Grace – This Girl Unravelled

New Spoken Word Poem Uploaded!

So, February has been crazy busy and part of that for me has been revamping my YouTube channel and recording some new spoken word poems as well as re-recording a few older ones in my swanky new studio setup, thanks to my firstborn, William Parker – Youtube – who, with over 100k views on one of his YouTube tutorial videos, is far more savvy than I’ll ever be.

Today I wanted to share my most recent poem, performed for the first time this weekend at the Paroxysm Press Showcase Series. It’s a reflection on the journey I have been on recently; the struggle to dismantle the strongholds of our survival and understand that allowing ourselves to become soft doesn’t mean we become weak; yet how tightly we cling to what we have always known.

For those of you who are new to my channel make sure you check out the other videos while you’re there – I’ll be putting some more up in the next while but for now I’m also many days behind in #poemadayfeb so have some catching up to do there first!

Much love x

Day Twenty-Two #PoemADayFeb – Sun

And when we couldn’t turn the page
we burned the book;
yet isn’t this the truth of love:
that we would rather
fill our houses with ashes
than promises;
that we would rather
curse the sun for drought
than believe for the coming rains.

©️ Kathy Parker 2019

Day Twenty-Two #PoemADayFeb – Sun

Day Twelve #PoemADayFeb – Summer

And this is how it happens;
months of half-descended skies
dampen our gaze and like greedy children
we clamber to see the first yellow vein
touch the surface of fleshy cloud; we drench
our shadowed bodies with light, careless
to heed the warnings of our youth –
eager gaze prolonged, cells of retina
bleached by sun’s bitter kiss.
Black spots, blind spots.
In a dream,
sky above scorches flesh
while ground below holds frozen
and the air hangs thick with a metaphor
I cannot see, blinded by beams of him
coming through the doorway of my winter.
Black spots, blind spots.
He does not notice how taut my arms
become from holding up the sky for him.
I do not notice how razor-edged the ice
against my flesh until I bleed.
Black spots, blind spots.
Blistered eyelids force my gaze away
from that which I once hungered
and I see what I did not before:
love is only born of the soft soil
beneath our feet.
The scales fall from my eyes.
I am the rain.
And he is so last summer.

Day Twelve #PoemADayFeb – Summer

Day Eleven #PoemADayFeb – First

alone-bampw-black-black-and-white-Favim.com-580179.jpg
I lost my voice when I was seven;
buried in an unmarked grave
where all untold stories go to die.
I learned it’s quite a skill to hold
a lifetime of words beneath your tongue
and not choke on the debris of letters
that fester in the back of your throat;
to swallow truth like a hungry dog with
bared teeth;
willing another to not come close enough
to taste such foul feast upon their lips.
It turns out there is no minute of silence
for silence;
no funeral for people to dress in black
and eat jelly cakes
and cluck tongues over the tragic loss
of life taken too soon.
Innocence taken too soon.
There is only the sound of applause; let a
woman learn silently with all submissiveness.
I am thirty-four when I find my voice again,
yet it is not the first time I speak
which brings me to my knees,
but the first time I am heard.

Day Eleven #PoemADayFeb – First

Gently, Gently Changing With the Seasons

I’ve been pretty quiet here lately.

I feel like the universe is asking me to do many hard things, challenging me to move away from everything in my life that has kept me from my true self; to cut ties, break cycles, let go of things I once thought I never could.

I feel pulled from the comfortable dwelling places I’ve frequented and propelled into something that feels hard to explain, something I don’t really understand myself. I just know I can no longer stay in these places once so familiar to me.

It’s exhausting work; this metamorphosis, this deep work of the soul. It’s why I haven’t been here much lately; I feel swaddled in the darkness of my cocoon with no idea of the outcome of this transformation but having an inherent understanding that I need to step back from the world at this time and trust this process, honour this process, and give myself the space needed to heal and change and grow without explanation or justification.

So while the rest of the world emerges into the new year with goals and plans and guns blazing, I am choosing to stay true to my own journey; to know I am not dictated by calendars, by clocks, or by society’s definition of timelines and success.

Instead I am allowing myself the permission and grace to surrender to this process; like nature: gently, gently changing with the seasons.

