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 this dreadfully woeful poetry about mental health and trauma!

The thing about trauma is that when you stop to give yourself the space to explore your inner creativity, you also give your inner child the chance to voice what happened to them.

I've given up trying to be cheerful when I write. The child, abused and traumatised by their childminder, just needs to be heard now and I am ready to be her parent. I will cry with her as she tells her story and reassure her that I hear her, I see her pain, and she is not alone any more.

The Weight of the Ogre’s Will

Bruised flesh,

fresh distress

And pain for daring,

Swearing it wasn’t me,

I didn’t lie,

My brother caught between the eyes,

My sister weeping

Soaked

Her arm twisted by the grope

And hope choked,

Fear stoked

I approach

Spoke with croaked voice,

Trembling,

Defending my siblings

From an undeserved stroke

But instead provoke

A monster cloaked in misery

And a yoke so tight

That my might to fight

Takes flight

And I freeze on the sheep skin rug

My knees collapsed

in the silky woollen fleece

Powerless to protect two 3-year-olds

One four-year-old

Whose self-determination

just cracked and snapped

Under the weight

Of the ogre’s will.

I'm still processing everything that happened to me as a child. The brain has this marvellous way of protecting developing brains by shutting out the memory... until it can't hold the lid on any more.

PTSD has exposed my trauma ... all of it... all at once... the lid has been completely blown off and shattered into a thousand pieces. Writing poetry is helping me to gather up all the fragmented pieces of memories and painful emotional memories and to put them back in some kind of order so I can store them away neatly in a new box.

I can't stress enough how much therapy is helping to sort though the the absolute chaotic mess that PTSD has created. Thankfully, I have a team of professionals who are helping me to deal with this because I don't think it's even possible to do it on your own without being retraumatised.