Working on my thesis has been immeasurably good for my mental and emotional health. There’s something about writing grief and trauma out of my body that fills me with gratitude, appreciation, joy, and a sense of healing and growth. I first truly noticed this a while back when I gave myself permission to really pursue poetry in the heavy way I felt compelled to. And it’s interesting, too, when I think of the timing. A couple of years ago, I attended a birthday party that included an aura portrait component. I had my aura portrait done at this really amazing place in Hillsboro and then a man interpreted the portrait.

He told me that my spiritual health was directly linked to my creativity; that writing, specifically, was a means through which I accessed spiritual healing, spiritual growth, and spiritual connectedness, that writing was how I processed my trauma and grief. He told me to keep doing that, to keep pursuing creativity, and my spirit guides would continue to work through me. It was an incredible day. I had never met this man before, so for him to tell me all of that after looking at an aura portrait for only a few minutes…I was blown away.

I think that day was meant to urge me towards writing more poetry. And although my spiritual journey is still evolving and changing, I can see what he meant by me choosing to embrace the creativity. The more poetry I write, the closer I feel to myself, my surroundings, and my healing process. It’s made me think about where I was a year ago, versus where I am now. A year ago at this time, I was struggling. Suffering might be an even more accurate word. So much in my life felt like it was going completely wrong. I was grieving so many disappointments and personal hurts. And while I wrote about all of them through my poetry, I felt stifled, unwanted, tossed aside in ways that I couldn’t reconcile or understand.

It often takes time for us to understand the extent of the damage we’ve endured, and that has been completely true for me. I’m only just now starting to full realize how damaging my marriage was, how damaging my miscarriages were, and how damaging 2019 and the first half of 2020 were. Trauma can sometimes feel dormant. Writing my thesis, revising it, working through the parts of each poem that need more revision and editing, has unearthed so much that I’ve buried. And through poetry, I’ve found a place where I can acknowledge the pain openly and freely.

And while a lot of these hurts still linger, instead of focusing on the pain and damage, I’ve been learning to acknowledge the pain while also turning my gaze to the places that are healing. I woke up this morning to a text from my boyfriend. He sent it to me last night while he was playing video games. (I always go to be earlier than he does.) After sending me a bunch of really sweet texts all weekend, the last one said, “I don’t know if you’re still awake, but I want you to know I think about you constantly.” It was a small thing that meant more than I can express.

Because here’s the thing: people will always disappoint and hurt us. It’s a fact of life. Even the people we love the most, the ones who promise to always be there, will let us down. These hurts can make it hard to trust others, can make it hard to believe that we really are worthy of belonging. But then there are some people who come along and remind us that yes, we are worthy of love. We are worthy of belonging. Even if others don’t acknowledge it. My boyfriend has been one of those people for me.

So now when I sit down to work on my thesis, I can sit with the trauma, the grief, the pain, and actually see through them, rather than be blinded by them. My faculty mentor and I have talked a lot about the taboos of discussing pregnancy loss and emotional abuse. The taboos are only allowed to exist because those of us who’ve suffered under them remain silent. Well, I’m not staying silent. And I know that will ruffle some feathers. But hey, As Anne Lammot says in her book on craft, Bird by Bird, “If people wanted you to write positively about them, they should have treated you better.”

So today I’m leaning in to the truths I’ve kept silent for too long. I won’t keep them silent any longer.