How We Break Free From Negative Cycles

Too often we find ourselves caught in negative cycles, either our own self-defeating patterns or in our relationships with others. Sometimes it can be a blind spot we don’t see, other times something we see but feel powerless to change or break. Either way, being trapped in these negative cycles shackles us to people who hold us back, to our past defeats, to history that repeats itself, to the versions of ourselves we desire to be free from. Staying in these cycles leaves us disempowered and feeling we have no control over our lives but are held at the mercy of other people or circumstances; forever pulled into a place not of our own choosing.

It takes strength, courage, determination and persistence to break these cycles, but we can never find the freedom to move forward until we consciously make the decision to do so. It isn’t something we can achieve through happy vibes and positive thinking, it takes more than that. It takes awareness and acknowledgement. It takes a decision to say, no more. It must be purposeful and mindful; a conscious decision we choose every day to move away from the negative cycles – from all that has held us back and held us down – and move toward the life we envision for ourselves.

Now is the perfect time to reflect on all that has held us back in the past year and make the decision to let go of that which no longer serves us well. To say, no more. No more will I be pulled back into those negative cycles. No more will I allow another to disempower or control me. No more will I believe I’m not deserving of freedom. No more will I believe I’m not worthy of the life I deserve.

K x

And This is How We Must Learn to Love

And this is how we must learn to love; without expectation or attachment.

To understand we cannot force people to come into our lives, or stay in our lives, simply because we want them there. There is nothing forceful about love; we cannot demand it, manipulate it, control it, coerce it into being.

We cannot bind another person to us but must understand those who want to be in our lives, will be. Indecision is still a decision; if we must convince someone to see our worth then they do not belong in our lives. There is no place for those who are not ready or able to love us now, as we are, and to set them free is to create space in our heart for those who will see us, and love us, as we deserve; it is to set ourselves free also.

To love without expectation does not mean we should ever be okay with a love that offers us no loyalty, respect, understanding, or hurts us in any way. But that we learn to love without an expectation of outcome; that we cannot place those we love inside our predetermined ideas of relationship but must allow love to manifest of its own accord, all the while finding the grace to accept we may not always get the outcome we hope for.

It is allowing those we love to put their own needs first, even if those needs do not include us; to become whole enough within ourselves that we do not need another to complete us. To love ourselves enough that we do not need another to prove we are worthy of love. To learn to love in a way which honours both them and ourselves.

It is accepting that there are days love will hurt; days our wounds of rejection and abandonment will be reopened when someone we have loved is no longer there; it is learning to sit with our pain in those times, to lean into it and know this too shall pass; tomorrow it will hurt less to breathe, tomorrow we will lift our heads a little higher toward the sky.

To love without expectation or attachment means to be open to allowing love to enter, but also to be willing to set another free. Knowing when we let go of someone we love it will make us bleed, yet so will the blisters on our hands from holding so tight as we force them to stay. Allow them to go; allow their freedom to become your closure. Their journey is not yours, and that is okay. Take what you have learnt, and use it to become stronger, and wiser, as you continue down your own path; eyes and heart open to new horizons ahead.

– © Kathy Parker 2018 –

For My Fellow Survivors ❤️

For my fellow survivors ❤️

“It says on pill bottles as a disclaimer, do not operate heavy machinery. The irony in all of this, is trauma is heavy fucking machinery, which is to say, I’m not giving you permission. But if you ever decided it was too much and you wanted to rip yourself from the soil of this world, I would understand”

Sometimes, I feel like my heart is doing okay. And then, without warning, something wrenches it open and I come undone. I listened to this spoken word poem today and came completely and utterly undone. Because as people who have survived trauma, this is the kind of validation we need. We need to know it’s okay to feel what we feel, no matter how dark, no matter how terrifying, no matter how uncomfortable it makes others feel. Rarely do I allow myself that validation. Instead I tell myself I’m fine. I tell everyone else I’m fine. So goddamn fine. Except, some days I’m not fine.

Today I’m not fine.

There are days I still wake up so damn tired; beaten before the day has even begun. Beaten by the memories and the flashbacks and the triggers and the demons and the shame and the anxieties and the fears and the way these things seem to find me in the night while the rest of the world sleeps and leave me feeling like a small girl in a big world; so very alone and afraid. I woke up today like this; the graveyard of my heart dug open in the night and me, too weary to fight against it. To outrun it. To stay above it. To shovel the dirt upon it once more.

