Poetry

I am owning my emotional brain.

I am observing and tolerating the heartbreaking and gut-wrenching sensations that register misery and humiliation.

I will no longer participate in soul murder.

Soul murder— erasing awareness and cultivating denial are often essential to survival but the price is that you lose track of who you are or what you are feeling—of what and whom you can trust.

I have the power of the life force.

I have the will to live and to own my life.

This is the energy that will help me counteract the annihilation of trauma.

I have the dedication to survival to endure the dark night of the soul that inevitable happens on the road to recovery.

I am on the road to recovery.

I am accessing my emotional brain through self-awareness.

I am addressing the imprints of trauma on my body, mind, and soul.

I own my body and my mind.

I am calm and focused.

I am learning to remain calm in response to triggers.

I am finding a way to be fully alive in the present and engaged with the people around me.

I am not keeping secrets from myself …

including secrets about the ways I have managed to survive.

I have a good support system.

I am recovering in the context of my relationships.

I am safe.

Safety and terror are incompatible.

My support systems provide physical and emotional safety.

I am safe from feeling shame, admonishment, and judgement.

I do not need to manage my terror on my own.

I deserve help.

I am loveable.

I am worthy.

Nothing is unmanageable.

I am grateful to the parts of myself that developed as efforts to save my life. I thank them.

They can rest now.

I am taking care of us.

I feel safe.

I am confronting my fears and anxieties.

Drugs cannot cure my trauma.

I am learning the lasting lesson of self-regulation.

I deserve to not be silent about my trauma.

I am not reinforcing the isolation of my trauma.

I am no longer keeping secrets or suppressing information.

I choose to no longer be fundamentally at war with myself.

I will not ignore my inner reality. I am no longer hiding.

I choose to not let secrets and silence eat away at my sense of self, identity, and purpose.

I am a member of the human race.

I choose to share my terror.

Communicating fully is the opposite of being traumatized.

I will continue sharing my stories to lessen the isolation of my trauma.

I am developing a robust sense of self.

I choose to notice and befriend the sensations in my body.

I am recognizing, feeling, and noticing the emotions in my body without hurting myself or being hurt.

I am learning to communicate.

I deserve to speak.

I choose to no longer let the self-destructive behaviors, that started as strategies for self-protection, to interfere with my capacity to function.

The symptoms of my trauma are not permanent disabilities.

They are learned behaviors.

I am learning new behaviors.

I feel safe. I am safe. I love, accept, and choose to integrate the parts of myself that are fighting and warding off trauma. I love all of myself.

I choose to address my traumatic adaptations.

I choose to no longer deny, ignore, or split off large chunks of my reality.

I will not try to forget my abuse.

I will not suppress my rage and despair.

I will not numb my physical sensations.

I am learning to reconfigure a brain system that was constructed to cope with the worse.

I am revisiting the parts of myself that developed the defensive habits that helped me survive.

I deserve to get along with myself.

I choose to listen to my different parts.

I choose to make sure they feel taken care of.

No part of me is toxic.

I do not need to deny parts of myself.

I will not lock parts of myself away.

All parts of me are welcome.

All parts of me are loved.

I am cultivating mindful self-leadership to heal from my trauma.

Firefighter- I do not need to hurt myself to make my emotional pain go away.

Manager- I do not need to lie or suppress information to maintain control.

Exile- No part of me is toxic. All parts of me are worthy of love, acceptance, help, and healing.

I choose to heal myself from the perspective of a curious and compassionate self.

I choose to alter my life by altering my attitudes of mind.

I am processing my memories of trauma. I am confronting my inner void

The holes in my soul that resulted from not having been wanted, not having been seen, and not having been able to speak the truth.

I am validated.

I am heard.

I am seen.

I am safe.

I choose to share my trauma secrets and rid myself of their toxicity.

I choose to acknowledge my realities to myself and others.

I choose to develop my sense of agency.

I choose to find my voice by being in my body.

I choose to access my inner sensations.

I will not make myself disappear.

I deserve to be seen and heard.

