A letter to survivors
https://thesoulspoet.com/2016/10/24/a-letter-to-survivors-it-never-gets-old/
— Read on thesoulspoet.com/2016/10/24/a-letter-to-survivors-it-never-gets-old/
A necessary post. Sending gentle hugs to all those strong enough to ask for help.
All six of my children have been detrimentally affected by the lies told, and their potential robbed by the rapists in our family. It is 2022 and more lies are being revealed.
My goal is to leave a record of the truth. I am determined that my linage will know the truth, I will continue to trust the guidance of my ancestors to lay a foundation that is built on the truth however brutal. There is still more to do. But the healing for our ancestors is continuing as we dig deeper and pull up the rotten roots to repair the damage.
I wrote this poem in January, 1999 for the brother we lost to alcoholism. He was 36. Now 2011 we could lose another brother to alcoholism. He just turned 37. They both drank for the same reasons but we pretend it is not happening. We are as Sick as our Secrets and ours are killing us.
I am grateful for the work I started in 2011 by committing to therapy. I am continuing with creating the family tree on ancestry and getting my DNA analyzed.
finally brother you can rest
in this world you no longer stay
we must accept that god
has taken you away
no longer do you plead for love
from a world grown cold
we did not get to see you grow old
but now you are free
you don’t have to hurt any more
finally brother you can rest
no need to cry or feel blue
one day we will join you
your soul has taken flight
you are smiling at the sight
of angels welcoming you
into peace, finally brother, rest
01/1999 by mozayik
Silence is deadly. We may be silent but our sick secrets are exposed for all to see. When a man drinks himself to death it is not happenstance. Some of us use drink, food, drugs or sex to abuse or addiction. It is self medicating to ease PAIN.
For the last week or so I have been contemplating why my family continues to pretend everything is okay. Another brother will be lost if we continue to sweep things under the rug. I feel so helpless to save him. I don’t think I can look anyone in the eyes again without saying “we have to stop this shit now”.
I want to ask my mother “How long will you continue to lie? How many of us have to die? Free us and tell the truth, please.”
I am tired of the superficial relationships. If we are not free to speak our truth in love then it is all a waste of time. There was a time when all I wanted was revenge. I was hurting, so I wanted the “perpetrators” to hurt. That position did not serve me well and the poison of anger was killing me. Once I sought my own healing I saw things differently.
My only motive now is to facilitate healing and stop others from being hurt.
Only LOVE can heal us. I realize that people have reasons why they do the things they do. The people who hurt us have been harmed by someone and the vicious cycle is repeated over and over because of silence. I am telling my story. I refuse to be quiet.
Karma is not a bitch. Karma is sweet. Karma is fair.
She will give you what you deserve.
About your feelings she doesn’t care.
She will pay you in love.
If that is what you reap.
Sowing seeds of love and positivity
will keep you out of the path of Karma’s negative proclivity.
Karma will be your friend, until you make her your enemy.
Whether you acknowledge her or not
she will bite that ass no doubt.
It is an absolute guarantee.
See, me and Karma go way back,
to a time when I did not know
or respect
her affect.
I finally woke up when my love debt was past due.
I had burned too many bridges,
so, a reckoning with Karma I had to do.
That changed my views.
Everyone will get what they are due,
no matter your hue.
Now?
I love every day my very best.
I am reaping love in abundance, cause I let go of judgments.
No more right or wrong.
I am living the moments of my life’s song.
I have created a life in love for myself.
Now?
My journey is filled with valley blessings.
I am receiving my wealth in love that Karma has dispensed.
by Mozayik “the souls’ poet” © 61917
Some have asked, “Yvette why did you do it?”
My answer, I did it because I wanted to.
I did it because it needed to be done.
Somebody had to do it.
F that mess about keeping our business in our house.
That is precisely why I did it,
it was time out for letting abusers get away with it.
It was time out for others controlling the narrative about my life.
It had to be done.
Why should I have walked around in shame?
Why should I have hidden the marks placed on my body
by someone that said they loved me?
Why should I have worn long sleeves so I would not be ashamed
when people asked how that happened?
Was I supposed to walk around in secrecy
trying to cover up your indecency?
Hell no, I did it because it had to be done.
It was time out for people getting away with hurting me.
I did it for all the girls and boys that went to sleep weeping
because they could not speak their truth.
I did it so you would suffer the shame that you threw.
I threw it back at you
and all those that thought they got away with hurting others.
I did it so you would get help,
or crawl into a hole and leave us good people alone.
Be gone or get some help.
I did it because I needed to be sure we were through.