“You will feel broken. It is okay to feel broken. Broken is where the healing begins. This is where we begin. This is where we begin again, and again, and again.”

Healing doesn’t come in straight lines and even spaces. It is a wayward journey that brings us back to the places we need to be broken once again; that after the breaking, eventually, we will know the rising.

But for today, I am reminded it’s okay to be broken. It’s okay to feel this way. It’s okay to begin again. Today, I am reminded I am not alone in this.

“You, survivor, are still here.”

I am still here. You are still here.

And by god, the world will see us bloom.

Daniel – “Flowers (or, A Beginner’s Guide to Surviving Sexual Assault)

She Might Be Beautiful, But She Will Never Compare To You

And she’s beautiful, the girl in the Instagram posts. All perfect smile and perfect tan and perfect proportions. You wonder what it would take to look like her.

If he would notice you more if you did.

In your head, you begin to calculate how many less calories you would need to become that thin. The amount of sit-ups it would take to get abs that defined. The cost of laser hair removal and breast enhancements and anti-wrinkle injections and teeth whitening.

Filled with inadequacy, your heart sinks. You know how much it would take to even come close to comparison; how much it would take to grasp a standard of beauty you know you’ll never measure up to. One you’re not sure you even want to try and measure up to.

Dear woman, you forget.

You forget she may be all those things.

But she isn’t you.

She isn’t the strength of your body that has brought forth life and risen above death; battle-scarred and weary but held together with the resilience and determination of the warrior spirit that blazes beneath your bones.

She isn’t the complexity of your mind, the paint strokes of colour and swirl like the starry night of Van Gogh’s imagination; the intelligence, the creativity, the emotion, but also the tangled knots of questions and doubts and fears; the blisters on your fingers from how much it has taken to unravel the distorted lies of your foundation to uncover the truth that now radiates from your existence.

She isn’t the beads of light behind your eyes that glimmer with the hidden mysteries of your soul. The quick wit you carry inside the cadence of your laughter. The words of courage you fearlessly speak to those who need them. The helpless tears that overflow from your heart for those who suffer around you.

She isn’t the love that rushes through your blood or the passion that douses your veins; the untamed wildfire that aches to be set alight by the strike of his fingers against your skin.

She isn’t vulnerability disguised as bravery.

She isn’t the taste of hope mingled with quiet apprehension as she learns to lean on trust once more.

She isn’t you.

And maybe he’ll never see that. Maybe he’ll never see beyond the surface of a woman’s skin; beyond an image on a screen, beyond a superficial ideal, beyond an unrealistic standard.

But maybe you deserve better anyway.

Because she might be beautiful.

But she will never compare to you.

And the only person who needs to see that, is you.

And I’m Not Sorry For Choosing Me

The more I begin to heal the less I find myself apologising for it.

It would be easy to say sorry.

Sorry for the ways I have pulled away.

Sorry for the ways I have let you down.

Sorry for the messages I have not replied to.

Sorry for the calls I have not answered.

Sorry for my absence.

Sorry for my silence.

Sorry I can no longer meet your expectations.

Sorry I can no longer meet your needs.

Sorry I can no longer put your needs above my own.

Except, I’m not sorry.

Because, the thing is, it isn’t me that needs to heal.

It’s the little girl within me; the wounded child that nobody protected. Or stood up for. Or put first. Or made to feel mattered.

The girl who was not heard, or seen.

The girl who grew up believing the needs of others were more important than her own.

That her body was not her own.

That her voice would never be heard.

That she wasn’t worth the respect of others.

That love was something to be earned.

That boundaries could be crossed by whoever so pleased.

That her value was not in what she could give, but only in what others could take.

I am fighting for her, because no one else ever did.

I am putting her first, because no one else ever did.

I am standing between her and the world; honouring her, protecting her, nurturing her, allowing her the time and space to mend the brokenness without more being taken when there is nothing left to give; without more of the world pulling her in every direction with its demands and expectations.

Because she matters. Because I matter.

I am choosing to heal the way I need to; my time, my way.

I am choosing me.

And I will no longer apologise for that.