Survivor

[JRose]

I wrote this four years ago, trying to express what my healing process feels like.  Originally there were more verses at the end about how my faith in God helped me to discover His love for me.  But since then, in the past two years I have had to look deeper to see that the love I need so badly is in me, that I can give all the love I need for my needy inner parts 


SURVIVOR

Heart beating – head reeling - A life that's spinning out of control
Can't function – all this junk in me - If there's one thing I have learned
It's to understand what devastating pain can do to you,
Your life trod on before it started to bloom
All you had was - splintered parts inside of you
So you fought to survive

All you knew was hurt – in your deepest part
Trying to defend that little spark
And no one understands why you can't take part
You had to fight  -  just to survive
The love you've never had – has passed you by

Now you wake up – start to rise up
Discovering parts in you you never knew
Feel healing – releasing - Hope begins to rise
You want to understand the devastating things that happened to you
And to take a chance for your life to bloom
And all the splintered parts inside of you
Can come to life

And you're allowed to hurt – in the deepest part
'Cause someone is there holding your inner spark
Someone who understands all your heart
It's you - who holds the key to love -

The love you never had – is given to you

[BJeanGrey]

This is a very empowering poem, JRose. It's wonderful to see people come through trauma with love and compassion for themselves. Thanks kindly for sharing it.

My therapist has been trying to get me to "love the little girl that I was" - but, yeah, it's not working - I hate myself...so very much. I don't even notice it most of time - it's just the normal, everyday, way of being in relation to myself. But, you're poem *sparks* hope.

[JRose]

So glad for your *spark* of hope, BjeanGrey.  I feel like the end of  what I wrote in the poem (it's actually a song I wrote) makes this process of dealing with the inner hurt seem easy and simple - but that's just not the way it is, for me anyway.  I sadly can't honestly say that I am through my trauma 

Thanks for being so honest about where you're at  - I regularly struggle with hating myself, probably don't like to admit it more of the time.

I guess I search for quick solutions to my inner conflict, but had to face up to the truth (again and again) that the harm done to me is much more complicated to deal with than I had hoped - two years ago I had to realize this again.  That's when I had to begin to look even deeper. Sometimes I think my inner parts are looking for any answer or formula to heal their hurts - but I have to turn again and again to the "process" - that all so hard road of making new positive paths to walk on. 

Once, in a trauma therapy workshop I attended, the subject of healing or change was presented in this way:  the survival strategies that we continue to follow, even when they are no longer needed and not even so good for us, are like an Autobahn/highway (I live in Germany  ) where you keep taking the same exit.  The hard process of change and healing is to get to a different, new exit, that you never took before.  That can lead to the change needed for our inner parts.

This also is over-simplified! But I do picture this for myself very often, especially when many or all of my inner voices begin to cry, "you're going the wrong way!" when I am trying to find new direction for my life. It can be excruciatingly hard to go in a direction while everything inside is crying "danger".  It helps me then to have lots and lots of support at those times, telling me that I'm not doing a bad thing, to do something that is good for me - always a hard message to receive inside.

Boy - it's hard to communicate this stuff in this way, just writing.  Hope it comes through with the intension that is behind it 

[Not Alone]

JRose, thank you for sharing this beautiful, vulnerable song. The song is one page, but the making of it is years and a lot of hard work. And I understand that the  journey is not over. Just lately, I have made a little shift in being able to love the child inside.

[JRose]

Thanks for the encouragement, notalone.  It is really good to be able to share on this forum.  The last time I was able to connect like this with anyone was three years ago when I was on the womens trauma ward in a clinic.  There we started a small group who liked to sing, and some who played guitar, and they really understood that song, like no one else since, except for here