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
Here’s the deal, guys:
I was born smack-bang on the cusp of Gemini and Cancer, which leaves me existing in a kind of constant state of ambivalence, swinging between the emotional heart of a Cancer and the intellectual mind of a Gemini.
Which means even though I have this big, sloppy romantic heart of a poet inside of me, I also flatly refuse to buy into the ridiculous, over-commercialised notion that is V-Day, and all the shizza that goes with it.
Because even though I may have had to learn about love the hard way, here’s what I do know:
Love cannot be bought with flowers and chocolate and wine; even less so on the one day of the year consumerism tells us it can. The only exception to this rule is gin. Love can be bought with gin.
When Jesus said to love thy neighbour as thyself, the dude was seriously onto something. Because if we cannot love ourselves first and foremost with every measure of love we deserve, we will never be able to love another the way they deserve. Loving others can only come from the overflow of love we give to ourselves first; to expect another to fill our well only ever leads to disappointment.
If we cannot love ourselves with this measure of love we deserve, we’ll spend our whole lives settling for those who do not love us that way either. How much we value our worth is how high we set the bar for the love we accept. Keep it high. Those who deserve to be in our lives won’t be afraid to climb. Or at the very least, buy a ladder.
Unconditional love transforms people. Like, the most incredible magic trick you’ll ever see. Love someone like that today and watch them change before your eyes.
Love does not look like abuse. The moment it does, leave and never look back. You do not destroy the people you love. Period.
Love is a decision. You will not always want to love the person you wake beside every morning. You either choose love, or you don’t. One of those choices is easy. The other is worth it.
For those actually celebrating Valentine’s Day today, I promise not to judge you. At least, not too much. It’s not that I take issue with celebrating love, or showing a loved one what they mean through grand gestures of overpriced flowers and chocolate. Love is glorious. It should be celebrated. Every day. And this is the point. I don’t want to reduce love to a once-a-year gesture, but remember to celebrate each day this force of nature that resonates through every part of our lives and makes it worth living.
K x
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.
© Kathy Parker 2019
Day Eleven #PoemADayFeb – First
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.
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; 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 –
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.
– ©️ Kathy Parker 2018 –
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.
– ©️ Kathy Parker 2018 –
I spent much of my life trying to hide who I was, convinced I wasn’t worthy of being loved. After all, if I had been worthy of love, then people who said they loved me wouldn’t have left. Wouldn’t have betrayed me. Wouldn’t have hurt me. It became clear that to be loved I would have to hide my true self; this girl with the fierce mind, wild spirit and poet’s heart.
I learned to hide these things and instead be whatever I needed to be to fit in and gain acceptance. I learned how to make myself the same, how to make myself small, how to make myself submissive. I learned how to make myself silent. I learned how to conform.
I learned these things will actually gain you the acceptance you’re looking for.
I also learned the cost of that acceptance is freedom.
Their acceptance is not worth your freedom.
There is nothing lonelier than existing separated from who we really are, than spending each day in captivity to the expectations of others, than denying the true heart within us that aches to be set free.
The road to self-acceptance has been a hard one; to finally have arrived at this place where I believe I am worthy of love exactly as I am. Where I will never again settle for anything less. Where I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of all that I am. It has taken me so long to be at peace with both the light and dark in me. To see my scars as victory stripes earned by overcoming every goddamn battle I’ve faced, and not just ugly reminders of how unworthy I am; how unloveable.
Freedom comes when we learn to accept and love who we are, exactly as we are. Including the regrets, the mistakes, the choices we made when we had no other choice. Including the bad days and the messy days and the godforsaken days where darkness wraps itself around us and we take comfort in the bleak heaviness that falls upon our souls. We cannot choose to love only the parts of ourselves we think are acceptable and not the rest, we cannot love ourselves only in pieces and expect to be complete. And if we cannot love ourselves completely, we will never be able to love another that way either.
Becoming our true selves in a conformist world is an act of rebellion. I have lost many people from my life who don’t like that I no longer fit inside their boxes. How dare we be different. How dare we make people uncomfortable. How dare we be so defiant. Fuck the haters. People will rarely tolerate the freedom they see in others that they choose to deny for themselves. And if others are not capable of love without conditions then we are better off without their love. Because once we have truly learned to love ourselves with the kind of love we deserve, we soon realise that anything less than that will never be enough for us anyway.
~ ©️ Kathy Parker ~