Liberated?

Call myself liberated
but this modern woman’s
shadow arches backwards
finds its reflection in legacies

How can I forgive my own failings
when their tale takes root in
oppression and abuses long passed?
Liberated a misnomer.

(Image my own.)

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VJ

Permission to write, paint, and imagine are the gifts I gave myself when chronic illness hit - a fair exchange: being for doing. Relevance is an attitude. Humour essential.

48 thoughts on “Liberated?”

  4. Yes, true liberation is at every level, especially release from trauma, oppression etc. but not forgetting that even the sense of it is diminished by the glass ceiling and the employment inequity, gah.

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  7. a raw honest insight VJ, love how open you are to sharing … great shot!

    our past shapes but doesn’t define us … healing is tough when our life choices are knotted by past abuses and oppression but we really have to dwell in that pain in order to make sense, in order to unravel it.

    There is no instant, all fix solution only constant awareness to wade our way through. I have found counselling and volunteering heal … but I know you’ve tried it all, hugs!

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    1. Thanks Kate. What is apparent to me – being one of six children from a chaotic upbringing – is that we all handle it differently. I have sought counselling, for instance, whereas my one sister will not, preferring to close herself off to the world.

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      1. you are so right, we all react differently, recall differently … if you can talk to a sibling with a similar recall that may be just as effective as a counsellor. Take care precious 🙂

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  8. What a moving poem, VJ. As we age, if we don’t realize the truth of that poem, how shallow we are! When I was a teen, I complained to my mom about being boring and not having anyone in our past who had done anything interesting. They were mostly farmers, teachers, and preachers back to the 1600s that we knew. My mild-mannered, self-controlled mother slapped my face and told me never to criticize my ancestors again. I became a teacher and made my own regrets.

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  11. Reading your poem I was reminded of how my sister and I have been forced to attempt to reconcile a family history that is way wilder than any we imagined before we started “prying”. Oh ancestors, there is little to be done about them, except to avoid the traps they fell into.

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