I did it because I wanted to.
The same way you wanted to hurt me.
But I was not trying to hurt.
I did it so a way could be paved.
So someone would have courage to do what I did
I bet you thought this was about you.
Mozayik ‘the souls’ poet’
5.2.2021.12.29a
I had a panic attack. I was afraid to leave my apartment. I cried, I prayed and I grabbed my box cutter, mace, gloves, mask and sanitizing wipes. I reminded myself that “I AM NOT MY FEELINGS” I went out and got my medicine because no one was coming to save me. I prayed that I would not be stopped by the police because they may not understand that I had to take the weapons to protect myself. They may think that I mean to harm them or they may use it as an excuse to kill me. All kinds of thoughts run through your head when you are a black woman living alone with ptsd.
I look back on 2020 and know that it was God that I held on to me, otherwise I never would have made it. I would have lost my mind, y’all know the rest of the song.
Thank God for therapy or else I probably would have just lay there and kept crying. This pandemic, the isolation, losing people that I love, and living alone with the constant uncertainty is starting to get to me. I am just keeping it real.
Crying helped me to release my emotions because I know that I am not my feelings so the sooner I face the fear and let it go the better.
BUT, I am exhausted from the unrelenting battle with fear. I am not paranoid. I have valid reasons to be afraid to step outside my front door. I was brutally beaten in the streets in July. I saw the man in my neighborhood again and he recognized me.
I came here to live because I was fleeing a domestically violent partner. I was unemployed and living in my daughters basement. They were the first people to give me a lease. I figured I would get in and get out but I had no idea what was about to happen.
I have been trying to move but the manager where I live is a Narcissistic a-hole that has it in for me because I wanted to start a tenant associations to address the horrific conditions she expects people to live in.
One example is allowing raw sewage to run through the parking lot while people walked through it and took it back into the buildings during the Coronavirus Pandemic. I reported it and forced her hand with other things so every time I apply somewhere else she lies and says that I have bogus lease violations. It is a very long story.
I have a good job and I don’t want to live here anymore but she thinks she is making good on her threat that if I sue her “I wont have any place to live.” God is still in control though especially since I have done nothing wrong by trying to help improve our living conditions.
I know that I am not the only one going through things. I am just telling my little story. I am tired of Covid-19, tired of racism, tired of white people not getting, that, WE BEEN TIRED. Tired of fighting for the basic right to feel like I matter.
We are supposed to be celebrating the legacy of Dr. King but now we live in a world where Hatred is at an all-time high. It is all very disheartening. I know I will survive. I always do, but I need a f***ing break.
I had a core belief that I did not deserve to be treated well. Of course, this is an expected response to abandonment, neglect, rape, and abuse. How else was my psyche able to allow this assault on my person, on my innocent soul?
It killed my healthy self-image. Convinced me that, I, the victim deserved this because I was bad and nobody cared. I had been programmed to expect to be traumatized.
I was guilty of not being enough. I was guilty of everything that had ever happened to me. I was guilty of ruining everybody’s life. I was fucking guilty if I did not buy the right toothpaste.
guilty felt normal
grandma said my mother did not want me
so I was guilty of being a burden
guilty of being unwanted
guilty of needing love
guilty of not adequately paying the debt I owed
for never being enough no matter how hard I tried
mother said I was crazy cause Mamie j raised me
after she abandoned me
it was my grandmothers fault for doing
what my mother did not
I was not enough to be kept
I was not enough for her to love me unconditionally
so I kept running into the arms that made me
feel like my mother
so I could one day be enough for her to love me
but just like my mother
they abused and abandoned
they were narcissistic just like she
but that was then
now my boundaries abound
I see the truth of who I am
I no longer need trauma bonding
my trauma brain synapses are rewired
the holes in my soul are filled with self-love
by mozayik thesoulspoet.com
5.5.2020.1.33p
someone walks into the room quietly and i jump
the startle reflex is the dominant symptom of the day
that was yesterday
today
i hyperventilate as i drive back home
i saw a man walking in the dark around our doors
I am triggered by this, i am tired, i have not slept
i am trying to put fear back on the shelf
understanding is far and i am just a complaint
my body hurts, i have struggled with chores
while trying to take care of my health
if i try to explain how i have felt
it is always and never
go back to your happy place self
the throw away is imminently dealt
the rejection, the judgment because i am myself
could i just not be me
i struggle with accepting me the way i are
i am scarred
i am scarred
i may even be broken but
most of the time i am just angry
about the battle days with fear
gripping me tight choking out safe light
i must fight to let it go
i must tell my mind that this is not then
and it is not happening again like before
so many befores’
so many befores’
sometimes they come rushing out the doors of my soul
in a second
a simple moment
i could lose control
i could stumble down the dark hole of ptsd
hypervigilance, easily startled, just fucking afraid of everything
it affects my breathing, my being
at least after therapy
i know what is happening to me
i can use my breath to regain free
i can breathe to release my body from this memory
my soul reminds me of who i am and the awesome power to live is me
in a single moment
i breath
shutting the door to the past
accepting me
even if no one else gets it
i still must love and live with myself
my superpower is the unconditional love that resides in me
fear is not really a factor
God lives in me
bring it on fear
i only need to breathe
to be free
by mozayik ‘the souls’ poet’
4.9.2019 716a
Because we are broken we choose broken people who help us to perpetuate the brokenness to a multigenerational level. We have been socialized and conditioned to withstand breaking. It has been our normal for so long that we don’t even question the breaking. We see it everywhere. It is a part of our history. We were determined to not break or at least not show our brokenness.
