Jodee Simpson
Fragmented parts of trauma survivors
I’ve been working through some difficult emotions. Difficult because when triggered, the emotion is so intense and overwhelming that my...
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Jodee Simpson
Re-writing the labels we give ourselves
Everyday milestones are a trigger for people living with Complex PTSD. My child’s 16th birthday and my Silver Wedding anniversary...
Jodee Simpson
Autistic Joy & Glimmer
Autistic joy is a concept that lots of people in the autistic community are trying to describe at the moment. For me, it describes a...
Jodee Simpson
A letter to my dad
Rated 5 out of 5 stars.(1)Trigger warning: themes of child abuse Six months ago today, I took a long train journey to start my new job 200 miles from my home. My...
Jodee Simpson
I’ve just signed up for stand up comedy!!! … I’m blaming it on my medication withdrawal symptoms
It’s been a hell of a couple of weeks, which is why I haven’t posted in a while. I am coming off antidepressants because I haven’t had a...
Jodee Simpson
Suspended in the gap between reality
My therapist told me that things would get worse before they get better once I start trauma therapy. They were right. I'm five months in...
Jodee Simpson
This makes my autistic brain light up
March 2024. The last few months have been extremely painful and intense. I am learning so much about how my brain works in therapy but...
Jodee Simpson
The “bravery” of talking publicly about mental health: I’m never quite sure if this is a compliment or a warning
I am always amazed at how much my mental health stories resonate with others. Apparently, I am an inspiration. But the fact that people...
Jodee Simpson
“Back to normal” is the biggest PTSD recovery lie I've ever told myself
I want to talk about the assumptions that many people make about therapy, myself included. There's this idea that therapy is meant to...
Jodee Simpson
Starting a new job but feel like I’m actually going into mental rehab
If you have seen Lord of the Rings, you will know that Frodo is never the same after his long and treacherous journey into Mordor to...
Jodee Simpson
No one wants to read this and I don’t blame them
Euugh 😩 I feel dreadful 🤒Another middle of the night poem. My last resort after meditation, medication, milk and sudoku have failed -...
Jodee Simpson
“It was my act of kindness that was noticed, not this person’s distress. There is something wrong with this and it makes me feel intensely sad.”
Trigger warning: self harm, suicidal thoughts. I spent Sunday night in A&E and noticed a person cutting their wrists with house keys....
Jodee Simpson
PTSD is making my autistic brain glitch
As a speech and language therapist I am constantly advocating for autistic people and those with intellectual disability or mental health...
Jodee Simpson
Trauma, PTSD and resigning from a job I love
PTSD has made working life extremely difficult. But it's more complex than that. It has triggered not only the previous workplace...
Jodee Simpson
Finding a safe space when PTSD overwhelms
This was the first poem I wrote as an adult, motivated by the healing and inner quiet I felt when out in nature. A vast contrast to the...
Jodee Simpson
PTSD has blown off my trauma lid but poetry is helping me gather up all the pieces
Trigger warning: child abuse When I sat down to write this, I was honestly trying to write something uplifting that would at break up all...
Jodee Simpson
I wanted to send this in a letter but HR told me it was a bad idea
I was so chuffed when I wrote this poem. My first poem that actually rhymes!! Does this mean I'm a real Poet now? 😂 Rhyming has...
Home: My poetry blog
About Me
I haven't worked out if I'm a poet yet. Mostly, I've always hated poetry. Mostly, because I can't connect to it.Probably, because trauma has prevented me from connecting to my inner world.
I'm autistic and ADHD with an eruption of complex-PTSD that blew off trauma’s lid at the age of 48 and now I can't get the frickin’ lid back on again.
It's left me with a bunch of very raw emotions that have been preserved in the exact form they were in when they first got stuffed into the box… starting at the age of 2. Some of the memories don't even have words to describe them.
And this is where the poetry comes in.
Somehow, it feels less painful to pull out the raw emotion and put if on the table in front of me, where I can try out a bunch of words to see which ones evoke the biggest “whoosh”.
It makes me feel connected to the pages and to myself. Like I am finally putting words to a faceless silent memory and giving the distressed inner child a voice to be finally heard.
Pointless poetry and meaningless mumblings are still awful.
My poetry is written to capture the big emotions that I feel. People tell me that my poems made them cry. Well at least I am not crying alone any more.
Maybe I am even finding a way to describe what I feel now. With words that other people recognize as synonymous with profoundly devastating and debilitating pain.
Maybe it's just a different kind of box. Maybe this is how the lid goes back on.Perhaps, I just needed to untangle the mess, iron out the pages and carefully fold so it can be filed away in long term storage.
Perhaps.
Home: About Me
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