I sat by the shore Watching a woman Swathed by the waves Sometimes completely inundated She sat there frigid.
I knew she was crestfallen Her grief seemed to be raw A lump rose in my throat As I walked towards her She sat there unaware.
I spoke some words of solace To assuage her emotional deluge Her fiery eyes bore through me A scary stony expression of glare Didn’t deter my positivity
I pressed further…share it Say it…feel the words that heal The arrows that sat on her tongue Pierced my heart into smithereens I clutched her hand when she spoke…
Do you know a shooting pain That rises every moment? Do you know how it feels To be asphyxiated every second? Do you know what is loss?
Loss of an only child My only hope, my only star Who went to school to study Bubbling with life cut short by a bullet Is this the price we pay for learning?
Can your words restore my faith? Can your hope bring my son back? Can you assure me no more would be killed? Can your words mitigate the woes Of a single mother?
This poem was written after the deadliest school massacre occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Broward County, Florida on February 14, 2018.
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No sane soul hurts deliberately. Yet hurts happen. Today I want to discuss emotional hurts, which remain deep-rooted, which keep gnawing at our hearts, as we don’t want to share them for fear of ridicule or exposing our relationships, which may appear to be loving and smooth.
Why do people hurt?
Insensitivity towards others
Lack of emotional quotient
Lack of communication skills
Jealousy
Arrogance
Vindictive attitude
Own selfish motives.
Selfish people never think of others. Even if they do, their own pursuits are so overwhelming for them that they are able to justify themselves. They buy peace with self- arguments and get rid of the guilt of hurting their own near and dear ones.
Sometimes vile and toxic people around them encourage them in their goals, by glorifying their efforts to guide them. Such people snatch them away from their most loving friends and relatives.
Sometimes we hurt others unknowingly. We use such words, which pierce the hearts, without realizing their impact.
Have you ever felt the depth of hurt? It is much deeper than we think it to be.
Emotional hurts leave longer shadows behind them. Unlike physical hurts, they are invisible but the marks they make on our psyche are indelible. While some hurts may be subtle, some stare starkly at us and become a burden.
Time is said to be a great healer but it doesn’t really heal. It just fades the memories of hurts. They keep returning in your solemn moments, in your dreams and when ever you think of that person.
SELF- HEALING
We keep burying emotional hurts into the deepest crevices of our hearts and only address them when they become unbearable. At this point we think of going to a therapist who directs us back to our own efforts!
So self-healing is the only answer and that too requires a huge effort:
Keep the thoughts of hurts away by engaging in meaningful tasks.
If you must think, try to analyze why you were hurt and who is responsible.
There is no harm in admitting if you are the cause. It will help in keeping your mind clear of all the clutter.
Accept the fact that the person who has hurt you is no longer attached to you; he or she doesn’t care about your feelings.
It is better to detach yourself.
Be Positive. Respect yourself.
Forgive and forget. Forgiveness is the first step to self-healing.
It is very painful to detach, I know. That is why probably, time is given the greatest credit but in reality, only self-efforts have the healing power.
Try the following tips:
Talk to yourself:Self- talking is a very powerful tool in our hands. Let the talk go on and on, don’t try to give it a direction. Let the positive and negative thoughts flow on. When they exhaust themselves, then sift through your thoughts and pick up the positive ones to convince yourself that it is not your fault.
It is just a phase:Accept that you are just going through a bad phase. Everybody has to. You don’t have any control over the circumstances but you can control the damage, which the present situation might do to your mental and emotional health.
Keep yourself busy:If you have work, bury yourself in that. It will keep you away from the depressive thoughts for a while. In case you don’t have a regular routine to keep yourself busy, read a good book, visit a friend, go and meet somebody whose company gives you relief and comfort.
Share your thoughts:Don’t conceal emotional wounds. When you speak out your mind, half of the burden wears off. You can discuss your anxieties and fears with a person you trust, a friend or your mother or sister, whosoever you are comfortable with. It gives immense relief and you will feel lighter.
Cry your heart out:As you share your feelings, let the tears flow. They bring about catharsis and have an amazing healing power. The pain of your heart will melt away for the time being. Let all the thoughts of regret, guilt and forgiveness visit you again and again and let them flow away.
Pour your heart out:Write down all your thoughts, the remorse and the censure and your answers to all the questions that are troubling you. It will give you a strange self- satisfaction and self-healing.
Listen to good music:Good music is a great healing balm; it takes us out of our situation and provides a soothing touch to our heart and soul. “For me, singing sad songs often has a way of healing a situation. It gets the hurt out in the open into the light, out of the darkness.” – Reba McEntire
Have faith in yourself. Self- therapy requires great determination to push aside your anguish and have immense faith in your efforts.
Can hurts ever be forgotten?
We try to deny them in our mind. We tell ourselves that they don’t matter to us but emotional wounds get deeper if we don’t acknowledge them.
Thank you for reading this. Please share your valuable reflections, as they are much appreciated.
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Many of our favorite poets who inspire us, had to battle with life and its miseries. I have compiled some interesting and amazing facts from their lives to reiterate the facts that success doesn’t come on a platter; grief transcends all boundaries and the icy finger of death may squeeze all your dreams.
Robert Frost sold his first poem “My Butterfly, An Elegy, to the New York Independent for $15. He was an extremely successful poet but his life was full of sorrow and suffering. His father died of tuberculosis when he was just 11 years old, leaving the family with just eight dollars. Frost’s mother died of cancer in 1900. His younger sister Jeanie died in a mental hospital, where she struggled with her mental illness for nine years. Mental illness apparently ran in Frost’s family, as both he and his mother suffered from depression and his daughter too was committed to a mental hospital in 1947.
