Before Therapy, I gave away my power because I did not value myself. I thought I deserved mistreatment. I constantly sought approval from those that did not deserve me.
After Therapy, I stand up for myself. I don’t allow anyone to mistreat me. I set clear boundaries and have the strength and value of self to enforce them. #therapyworks
I have not posted in a while. The process of self-publishing is long and tedious but so very enjoyable. I am also planning for my trip to Newark in October to attend the annual Convocation of the Unity Fellowship Church.
I am also having Breast Reduction Surgery soon. I have a lot to share about my relationship to my breasts and how it relates to my childhood sexual trauma.
So much has happened since August of last year. I will talk about what life is like after therapy and the changes I have experienced in myself now that healing has come. Some changes are subtle and others are glaringly obvious.
Since this blog started with me trying to finish the book The Souls’ Poetry and I am now nearing the completion it is only fitting that I share the journey. I will be posting any and every thing happening in my life as it relates to the continuing evolution of my soul and it’s expression.
The Souls’ Poetry is my soul’s voice. This book is my soul’s gift to the world.
My life’s mission is to lead women to and through therapy. I want to demystify therapy, help women to identify when and if they need to seek therapy. My experience can help to show what to expect from therapy, how to choose a therapist and just to give a layman’s point of view about the entire therapy process from beginning to end.
So, let’s go. Next year this time we will be celebrating. The Souls’ Poetry will be on bookshelves. I will have a clear plan for my soul’s spiritual growth. I will be at least 5 bra cup sizes smaller.
Love, Peace and “the souls’ poet” mozayik
If you had told me that I would I be living this free two years ago, I would not have believed you. Two years ago, events happened that triggered my healing. I have post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD is a result of surviving childhood sexual abuse, abandonment, neglect, and rape before the age of five. Five is the age of the first rape memory at the hands of my mothers’ boyfriend.
Writing saved my life. Words were my saviors. This is why I am compelled to tell my story. I do not tell it to gain pity or fame. I tell it because I was born to tell it. So I tell. Everywhere I go I tell.
I want to tell my story of PTSD because most of us do not know what that looks like on an African American girl or woman. The number is many but until we start talking about it, most will suffer in silence, and ignorance. The majority will be miss-diagnosed with a mental illness or written off as just an angry black woman.
Be clear that PTSD is not a mental illness. It is how I respond to stressors in life after some trauma. My brain is wired differently, when it comes to how my body and mind react to stress. Knowledge about this disorder has been the single most important piece of my healing outside of my willingness to heal and therapy. I was able to function in society but the evidence showed up as “angry black woman”. I married, had children, went to school, worked, and to some had a pretty good life but PTSD affected everything. I will talk more about it in my book.
The story was telling me. I was angry and spiteful. Guarded was the aura I wore. I had to wear a mask that made you want to stay away from me. It served me well as a child but, as an adult, it robbed me of everything good. As a child, it kept me safe. If I came across as angry and hard then you could not interact with me. You just left me alone and that was how I controlled my environment. Of course, all of what I know about how I used to be is the result of a lot of therapy and my soul’s persistence to heal itself. I say used to because I have worked hard to change. I am not that woman any longer.
I am who I always knew I could be. I did not have the tools to let her live but I always knew there was a beautiful sweet woman inside of me.
I want to tell you, whoever may be reading this and experienced similar trauma that you can make it. You are a survivor and you will thrive. I know you feel like you will never be happy. I know you feel the weight of all that has happened to you. You get tired of trying to be happy. I know you are tired of people telling you to “get over it”. I know you want to be over it so badly it hurts.
You may have even learned, as I did, to give the appearance that you are okay. Believe me I know that feeling of being two different people. You have the functional face and energy that has served to get you through until this day. However, you also have that little child inside that needs nurturing. She needs rescuing and you know you are the only one to save her but you feel like you don’t have enough to even save yourself. I am telling you that you can and will heal.
