how to heal a broken heart?
you must love again
something
someone
get up
dry your eyes
dust yourself off
loss, is just a season’s weight
not a calling until death
you were not born
to exist
on crumbs
now go!
someone out there
is searching
for you.
— it’s ok, you can let go now.
© Liezel Graham 2019.
Photography by Liezel Graham
if this is for you, may your heart find all the courage it needs to love again.
it’s ok, you can let go now.
liezel
i have tasted this poison before.
still i lift the cup again.
— captive.
© Liezel Graham 2019.
This is the second micropoem in my #HealingTheHurtChildWithin
series.
I don’t think that I need to elaborate on this one.
If this is you, you’ll know exactly what I mean.
Sometimes, if we haven’t healed, we keep returning to the thing that holds us hostage.
For some of us this is an addiction—be it alcohol, food, sex, drugs, gambling… for others it is choosing a toxic relationship, or the same types of toxic partners because it’s all we know.
Perhaps it is choosing the same addictions or behaviours that owned the ones who love(d) you.
I would love to hear your insight into this,
liezel
Photography by Johann Piber.
the fear that owns you
has a hungry
voice
falling
from
your
lips
when you are not looking.
— fear has a hungry voice.
© Liezel Graham 2019.
This is the first micropoem in my #HealingTheHurtChildWithin
series.
‘The fear that owns you…’
Childhood trauma or hurts that you have not dealt with, becomes another voice that lingers in the background.
It often speaks in anger, or in fear, when it shouldn’t.
It doesn’t speak up when it should.
It ignores things that it should not overlook.
It is easily triggered by things it shouldn’t be triggered by.
It says ‘yes’ when it wants to be loved, and ‘no’ when it is afraid of being loved.
When it speaks, it often leaves you wondering ‘why did I say that’ or ‘why do I react this way’?
It is a voice that is hungry—hungry to be loved, hungry to be found ‘enough’, hungry to be seen, hungry just to feel some sort of confirmation that there is still life and that it is worth living.
It always has a root.
I am still very aware of this other voice of mine. Healing has not been an overnight thing for me.
I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments,
liezel
Photography by Evie Shaffer.
I have been working on a collection of micro poems that focus on the effects of (unhealed) childhood trauma, and disordered/chaotic relationships with primary caregivers on a child, and how they might affect the adult later on, and the way that these early traumas might then cause them to relate to relationships, love, (potential) addictions, their ability to handle conflict, and how they might as adults with deep emotional scars, negotiate their place in the world.
As always my poems are written partly from a personal place, and partly from my professional experience in mental health.
There is no right or wrong to my words, other than personal truth based on introspection, however there is nothing new under the sun and if you should find yourself in my description, please do look out for my posts in the next couple of days.
They be will short, sharp and sometimes bittersweet, but always I hope, a springboard for deeper reflection and healing.
Perhaps we can find some healing together,
liezel
Photography by Lisa Fotios.
she said, this man makes me
feel so alive and he is everything
that i have ever wanted, but
still he is not enough, and
still i need more, and
i don’t know what it is, and why do i always have this thirst in the middle of my heart, and how
do i fill it,
if not with love?
and i said, as gently as i could, because some words are spiky and need to be unwrapped with gentle hands, and
i asked my friend, with the father-shaped hole in her heart,
do you know the difference between honey and water?
do you know that there are men who will pour you cups of honey and oh, it will be so sweet on your tongue and you will feel all your holes fill up with golden stickiness, and
for a little while,
perhaps if you are very lucky,
and if you learn this lesson quickly, then
you will only believe this for a short while, and
you will think that honey is
liquid
love,
but it is not.
and it will never be enough.
because honey
will never
quench
your
thirst.
and you need to wait for a man
who is running water,
pure and full of life, who
will pour himself out, and into your cupped hands, and over your head, dripping down into your bones, filling up that thirst in the middle of your heart.
flooding it with the one thing
that always gives life, and
only then will you know the difference between words that fall sweetly from the tongue, and
the men who use them, and
words that will make an ancient thirst go away, and
they are not the same thing.
honey and water.
and what you should really know, is this,
it is not the man
who should heal your heart, and
only one man is shaped like your father, and
no other man can do that,
fill that hole,
and
fix that hurt.
although some men will try,
if their hearts are big enough for two, and
if they love you enough.
but it is not fair to expect a man to lie down in a hole made by another, so that you can walk across him to the other side, and
you have to find your own way out of that hurt, and when you finally manage to swim to the edge of that hole, and
you finally manage to crawl your way out through the mud, only
then will you know the difference between honey and water, and
you will know which men bring life in their hands, and
which men don’t.
and you will never confuse
them again, and
you will teach your daughter
how to sniff the air for the scent of rain, and you will show her how to walk away from things that do not flow over her thirst with life, and
she will know how to swim
to the edge of her pain, and
she will grow strong from climbing out of holes that were made by others, and
she will stand on the edge of that which wanted to drown her,
but couldn’t.
and water will run down her limbs, and drip from her skin, onto the dry dusty ground, until
everything under her feet blooms green.
and this will be your gift to her.
— honey and water.
© Liezel Graham 2019.
Photograph by Nicholas Githiri.
you’ve changed, haven’t you?
all the truth that you once nailed to the inside of your heart — ran your fingers over every day when nobody was looking — none of it makes sense anymore, does it?
none of it.
and you’ve stared out of windows, and all those tiny cracks in your life, searching for the light, and for that thing that makes it all fall into place, and you’ve found it.
at last.
haven’t you?
and it doesn’t look like what you knew before, and it doesn’t look like anyone else’s, and how do you walk away from all that you’ve known?
and now, you’re afraid.
afraid of walking out your front door wearing your new life, knowing that they might not understand, and you’re lying there in the middle of the darkest thinking hours of the night, hoping they will see how lovely this new life looks on you, but all you can feel is fear.
why?
why are you so afraid of another’s eyes on your heart? have you not scraped enough pain from your skin to feel — to know, that it is ok for you to change? have you not discovered yet, that it is ok to change your mind about things — the biggest things, the smallest things, and even the holiest things.
you can change your mind about anything, really.
really.
because truth has found you in the most unexpected of places, and you have had to grow out of your skin, your birthday, your promises and your life, in order to know that you are only halfway there and suddenly, or maybe not, time has been shy, you realised that the joy that was once blooming in the middle of your heart, is dead, and has been for a while, and that living a lie will not bring it back to life.
only living, will, and
the light is out there waiting for you. waiting just for you to start putting down all the things that no longer fit into your hands, and your bones, and your mouth, and your eyes, and your life is there too, breathing in and breathing out.
with, or without you, and
you might have to undo a vow, or change holy books, or change the way that you have always ticked boxes, and loved yourself, but this can all be done, and
it is scary to stand there, naked from your bones to the tip of your heart, and yes, some of them will not understand, and yes, some of them will not be able to stay, and that is ok.
really, it is.
let them leave.
new people will come.
really — they will, because
do you know how beautiful your truth finally looks on you?
courage, dear heart.
you can do this.
— courage, dear heart. you can do this.
© Liezel Graham 2019.
Photograph by Kat Jayne.