John Keats, an English Romantic poet who is known for his brilliant poetry, vivid imagery and sensuous appeal died from tuberculosis at the age of 25. He received fame only after his death. His poems were not received well by critics during his lifetime; his reputation grew after his death.
S.T. Coleridge had bipolar disorder, which had not been defined during his lifetime. Throughout his adult life Coleridge had crippling bouts of anxiety and depression was treated for these conditions with laudanum, which fostered a lifelong opium addiction.
He is best known for his long poems, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel and Kubla Khan, some of which were written under the influence of opium. He has given the English language the famous metaphor of “an albatross around one’s neck”, the quotation of “water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink” and the phrase “a sadder and a wiser man.”
Walt Whitman, one of the most influential poets in the American canon, often called “the father of free verse” was very controversial in his time, particularly for his poetry collection ‘Leaves Of Grass,’ which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality.
Maya Angelou, best known for ‘I know Why the Caged Bird Sings’ became a poet and writer after a series of occupations as a young adult, including fry cook, sex worker, nightclub dancer and performer, cast member of the opera ‘Porgy and Bess’ and journalist in Egypt and Ghana during the decolonization of Africa.
When Angelou was three and her brother four, their parents’ “calamitous marriage” ended, and their father sent them to Stamps, Arkansas, alone by train, to live with their paternal grandmother. She was sexually assaulted by her mother’s boy friend when she was eight. It was her tumultuous life that molded her into a multi-faceted personality.
Mirza Ghalib, the last great poet of the Mughal Era, is considered to be one of the most famous and influential poets of the Urdu language but fame came to him posthumously. He started composing poetry at the age of 11. His verses eloquently expressed philosophy, the travails and mysteries of life.
Kahlil Gibran, a Lebanese American writer, a poet and a visual artist is the third best-selling poet of all time, behind Shakespeare and Laozi. Due to his family’s poverty, Gibran received no formal schooling during his youth in Lebanon. Gibran’s father was imprisoned for embezzlement and his family’s property was confiscated by the authorities. It was only when his mother took him to New York that he could attend school.
Emily Dickinson, a prolific poet lived much of her life in reclusive isolation. Considered to be an eccentric by locals, she developed a noted penchant for white clothing and became known for her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, to even leave her bedroom. Dickinson’s poems are unique for the era in which she wrote; they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation.
For a poet of his stature, T.S.Eliot produced a relatively small number of poems. He was aware of this even early in his career. He wrote to J.H. Woods, one of his former Harvard professors, “My reputation in London is built upon one small volume of verse, and is kept up by printing two or three more poems in a year.”
Rudyard Kipling was born in Mumbai. (India) His parents had been so much moved by the beauty of the Rudyard Lake in Rudyard Staffordshire, (England) that when their first child was born they named him after it. In a 1995 BBC opinion poll, his poem ‘If’ was voted the UK’s favorite poem.
A 13th-century Persian poet, Rumi’s influence transcends national borders and ethnic divisions. Rumi has been described as the “most popular poet”and the “best selling poet” in the United States.
Source: Wikipedia
Compiled by Balroop Singh
Thank you for extending your support during the National Poetry Month by sharing your poems and reflections. Next post will announce the two winners of the gift that I had promised in the beginning of this month.
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While we have been talking about our poems, I wonder whether you would enjoy an interlude and click on the following link, where I received the honor of sharing some interesting facets of my life and a childhood memory.
When I published my debut book, ‘Sublime Shadows of Life’ my excitement was at cloud nine and I got some copies printed for friends and family and sent them, even to those friends whom I met occasionally or had not met since school days.
One of my friends who had not been in touch with me for a long time rang me up and asked: ‘Are you okay?’
I replied in affirmative and asked why was she asking.
She had a grim tone and said: ‘Is everything going well in your life?’
I laughed loudly at the tone of my fun-loving friend and asked her what was wrong with her.
She told me that she got alarmed at some of my poems, which talked about oppression and dark moments.
Though I had mentioned in the blurb “I, you, he, we and they are universal symbols, which highlight the fact that happiness is not a destination…” but who reads the introduction!
Authors draw inspiration from life and people around them and many of them agree that they do creep into their stories.
Some of my poems do give a peep into my life. I have written about an incident that moved me deeply. Some of my poems are an emotional outburst; some are inspired from the life of my friends but all of them are not about me.
This one is. I hope you would understand who this pearl is.
Wendy, a spiritual poet, has shared her thoughts about this topic “I have written poems about defining moments in my life. Although at that time, I may not be aware that I am writing about a moment that I would consider life defining. There have certainly been life defining moments that I did not write about at the time, but a reference to the event came much later in life as a line or stanza in a poem, as with my father’s death when I was 19.
Ritu too has written about life defining moments: “I think one of my most poignant poems about my life was the one I wrote one morning, in 10 minutes, about my journey to become a mother…” She has shared that poem with us:
Lisa has shared a poignant poem that she wrote during the difficult moments of her divorce.
PRAIRIE PRISON
Here I sit in my Prairie prison
I have known
Great joy and worse sorrow
Here I sit in my home
Longing for more…
Lisa Thomson
The ocean
And mountain peaks calling
I make this prison home
I look out of my window
While the prairie winds blow
Dust in my eye, pebbles in my soul
Here in my prairie prison
I long for my Ocean boy
The one and only
Yet some ties bind and clasp me
Fastening me to a make believe home
Among wheat fields
Can you blame me?
I bore my children in a prairie home
A landscape so flat
It cannot compare
To my wild, sea salt air
I would be gifting two ebooks of Sublime Shadows Of Life, my debut book to those two readers who write the most poetic answer to all the posts I publish this month – #NationalPoetryMonth. Happy writing!
Thank you for reading this. Please share your valuable reflections, as they are much appreciated.
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Emotional Shadows 