—without softening it.
It might be a journal entry, a rant, an audio clip, or evidence I’ve held onto.
It’s me, trying to find language for what I couldn’t say then.
Told
How they remember it.
These are the versions told by other people—parents, partners, friends, doctors.
What they saw. What they said happened. What they chose to believe.
Sometimes it lines up with my memory.
Sometimes it doesn’t.
That’s the point.
Each story might exist in all three forms.
Sometimes they contradict. Sometimes they overlap.
Together, they show what it really means to live through something—and live with it afterward.
Features You’ll Find:
- 🎧 Audio clips from real events
- 📖 Chapbooks with unfiltered content (available for purchase)
- ✍🏽 Submissions: Tales & Tolds by the Southern voices of America’s Mental Health Collective
- 📸 Visual galleries: self-portraits, clippings, poetic chaos
- 🌀 Memory trails: staggered, contrasting narratives that ask: Which version was real?
A Call to the Collective:
Brookery Tales isn’t just mine.
It’s an invitation to question your own narrative,
to trace what’s been told to you,
and to maybe—finally—tell it yourself.
We’re building a chaotic Southern anthology,
gathering real voices with real stories,
to make space for truth without polish—
especially where it hurts, heals, or haunts.
Brooke Danielle Haller
About Brooke Danielle Haller | Founder of Brookerytales
I’m Brooke Danielle, a storyteller, artist, and seeker of truth. Brookerytales is my ongoing analogue—a living archive of 13 years inside the U.S. mental healthcare system and a testimony of God’s undeniable presence in my life.
Through spoken stories, poetry, self-portraits, videos, and essays, I document the raw, unfiltered journey of navigating mental health, faith, and identity. My work isn’t about polished conclusions—it’s about witnessing, questioning, and breaking down the false truths we’ve inherited.
I believe in the power of storytelling to challenge perceptions, reclaim narratives, and reveal truth—whether it’s through the lens of mental health, spirituality, or the human condition itself.
Brookerytales is more than my story. It’s a space for others to share their own experiences—of God, healing, struggle, and survival. If you feel called to contribute, whether through testimony, art, or spoken word, I’d love to hear from you.