It is my brokenness that has made me whole. The tears in my soul are sewn with the golden thread of Grace. Beautiful scars honor my journey. Breaking open has allowed my soul to evolve to unconditional love for myself.
I kept recreating the scenario where they would leave because I pushed them away and then I could cry victim that they left. I wanted them to come back and love me the way I deserved.
Childhood Emotional Neglect sent me a powerful, subliminal message that my feelings didn’t matter.
I kept looking for the unconditional love that only a mother could give. Now I know though that even mothers can’t give that kind of love sometimes. That is the biggest myth of motherhood. All mothers don’t love their babies because some don’t know how. Some mothers know but lack the resources and support. I was pregnant at 16. I married at 17. I escaped that marriage at 18 with three children. By 19 I was depressed, dealing with PTSD from childhood sexual abuse, neglect, and poverty. The only real support I had was my disabled grandmother.
We are designed to benefit from the experience of loving nurturing touch. If you don’t get that as a child, you will search everywhere to find it. I was sexualized and raped at 5, I believed sex was love.
I subconsciously chose situations that felt familiar to me. My toxic environment had shaped me. My mother’s violent relationships were what I was born into. The cycle was intrinsically wired into my brain. They would love each other one minute and the next they were fighting and then they would fuck. It was like that for her entire life.
Subconsciously this is all I knew about relationships. Studies have proven that the first 6 years of a child’s life is when they are the most impressionable. What children learn about the world during this time will be what is subconsciously their default. This is one reason I kept choosing the same people.
I was hoping for a different outcome with each lover but doing the same things I had been programmed to do over and over.
The marvelous thing about a brain is we can rewire it; we can create another default. That is what I am taking the time to do my next level of healing. I am not taking time to grieve over something that was not good for me. That is wasted energy. I see the issue and I understand the why, I know how to fix the issue.
Now my time will be spent being grateful for today. I survived. I have learned. There is some undoing that needs to be done but I am able.
I don’t need another project. No more goals will be set at this time. I just want to slow down and be with the love inside of me. I just want to sit and think about whatever pops into my head. I want to read the books I have on my TO Read LIST. I want to get lost in some sexy Fiction.
It is time for a reset. All my circuits will be busy just loving life and enjoying this big family that God gave to me. I have really accomplished a lot in my 50+ years on this earth. I measure my accomplishments by how many people’s lives have been affected in a positive way by anything I have shared about my healing journey.
As a little girl, I asked God to use me to help somebody so my living would not be in vain. It is time for Release.
Karma is not a bitch. Karma is sweet. Karma is fair.
She will give you what you deserve
and about your feelings she doesn’t care.
She will pay you in love,
If that is what you reap.
sowing seeds of love and positivity.
Will keep you out of the path of Karma’s negative proclivity.
Karma will be your friend,
until you make her your enemy.
Whether you acknowledge her or not
she will bite that ass no doubt
it is an absolute guarantee.
See, me and Karma go way back
to a time when I did not know
or respect
her affect.
I finally woke up when my love debt was past due.
I had burned too many bridges,
so, a reckoning with Karma I had to do
that changed my views.
Everyone will get what they are due.
No matter your hue.
Now,
I love every day my very best,
I am reaping love in abundance cause I let go of judgments,
no more right or wrong.
I am living the moments of my life’s song
I have created a life in love for myself,
my journey is filled with valley blessings.
I am receiving my wealth of love that Karma has dispensed.
by Mozayik “the souls’ poet” © 61917
The Souls' Poet 