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A Poem for Strength: The Feminist Rant
Poetry for Survivors, by a Survivor
As always, the poem is at the end of this passage.
My collection of poetry, The Whole Story, dives into the world of complex trauma. While the book is primarily about my experiences in college, when I dated an incredibly abusive person, there is lots of reflection on my past. Since healing is not linear, and triggers can compound, the book took me on a journey I was not expecting.
I thought I healed from certain events in my past, but once I started doing trauma work in therapy, I realized how much was still unresolved. When all you have known is abuse, it can become hard to identify. Our most painful memories are also sometimes slippery, our brain wanting to protect us from the past.
When working on my college trauma, a lot about my past came up, too. When I was in high school, I went through a lot. One of those things was a relationship that was abusive beyond belief. The abuse was not limited to emotional abuse; it included not only physical abuse but sexual abuse as well.
In processing these traumatic memories, I am reminded of all the things that protected me back then. Poetry was my biggest safety net. I wrote this poem the summer before my Junior year of high school. It went on to be my most popular poem for years. While that…