I choose to not be afraid of conflict.

I deserve to have a caring relationship with my body.

I choose to cultivate feelings of calmness, power, and relaxation.

I choose to be known.

I deserve to be known.

I choose to be loved.

I choose to be cared for.

I choose to communicate.

I choose to ask for help.

I deserve help. I deserve healing.

I have a strong support system.

I am confident that others will know, affirm, and cherish me.

I am safely held in the hearts and minds of the people who love me.

I can do anything.

I choose to identify the truth of my experiences.

I choose healing.

I choose self-awareness, self-regulation, and communication.

I choose to recognize and name my physical sensations.

Rows of blue plastic chairs form perfect lines

Like so many soldiers awaiting their next command

Tall and dark-skinned, a woman bounces a toddler on her knee

Entertaining him with the ruffles on her loose sleeve

Old hands entwine, shoulders sag, foreheads touch

Wrinkled whispers tiptoe in worried undertones

Avoiding the scar that jags across their son's shaven head

Tattooed arms, chipped teeth, burned fingers, hardened eyes

Stories to tell, stories to hide Strange faces

Week after week become strangely comforting and familiar None of us planned to be here

The Saturday before Christmas

Camped out in the visiting room of the federal penitentiary

Prison

He was the brother who carried my bike through the mud

Bought me ice cream cones

Showed me how to flip on the trampoline

Made forts out of broken shutters, old picnic tables, and swing sets

Taught me how to program a computer

Explained how to solve for the velocity of a train

Expounded on Euclid's theory of time and space

He became the brother who passed out on the couch

Unaware of the haze of smoke smothering him

Stench of tobacco and marijuana clinging to his hair and skin

Who smashed doors and walls with his angry elbows and fists

Who hid drug money in my favorite teddy bear

Who betrayed me and my family

Who chose drugs and alcohol over me

Years of therapy, counseling, residential treatment, detention centers, expensive attorneys

The time, the money, the energy, the love - poured out

Now he sits, baggy in his khaki jumpsuit His name stitched across his heart

Our name

Followed by 01865-083

What happened to a perfect family?

The one who cuddles together for family film nights

Plays games together

Talks and laughs over shared secrets

Maybe, just maybe, our perfect family needed to be broken into pieces

Maybe the difference between a perfect family and a broken family is not very distinct after all

Maybe there exists a degree of brokenness in every family

Analysis, from the Greek word analusis --

To break apart Just as in a literary or scientific analysis

Where the depth of understanding comes

From a thorough examination of specific elemental parts broken off from the whole

Maybe the true depth of a family comes from its very brokenness

Within the brokenness of my family, I help hold the pieces together

I sit the hospital with my younger brother as he recovers from surgery

Help Mary Sophia recover from her concussion

Nurse Hattie after her car accident

Walk Leo home from Tae Kwon Do, drive Mary Sophia to basketball practice

Pick up take-out, help solve for X and study Spanish

While my parents visit my brother - the inmate

These broken shards have made each of us more fully human

More compassionate, more resilient

More whole

We are not the only visitors

Who huddle together around our vending machine lunch

Like travelers bent over a fire

Dependent on each other for warmth and strength

Sitting across from my incarcerated older brother

The seven of us draw closer in to his sensitive former self

The very mistakes that threaten to break us apart

Bring us closer together

Soft fingers from a slight breeze pluck at wispy clouds

As the half-hidden sun peeks

Through glassy chinks of porcelain blue

Bright pink balloons swim up through the trees

One catches in the thick arms of an oak

Struggling as the others leave it behind

A single rose

Solitary and soft

Sleeps

On a closed, wooden box

Before the passing of five summers

A child slumbers

Sorrow seeps into my soul

Like shadows creeping in the night

Later that evening

While I lie in bed

White doves dance in my head

As the last breath of a still memory

Snickers at the moon

In shadowed grief

I cannot sleep

Headlights from a passing car

Pattern stripes across my face

Without my sister

There will be only a gaping hole

Filled with a dark purple mist

Draped in sorrow