Category: dear survivor

• Sending love from paradise lost

  Sometimes it takes many words
  to get to the point.
  Let that be okay in your body.
  Because you are perfect
  in your brokenness and survival.
  My hope is that one day
  your body feels less like a tomb
  and more like paradise lost.
  I promise you’re more found
  than you know.

  September 16, 2025

  chronic pain, csa, flashbacks, IFS, life, love, mental-health, pain, poetry, ptsd, recovery, survivor, trauma, writing

  ---

• Promise, there is this part where

  Dear Survivor,
  I know you’re ready
  for Survivor to stop
  being your identity.
  The part you crop
  from insta stories
  is the part that brought
  you to right here.

  
  I’m here, as there are others
  who need to hear you
  speak real clear,
  about anything you want to.
  Your full story is worth telling;
  You’re worth pausing and reflecting.
  An entangled knowing
  including
  the parts you’re ready to drop.

  
  So, I’m here for the days
  when you are ready to set down;
  and also for the ways
  parts of you incredulously ask how
  there could be anything worth telling
  beyond the pain and violence unwitnessed.
  One day, I promise
  they’ll integrate too
  and know the meaning of pure bliss.

  
  But I’ll tell you now a little secret
  I’ve learned in all my asking –
  bliss and pain are both unfit
  for more than just this moment;
  their only part in our forever story
  is a series of
  ongoing nows
  never-ending hows
  brought fully
  to life
  in a blink
  or a wink
  just think
  about it.

  
  We were never endless suffering-
  we are what we choose
  to fully feel
  no matter how overwhelming
  entrapping
  dismantling-
  feel it all
  because I promise
  there is this part
  where it starts to feel
  a little lighter.
  

  And all we need
  is just to start.

  August 29, 2025

  flashbacks, IFS, life, love, mental-health, poetry, ptsd, recovery, trauma, writing

  ---

• Until we’ve all learned

  I wish it wasn’t such a burden
  to feel every little thing, so deep and rich.
  Its dark and thick behind this curtain
  where sounds can still ring out in unbearable pitch.

  At once both grateful and in awe of
  a body molded with great care and epic purpose,
  but twice resentful of the club
  it joined me to for all my existence

  in this life I’m sure I consented to.
  Save my bloodline and right our history-
  NO way, the details I then knew
  how painful the trail to justice and glory

  would cost. How wholly lonely
  and stifling all this feeling would
  day after long day leave me-
  wishing I could be understood

  for more than my suffering and my tears.
  But goddamn it hurts in this beautiful body-
  the one into which jealous eyes peer
  without understanding it’s much more foggy

  than it could ever be truly clear;
  that feeling fully means an intimate knowing
  of one’s wildest and most engrossing fears.
  All you see is my skin glowing

  and my eyes radiant with light,
  but what I wish you also took in
  more than what’s in sight.
  I know the chances are real slim

  unless like me you live as outcast
  of the current prescribed norm.
  The one that arrogantly pushes past
  our no to quietly conform

  to the standards set forth by
  a humanity numbed to the bone.
  Rules fully feeling bodies cannot abide
  without abandoning what’s ancient and known

  as truth – the universal kind –
  a truth felt in the body deep,
  and meant to union body, soul, and mind
  such that of this land and life, great care we keep.

  Instead, the powers that be
  intimidate and forcefully
  convince us we’re only free
  when we give up easily

  our birthright of wellness and peace,
  which we can access outside the system
  of capitalistic rush and greed.
  You see, there is no you versus them.

  There is only we, one, together
  fully sharing in the load;
  no longer keeping track of turns.
  Forget the line that splits the road;

  for we’re all walking each other home.
  In community we must travel
  so that each of us can be known and shown
  that when the hard times unravel

  our hearts and bodies from our souls,
  it’s in witnessing the other with great attention
  that beauty, truth, and healing we uphold.
  In proximity with honest intention

  to trust, facilitate and believe
  the lived experience of one another;
  until we’ve all learned the meaning of gently.
  Then, may in love and connection we uncover

  that the point of all of this
  feeling fully joy and immense pain
  was not to fight or somehow miss
  each other on the way to soon see you again.

  August 23, 2025

  community, flashbacks, friend, friendships, healing, lgbtq, life, love, mental-health, poetry, ptsd, recovery, sexual asssault, spirituality, trans, trans lives, trauma, writing

  ---

• There, there

  Hey survivor,
  don’t beat your-
  self up for giving
  him a few extra chances
  to show
  that he was better
  than the men
  you’ve known
  in your nightmares.
  There, there.
  You’ll survive this one,
  too.

  August 20, 2025

  flashbacks, friend rape, love, mental-health, nonfiction, poetry, ptsd, rape, rape culture, recovery, sexual assault, survivor, trauma, writing

  ---