It really does get better. Like I say in my poem “survivor” whatever it took to get you through until this day, it will take you further. You are not what you are feeling. You are strong and courageous. If you are reading these words that means you survived and now you can choose to do the work and start to thrive. https://thesoulspoet.wordpress.com/2011/03/31/survivor/
I know it f***ing sucks that you have to heal yourself. You did not do this shit to yourself. I look at it like this I had two choices. I could stay in pain or I could heal. Either way, I am in pain. So, I told myself if others said they made it over to the other side of healing then I am going to try it. It is true that the day will come when healing is the only choice you really have because the alternative has become unbearable. Trust that your body and mind know when the time is right. If you are suffering, it is time.
The most loving thing I have ever done for myself is do my work in therapy. I swear there have been days when the fear of healing took my breath away. My mind hid those things away to protect me until I could fully comprehend what happened and go through the healing process.
It has really become a spiritual journey for me because I know that my personality is only the tool my soul uses to heal itself and everything that has happened to me was for the elevation of my soul. Looking at it in this manner does not lessen the pain it just helps me to accept it as a necessary part of my journey. I hope my words have helped. My purpose is to use my words to help.
Mozayik “the souls’ poet”
Celebrate with me my healing. Pity has not served me well. I am done with pity parties. I tell my story so that some woman, girl, boy or man can believe they can heal. I tell it so someone can know that their pain does not define who they can become. I tell it so that my soul can no longer be in bondage to the secrets and shame. I tell my story to show you can overcome tragedy and triumph. I want others to feel empowered to tell their stories in hopes that we can save lives. Secrets kill and I want to live.
It has been a while since my last post. I have been putting my mental and physical health first. I seek to be whole. I am ready for truth. I await my teachers. Bring me my answers, show me how to go in and bring out the gift. This is my prayer.
I have been reflecting because my homework from my therapist is for me to look at my emotional and physical boundaries. All of my relationships with men and women have been abusive in some way, except for maybe two, and those two people are still a part of my life.
I am asking myself some hard questions lately. Why do I partner with abusive people? Why do I partner with people who need me to take care of them? I am seeing the patterns. I am committed to taking the time and energy to do what is necessary to change my thinking so I make better choices. My relationships have not been healthy but that does not mean future relationships are doomed to be a repeat of the past, especially if I do the work.
So much has happened since my last blog post. This journey is mine uniquely. Others may have been able to endure what I have and not be as affected. Others still, did not survive and have severe mental illness, addictions or have committed suicide. We do not know why some are affected more or less than others.
I have given up feeling guilty because it appears to have been harder for me than someone else “getting over it”. We all have own limits. PTSD is Post/After Trauma Stress Disorder the very name describes a disorder in the way a person handles stress physiologically, psychologically and certainly emotionally get so tired of people saying, “Let it go, it happened so long ago, get over it, and move on”
I am now finally learning how to move on. I started taking care of people at the age of eleven. I married at 17, again at 25 and again at 38 along the way having twins and triplets. This is the first time in my life the only person I have to take care of is myself. Now is the perfect time to devote to “getting over” this. I am creating my best life. My likelihood of having a healthy, loving, and honest relationship increases every time I go to therapy even when my body is taunting me with pain.
Any way I may have digressed, I think one main reason that my partners turned out to be abusive, (they did not seem abusive in the beginning), is I do not have well established emotional boundaries. I never even considered this concept until my therapist brought it up.I am an open book and I was proud of it until now. Being too emotionally open has allowed people into parts of me they did not deserve access to. I gave them a map to my buttons by telling all of my darkest secrets and fears. All the things I felt guilty about or felt ashamed of were deliberately used to their advantage. Well, not anymore. I am a survivor. I always figure out the way through difficult situations.I am strong enough to write about the past and still live in the now.
I still have some work to do, but the hardest part is over. Now I can work on the side effects. The images, memories, and the feelings that accompanied them don’t take me hostage while robbing me of my breath.
I will definitely tell y’all about it when the time is right. But, it will be soon. I am now working on the final touches for the book. I have a feeling that now is the time to give my gift away to the world.
by mozayik “the souls’ poet”
I am ready for the next level of healing. The one where I embrace who I am. The one where I am empowered with the knowledge of self. That means I can and will keep changing. I am inspired by my story. I accept my purpose with humility because to whom much is given, much is required.
All of my life
I’ve been risking it all.
Fall after fall
I kept getting up,
running,
trying to catch the next heart.
Broken up with lies,
“we” never arriving to a destination
that had no beginning
or ending for its’ route.
Emotions roll,
we separate,
trying to be whole by
fixing the holes in our souls
and so it goes, “we”
wearing many faces
until we finally admit
that our addictions
are the vehicles
we use to chase love.
The tragedy of this reality is
we search all over,
only to find
we had it all along,
it is our home.
We travel far
looking for ourselves.
In our own hearts
are the answers,
that is where you find your love.
Once you find it,
the only way to keep it
is to give it away
by mozayik “the souls’ poet” 121712
I have been reflecting all day on the goings on of the last year of my life and one thing stands out among all the amazing changes and challenges. On the day we moved my daughter to another hospital because as a nurse that pulled me aside and told me said, “they were killing my daughter” I overheard a comment a Doctor said about her situation.
This doctor refused to look me in the eye. I was stretching my head all kind of ways to force him to look eye to eye with me without success. Because he deliberately would not look at me, when he left the room I followed him down the hall.
I overheard him telling one of the residents he was walking with
“It is just collateral damage” and I said “Not on my watch she’s not”
This has been one of the most traumatizing experiences a family can go through. It is right up there with death and cancer, murder or some other debilitating condition that causes someone life to just come to a halt.
Only another mother can comprehend the agonizing helpless feeling you endure when your child is suffering.
It is still hard to see her in that condition, but, SHE IS ALIVE.
My girl is still here, so no matter what changes or challenges I’ve had they pale in comparison to SHE IS ALIVE. Nothing else matters.
you have no power over me.
you’ve held me captive much too long
you were my master and i your slave
you even tried to take me to my grave
the scales have fallen off my eyes
perfect love found me
now i know you are just a wanna be
in the presence of love you flee
i have power over you
love has destroyed every yoke
victory is mine i am free
i have power over fear
There may be some truth to pain is fear leaving. All of 2012 I have been in therapy dealing with the fear of PAIN. I was living with the fear of psychological and physical pain. My quality of life was affected because I feared doing anything that would result in me being in unbearable pain.
I was afraid to allow the memories and flashbacks to surface because I thought I could not endure the overwhelming feelings of shame and heartbreak. Along with the memories my body would hurt in direct proportion to area of my body that was being harmed in my memory. I actually felt a release of painful energy. I felt lighter more free, less afraid.
I know beyond a shadow of doubt that one of the biggest reasons I have Fibromyalgia is because my flight or fight response is stuck to ON. That means I have been living in a state of tension/terror all my life and this has caused me to tense all my muscles and now I am telling my muscles to relax and that is not my natural state. I do not know how to relax. Therein lies my problem. Even my brain has been wired abnormally but that is being changed every time I get out of bed and “Keep it Moving”
If y’all remember, I had to stop editing my book because of the memories and flash backs I encountered. It was very puzzling to me that this was happening to me now. I have worked on this book in some form for the last 12 years. So I wondered, why now?
I immediately found a therapist to help me cope and process the feelings that seemed so over whelming.
Along with the flashbacks and memories came intense emotions. I would resist the feelings. I would find distractions so I did not have to experience this stuff. I had some events happen in my life that triggered my mind and body to relive one of the most traumatic experiences that happened when I was five. I had not dealt with this in therapy because I had forgiven the people involved.
I learned I still have to process the emotions that are buried in my psyche. Now is the time my body and mind have chosen to deal with this at this time in my life the only thing I have focus on is myself. No more hiding behind children and spouses I am ready to create and reveal the life I deserve.
I am at a place where I can move forward to complete this book. I am still in therapy dealing with my abandonment issues and working diligently to find peace with the memories. I am going to start a new page as I go through the process of dealing with these issues and how they have showed up in my behavior and my relationships.
I am striving towards healing to allow me to have more healthy relationships. It is not something that can be dealt with quickly because i have learned that the mind will bring these memories and flashbacks to surface when i am ready to deal with them. As i have learned the hard way, if i don’t deal with the feelings they will deal with me.
As i continue on my journey to healing and mental health and stability hopefully someone will be encouraged to start their own healing.
I promise the little girl in my that I will not abandon her and will stay with her for as long as it takes to learn how to live with PTSD.
Thank you for going on this journey of my soul with me.
The Souls' Poet 